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9 - Languages in Chemistry

from Part II - Discipline Building in the Sciences: Places, Instruments, Communication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent
Edited by
Mary Jo Nye
Mary Jo Nye
Affiliation:
Oregon State University
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Summary

Language plays a key role in shaping the identity of a scientific discipline. If we take the term “discipline” in its common pedagogical meaning, a good command of the basic vocabulary is a precondition to graduation in a discipline When disciplines are viewed as communities of practitioners, they are also characterized by the possession of a common language, including esoteric terms, patterns of argumentation, and metaphors. The linguistic community is even stronger in research schools, as a number of studies emphasize. Sharing a language is more than understanding a specific jargon. Beyond the codified meanings and references of scientific terms, a scientific community is characterized by a set of tacit rules that guarantee a mutual understanding when the official code of language is not respected. Tacit knowing is involved not only in the understanding of terms and symbols but also in the uses of imagery, schemes, and various kinds of expository devices. A third important function of language in the construction of a scientific discipline is that it shapes and organizes a specific worldview, through naming and classifying objects belonging to its territory. This latter function is of special interest in chemistry.

According to Auguste Comte, the method of rational nomenclature is the contribution of chemistry to the construction of the positivistic or scientific method. Although earlier attempts at a systematic nomenclature were made in botany, the decision by late-eighteenth-century chemists to build up an artificial language based on a method of nomenclature played a key role in the emergence of modern chemistry.

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The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 174 - 190
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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