International Language and Science: Considerations on the Introduction of an International Language into ScienceCouturat, Louis
Science
International Language and Science: Considerations on the Introduction of an International Language into Science
Couturat, Louis
Communication in science; Language, Universal
These are the formal suggestions which I should like to make
with reference to the problem in hand; they are only intended
to indicate how one might proceed, and are not to be regarded
as either exhaustive or infallible. There arises now the second
question as to how such work is to be organised.
As the same concepts occur in several related sciences, and must
receive the same designations, it would not be practicable to
entrust the construction of the vocabularies to special commissions
for each particular science. It would be more advisable to appoint
a certain number of persons to collect the material and to make
out lists of the concepts for which terms are required, and then
to appoint commissions representing a whole group of sciences to
discuss the necessary principles, after which the details could be
worked out and finally subjected to the examination and approval of
the whole body. To make matters at once more definite, I think the
exact sciences ought to be first taken into consideration, for in
their case the fixation of concepts is most highly developed. There
is no need for a replacement of the well-known Latin nomenclature
employed in the descriptive sciences, nor would any attempt in
this direction have any likelihood of success. We must look rather
to the distant future, when all other sciences will have already
adapted themselves to the international idiom for the translation
of the Latin names into the forms of the international language
(retaining the stems, however) in order to produce for æsthetic
reasons a uniform system throughout the whole of science.
On the other hand, I consider it absolutely necessary to subject
the concepts of _logic_ and the _theory of cognition_ to the same
process of scientific delimitation and fixation. In the first
place, these sciences belong, at least theoretically, to the exact
sciences; and, in the second place, work in these departments of
knowledge is rendered extraordinarily difficult by the fact that
their concepts are expressed in the terms used in daily life, whose
elastic nature constantly frustrates exact work.
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