Words of Science PDF
Preview Words of Science
Asimov Isaac Words of Science and the History behind Them i t unda a RhRecit: A( tj m tin ear\ tr n. ci ( ic malgaii X± p '^ , ioarcLOti T nai ; -' <d li n 5 ' I Lh ir .0' ^e re s /?^ j* Ah *w* O ^ ' rium Asoorfc ?a Si ai L Words of Science il: a in 10 ni ISAAC ASIMOV : What's in a word? Did you know that a lens is named for the lentil seed it re- sembles? That a straight line actually comes from the words stretched linen? mil or that a hippopotamus is literallv a "river 1 1 horse"? That oxygen means "giving birth to sharpness" because Lavoisier, who named it, mistakenly thought it was in all acids? (And acid, by the way, comes from the Latin word for vinegar). That alcohol is the word for an ancient Arabic cosmetic? That petroleum in Latin is "olive oil from a rock"? That a nucleus is a "little nut" or that deoxyribonucleic acid simply means ? Well, read the . . . IKIRTi book and see. The vocabularv of Science has alwavs J J been a forbidding one, bristling with many-syllabled words and odd, unfa- miliar terms. Now Professor Asimov has opened up this language to the ordinary i readerbyconductingan informal explora- tion into the roots and histories of hun- dreds of scientific terms. The result is a really fascia <tiiit* book that combines a vast quantity cientific : continued 01 / .. k fl .n \t\it 1C ID ±1 5 L/C l/VJ ice ^ AlmaiiaF ' in For Reference Not to be taken from this room V R 692h 503 A832w m s 72 Archbishop Mitty High School Library 5000 Mitty Way San Jose. California 95129 RULES 1. Books may be kept two weeks and may be re- newed once for the same period, except 7-day books and magazines. 2. A fine ^fthroo renteo rlov ill ho rharrrofl r^p each book which AR^CHBISHOP MITTY LIBRARY IB rule. No ttk i^^BHB^^***^ u 3. All in I ar and all losses sr 9950 of the Librarian. 4. Each borrower is held responsible for all books drawn on his card and forallfinesaccruingon thesame. Jt, SM 11-8-69 fill IPS n 1ST r\ ^ • . i Words Science By the same author FICTION Pebble in the Sky Robot I, The Stars Like Dust Foundation Foundation and Empire The Currents of Space Second Foundation The Caves of Steel The Martian Way and Other Stories The End of Eternity The Naked Sun Earth Room Enough is The Death Dealers Nine Tomorrows NON-FICTION Biochemistry and Human Metabolism * The Chemicals of Life Races and People * Chemistry and Human Health * Atom Inside the Building Blocks of the Universe Only a Trillion The World of Carbon The World of Nitrogen • in collaboration Words Science and the History behind Them J-SclclC Asimov Illustrated by William Barss Houghton Mifflin Company Boston The Riverside Press Cambridge ARCHBISHOP MITTY HIGH SCHUUL LIBRARY 5000 Mil AVENUE i V SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA 95129 MMh MOTHER BUTLER MEMORIAL SCHOOL HIGH PARK AVE. SAN JOSE To the women in my life GERTRUDE and R B Y N © COPYRIGHT 1959 BY ISAAC ASIMOV ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 59-5198 THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. C692# Introduction Most people have had at least a glancing blow from one or more of the sciences in school, and if there is one impression they come out with, it is that science is "hard." In some ways, of course, it is, just as any other subject is "hard." It isn't easy to learn to be a good carpenter, or a good actor, or a good poker player. The trouble is, though, that most people are early convinced that there's something particularly hard about science beyond the ordinary hardness of other skills. Why? One reason is the scientific vocabulary. Entering the world of mathe- matics and science turns into a meeting with a whole realm of new words: words thatlook and sound odd; words that are long and hard to pronounce; words that the ordinary person never meets with in ordinary life. It is as though scientists were protecting their mysteries from the prying eyes of ordinary mortals by an enveloping shroud of forbidding syllables. And yet quite the reverse is true. The scientific vocabulary is the bridge by which we enter the land, not the wall that keeps us out. This shows up at those times when the scientific vocabulary fails us. For in- stance, there are scientific concepts which are expressed in common, ordinary words. An example is the word work. To the scientist, work is motion against a resisting force. Thus, lifting a rock against the force of gravity is work; driving a nail into resisting wood is work. However, holding a piece of luggage six inches above the ground and motionless is not work; banging a nail against steel which it does not penetrate is not work. In ordinary English, however, work is anything you don't particularly want to do which makes you physically tired, so that holding luggage and banging uselessly at nails is work. Naturally, students starting their physics course have trouble with the word work. It convinces some that scientists are a little queer. How much better off physicists would have been to have made up their own word for work. In most cases, words are made up, and the words are usually taken from the Latin and Greek. This is a practice that began in the most natural way possible. In the first place, in the dawn of modern science, back in the sixteenth century, Latin was the language of scholarship. Any educated man could speak Latin; many could read Greek. So making up words out of those languages was as though we were making up words out of English. The practice continued even as Latin — and Greek slowly lost their place in the school curriculum but for once inertia served a useful purpose. By keeping to the "dead" languages, the A scientific vocabulary has remained very largely international. large proportion of the various scientific terms are the same in Russian, for instance, as in English. This is important since artificial barriers among the world's scientists will certainly slow scientific advance, and if each nation had its own nationalistic scientific vocabulary, there would be a scientific barrier at every language barrier. If all educated people still had their Latin and Greek, each would see at once that thermometer, for instance, is a word that combines the Greek "therme" (heat) and "metron" (a measure). It is a "heat measure," and what could be plainer? But there's a bright side to the loss. If, through the changing fashions in education, scientific words have become mysterious to us, there is the excitement of discovery in them. The telephone is just a telephone to us; we're so used to the word that we never give it a thought. But in Greek, "tele" means "far off" and "phone" means "voice." When we pick up the telephone, we pick up a "far-off voice." How can we describe the instrument more dramatically than we do whenever we casually name it? In short, the scientific vocabulary is really an adventure. Hidden in the queer jawbreakers and in the shorter oddities are little stories; concise descriptions; thumbnail sections of history; tiny bits of testimony to great scientific achievements and to human error, too; reminders of great men and of mistaken and forgotten theories. As the words pass in review, they are all so different, and each in its own way is so interesting. Far from frightening people away from science, the scientific vocab- ulary, looked at squarely and with understanding, should be one of the most powerful attractions of science. This book, I most earnestly hope, is evidence in favor of that view.
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