Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1898: Volume LIV, No. 2, December 1898Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1898: Volume LIV, No. 2, December 1898
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Japanese Islands, who have been modified more or less by association
with the latter people.
=Technical and Popular Names.=--In a paper criticising the
multiplication of local names in geology, Prof. C. E. Keyes
distinguishes between names devised with a conscientious desire to
better the condition of a science by clothing the new ideas with
simple words and those which are the product of a name-making mania.
"The first can not be too highly commended, nor the second too deeply
deplored." Every progressive science must discard the names that have
served their purpose, and must be prepared to receive all of the
new ones demanded. The sciences have each two phases, for each of
which a terminology is demanded, in one of which the names must be
technical and special, established primarily for the investigator,
and in the other general, popular, simple, and free from technical
appearance; but the distinction is rarely made. Those who object to
the prevalence of technical names in other sciences seldom reflect
that they have them in their own art. Yet if a man of science should
desire to familiarize himself with the artisan's work, "he would be,
after five minutes' talk with a machinist or electrician, confronted
by so many unfamiliar terms--technical terms of everyday use--that
he would at once cry out for greater simplicity of language." In the
geological sciences the technicalities play the same part they do in
the arts and in business. Every new name in geology, however, must be
properly defined before it can be noticed, and its subsequent career
will depend on its utility. It may be said that no greater boon to
the working geologist has been devised than the plan of designating
geographically geological units irrespective of exact position or
age. Since its adoption a vast mass of valuable information has been
obtained that was previously unthought of, and is in a shape to be
always used; the other departments of geology have been much aided,
and stratigraphical geology has been greatly helped.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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