Language as a Scientific Tool Language is the most essential medium of scientifi c activity. Many historians, sociologists, and science studies scholars have investigated scientifi c language for this reason, but few have examined those cases where language itself has become an object of scientifi c discussion. Over the centuries scientists have sought to control, refi ne, and engineer language for various epistemologi- cal, communicative, and nationalistic purposes. This book seeks to explore cases in the history of science in which questions or concerns with language have bubbled to the surface in scientifi c discourse. This opens a window into the particular ways in which scientists have conceived of and construed language as the central medium of their activity across different cultural contexts and places and the clashes and tensions that have manifested their many attempts to engineer it to both preserve and enrich its function. The subject of language draws out many topics that have mostly been neglected in the history of science, such as the connection between the emergence of national languages and the development of science within national settings, and allows us to connect together historical episodes from many understud- ied cultural and linguistic venues such as Eastern European and medieval Hebrew science. Miles MacLeod is Professor for Philosophy of Science at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. Rocío G. Sumillera is Assistant Professor in the Department of English and German, University of Granada, Spain. Jan Surman is Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Leibniz Graduate School at the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe in Marburg. Ekaterina Smirnova is currently affi liated with Sciences Po (Paris) and the STS Center in EUSP. 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Sumillera, Jan Surman, and Lang, and Katie Sutton Ekaterina Smirnova This page intentionally left blank Language as a Scientific Tool Shaping Scientifi c Language Across Time and National Tradition Edited by Miles MacLeod, Rocío G. Sumillera, Jan Surman, and Ekaterina Smirnova First published 2016 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: MacLeod, Miles, editor. Title: Language as a scientific tool : shaping scientific language across time and national tradition / edited by Miles MacLeod [and three others]. Description: New York : Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge studies in cultural history ; 43 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015041763 | ISBN 9781138101050 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Communication in science. | Science—Language. | Language, Universal. Classification: LCC Q223 .L264 2016 | DDC 501/.4—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041763 ISBN: 978-1-138-10105-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-65725-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents List of Figures ix List of Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii 1 Introduction 1 MILES MACLEOD, ROCÍO G. SUMILLERA, JAN SURMAN, AND EKATERINA SMIRNOVA 2 Modern Science and the Spirit of Language, Literature, and Philology 9 MATTHIAS DÖRRIES PART 1 Language, Rhetoric, and History 3 How Language Became a Tool: The Reconceptualisation of Language and the Empirical Turn in Seventeenth-Century Britain 25 MILES MACLEOD 4 The Beginnings of Scientific Terminology in Polish: Kłos’s Algorithmus (1538) and Grzepski’s Geometria (1566) 42 JERZY BINIEWICZ 5 Language and History in the Context of the Société des Observateurs de l’Homme (1799–1804) 57 MARTIN HERRNSTADT AND LAURENS SCHLICHT 6 Contested Boundaries: How Scientists Deal with Uncertainty and Ambiguity in Language 74 PRIYA VENKATESAN HAYS viii Contents PART 2 The Creation of Scientific Terminology 7 Reading Astrolabes in Medieval Hebrew 89 JOSEFINA RODRÍGUEZ ARRIBAS 8 Opyt in the Social Lexicon of Modernity: The Experience/ Experiment Dichotomy 113 EKATERINA SMIRNOVA 9 Linguistic Precision and Scientific Accuracy: Searching for the Proper Name of “Oxygen” in French, Danish, and Polish 131 JAN SURMAN 10 Mathematical Machines: Automating Thinking? 149 HELENA DURNOVÁ PART 3 Imagining Universal Languages 11 Seventeenth-Century British Projects for a Universal Language and Their Reception in the Augustan Age: The Cases of John Wilkins and Jonathan Swift 167 ROCÍO G. SUMILLERA 12 One Second Language for Mankind: The Rise and Decline of the World Auxiliary Language Movement in the Belle Époque 187 MARKUS KRAJEWSKI 13 Impacts of a Global Language on Science: Are There Disadvantages? 199 SCOTT L. MONTGOMERY Contributors 219 Index 225 Figures 5.1 Illustration of the function of the judgement ( proposition) from Sicard’s Cours d’instruction 65 11.1 Wilkins, A n Essay , Ddd2r 179 11.2 Wilkins, A n Essay, Ddd2 v 180 11.3 Wilkins, A n Essay, Eee2r 181