Standardization and diversity

Does it matter what words go with the mathematics?

It was a number of years ago that our astronomer was scoping out graduate programs for his PhD.  Upon visiting a school, one of his standard questions was, “Given that I’ll be learning or brushing up on a language in support of astronomy, which should it be?”  He asked mostly out of curiosity, rather than using it as a criterion to choose a school.  The reply in all cases was, “Don’t bother.  Everything important is published in English.”  In the event, he did include a reference to a French paper in his thesis (he had help, since he didn’t read French at the time) and might have included one or two in Russian.  And he did find that speaking Spanish was useful during his work at an observatory in Chile. We understand that it was advantageous to our Chemist colleagues to have a reading knowledge of German, at least at one time, and there are German terms in modern Physics. Nevertheless, it was true that no foreign language was vital to our astronomer’s scientific career.  He could have done everything that needed to be done knowing only English.

This was not always true.  Consider the way most of the brighter stars in the sky are designated: a Greek letter, normally (but not invariably) assigned in order of brightness within each constellation, followed by the Latin genitive of the constellation name.  The brightest star in the constellation Orion is thus alpha Orionis, also known as Betelgeuse (which is itself a mangling of an Arabic description).  This seemed a logical procedure when all scientists in the European tradition were fluent in Latin and Greek, and were familiar with the practice of the ancient Greeks of using letters for numbers.  (It also shows how apparently logical historical processes result in astronomy having some strange features.)

Indeed, through the nineteenth century catalogs and observing manuals commonly give quotes in Latin, sometimes Greek, often even French without bothering to translate.  It’s assumed that anyone with enough background to operate a telescope had a multilingual education.  No doubt it made printing books in multiple typefaces challenging, but since it was widespread among the literate public the publishers adjusted, and it didn’t present the difficulty faced by some language teachers in the following century.

Well, that’s changed.  English is the language of science nowadays, as Latin was in former centuries.  In some ways that’s a good thing.  Science is a worldwide activity, and having a common language makes it easier.  And one could say that English is suited for the role: while it is fiendishly difficult for a non-native speaker to grasp its nuances and ramified connotations, it is possible to say something understandable with minimal study.  Contrast this with, say, Russian or German, in which several verb conjugations and many noun declensions must be mastered before producing even a moderately grammatical sentence.

But the ascendance of English is really a historical accident, something that didn’t rely at all on the structure of the language.  And it is not at all guaranteed to continue.