18 July 2011
In a post that makes some nice points about semantic change, Pete Langman, writing in the Guardian’s “Mind Your Language” blog, makes a whopping error:
Old words evolve, too, by stepping out of the dictionary and back into oral culture. Johnson’s use of the word “science” perfectly illustrates his point. “Science” now means a specific mode of inquiry; indeed, it presents a certain type of knowledge guaranteed, so to speak, by the method that underpins it. It was first used in the modern sense in 1834. But when Johnson used it, he meant scientia, or knowledge in the broader sense. The use of the word “scientist” to describe anyone before 1834 is not only anachronistic, but erroneous.
Now the main point of this paragraph is absolutely correct and worth saying. We have to be careful when applying current definitions to works written in the past. But the example is problematic, and the final sentence is ludicrous.
First, Langman conflates the words science and scientist. It is scientist that is first attested in 1834, not science. Second, the invention of the modern concept of science cannot be pinned down to any particular date. The OED entry for science is problematic; it’s one of those entries that has been haphazardly updated over the decades and needs a thorough scrubbing, and you can’t tell when the modern sense of the word emerges. I’ll define the modern concept using Merriam-Webster: “knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method [i.e., systematic use of empirical and controlled observation].” There are plenty of examples of excellent science from before 1834. The names Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Jenner, and Davy spring immediately to mind. The Royal Society was founded in 1660. I can even point to flashes of scientific methodology by the eighth/ninth-century Bede and the tenth/eleventh-century Ælfric. Now it is true that most of the modern institutions of science-as-we-know-it-today (e.g., journals, professional/university laboratories) did not come into being until the first half of the nineteenth century, but that’s a historical or sociological issue, not a linguistic one, and it does not mean that there weren’t earlier examples of good science.
Langman seems to be saying that we shouldn’t call anyone a scientist because that word didn’t exist before 1834. He isn’t the first to make this claim. I’ve heard others make it, but it is just patently absurd. We can certainly apply words anachronistically. Just because Humphry Davy (d. 1829) didn’t have the convenient label to denote his profession doesn’t mean that we can’t look back today and describe him as a superb scientist. Are we to say that there is no such thing as the Middle Ages because the term wasn’t coined until 1605, and no one living the period would have described it as such? Now, people will point to the fact that Newton toyed with mysticism and alchemy in addition to his scientific pursuits, but Linus Pauling (1901–94), who is one of only two people to win Nobel Prizes in two different fields—the other is Marie Curie—also engaged in crank medical research involving vitamins. Great scientists are not immune from bad ideas and don’t always apply the scientific method to everything they do.
Now Langman is correct that we should be careful when applying terms like science and scientist to pre-modern eras. I mentioned Bede and Ælfric; now while I can point to examples of them using the empirical method in their work, I would by no stretch of the imagination label these medieval monks as scientists or describe their general approach to discovery as scientific. Which is why I wrote “flashes of scientific methodology” and not “science.” Use of modern senses of such words are indeed anachronistic, but that does not mean they are “erroneous.”
[Edit: Upon rereading Mr. Langman’s post and engaging in a lengthy discussion with him on the forums here, I realize my initial assessment of the piece is a bit unfair. So I’ve changed the opening paragraph above. — dw]
