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Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done Before and After Global English
English is the language of science today. No matter which languages you know, if you want your work seen, studied, and cited, you need to publish in English. But that hasn’t always been the case. Though there was a time when Latin dominated the field, for centuries science has been a polyglot enterprise, conducted in a number of languages whose importance waxed and waned over time—until the rise of English in the twentieth century. So how did we get from there to here? How did French, German, Latin, Russian, and even Esperanto give way to English? And what can we reconstruct of the experience of doing science in the polyglot past? With Scientific Babel, Michael D. Gordin resurrects that lost world, in part through an ingenious the pages of his highly readable narrative account teem with footnotes—not offering background information, but presenting quoted material in its original language. The result is as we read about the rise and fall of languages, driven by politics, war, economics, and institutions, we actually see it happen in the ever-changing web of multilingual examples. The history of science, and of English as its dominant language, comes to life, and brings with it a new understanding not only of the frictions generated by a scientific community that spoke in many often mutually unintelligible voices, but also of the possibilities of the polyglot, and the losses that the dominance of English entails. Few historians of science write as well as Gordin, and Scientific Babel reveals his incredible command of the literature, language, and intellectual essence of science past and present. No reader who takes this linguistic journey with him will be disappointed.
424 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 19, 2015
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448 people want to read
About the author
Michael D. Gordin
25 books35 followersMichael Gordin is Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Princeton University, where he specializes in the history of modern science. In 2013-4 he served as the inaugural director of the Fung Global Fellows Program. He came to Princeton in 2003 after earning his A.B. (1996) and his Ph.D. (2001) from Harvard University, and serving a term at the Harvard Society of Fellows. In 2011 he was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and was named a Guggenheim Fellow. He has published on the history of science, Russian history, and the history of nuclear weapons.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
May 1, 2025
Eminently readable, really, really good. Somewhat constrained in scope: mostly focusing on chemistry, mostly constrained to major language which are have been significant vehicular languages (doubtless at least a little bit because these are those that Gordin has knowledge of) – which constrains how deep the histories of making science whilst speaking a marginalized native tongue can go.
Which is to say, I will happily read several thousand more pages in the field.
Which is to say, I will happily read several thousand more pages in the field.
English has attained its current position owing to a series of historical transformations that it also in turn shaped, exploiting a perception of neutrality that it gained through being distinctly non-neutral in either its British or American guise. There is a circularity to studying language and history together, scrambling our notions of time even in the buttoned-down domain of science. The history of scientific languages ends here, until it no longer does.
a conversation i actually had, paraphrased:
"cicero invented the latin word for quantity, apparently"
"that is such a cicero thing to do"
January 7, 2024
This book is ambitious, but knows its limits. Gordin, only (/s) able to read English, German, French, Russian, Latin, and Esperanto (and Ido), has limited himself to works published in those languages. Readers hoping for a comprehensive account of all global languages of science and their relative histories will therefore be disappointed. Really, this book deserves to be a collaboration between many more scholars, from various language backgrounds. The scope is also a familiar one: mainly Europe and North America, mainly 1850 to the present, mainly chemistry (three of the most chronicled areas in the history of science). The first chapter (on Latin) is therefore somewhat out of place, but very welcome, as it establishes a recurring theme: there are limits to languages’ dominance, and they never become dominant overnight. Even as Latin is remembered as the quintessential language of learning in Europe for a millennium, Arabic was “far and away” the leading scientific language globally during the Middle Ages.
By the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Latin had mostly been replaced by three languages: English, French, and German. Over the subsequent century, Gordin shows how these three languages (including Russian for good measure) grew and diminished in importance, often mirroring wider cultural and political developments. Really, the book is more than just a history of these languages in science. Gordin devotes a couple chapters to constructed languages (notably Esperanto, Ido, etc.), and through his analysis of waxing and waning linguistic influences in the 19th and 20th centuries readers are simultaneously given plenty of insight into cultural and political history. Perhaps the clearest indication of this are the global conflicts of the first half of the 20th century, which for instance did much to harm the prospects of German as an international language of science (for obvious reasons), and were perhaps the most significant reason why English became so dominant (there is, however, lots more nuance to this).
The book is thoroughly researched and is extensively cited. In addition to brimming with statistics, Gordin also includes a number of really gripping case studies. Standouts include the careers of Zamenhof (Esperanto) and Dostert (machine translation), or the priority dispute between Mendeleev and Meyer regarding the periodic table of elements, also because they were written very well. In fact, I’m a big fan of the consistently entertaining writing style. Gordin has a gift for including playful turns of phrase throughout his prose, adding a welcome nuggets of humour to what is otherwise pretty dry historical analysis.
Gordin’s book importantly touches on the issue of fairness in the current Anglophone-dominated world of science. Native English speakers are disproportionately cited in global (natural) scientific literature. Non-native English-speaking scientists will have had to invest time and energy to learn the language – one that will be at odds with their “speaker-centric choice”, or identity – at the expense of doing research. In fields where research is strongly scrutinised and scientists’ ideas rigorously tested, those who are more comfortable expressing themselves have an obvious advantage. Not to mention the importance of being able to read in by far the most common language of new scientific output. English as a common language also has its advantages, not least because it helps neutralise linguistic and cultural differences between peoples. But Gordin wisely asks whether having one dominant language may not have undesirable consequences for creativity and diversity in science?
By the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Latin had mostly been replaced by three languages: English, French, and German. Over the subsequent century, Gordin shows how these three languages (including Russian for good measure) grew and diminished in importance, often mirroring wider cultural and political developments. Really, the book is more than just a history of these languages in science. Gordin devotes a couple chapters to constructed languages (notably Esperanto, Ido, etc.), and through his analysis of waxing and waning linguistic influences in the 19th and 20th centuries readers are simultaneously given plenty of insight into cultural and political history. Perhaps the clearest indication of this are the global conflicts of the first half of the 20th century, which for instance did much to harm the prospects of German as an international language of science (for obvious reasons), and were perhaps the most significant reason why English became so dominant (there is, however, lots more nuance to this).
The book is thoroughly researched and is extensively cited. In addition to brimming with statistics, Gordin also includes a number of really gripping case studies. Standouts include the careers of Zamenhof (Esperanto) and Dostert (machine translation), or the priority dispute between Mendeleev and Meyer regarding the periodic table of elements, also because they were written very well. In fact, I’m a big fan of the consistently entertaining writing style. Gordin has a gift for including playful turns of phrase throughout his prose, adding a welcome nuggets of humour to what is otherwise pretty dry historical analysis.
Gordin’s book importantly touches on the issue of fairness in the current Anglophone-dominated world of science. Native English speakers are disproportionately cited in global (natural) scientific literature. Non-native English-speaking scientists will have had to invest time and energy to learn the language – one that will be at odds with their “speaker-centric choice”, or identity – at the expense of doing research. In fields where research is strongly scrutinised and scientists’ ideas rigorously tested, those who are more comfortable expressing themselves have an obvious advantage. Not to mention the importance of being able to read in by far the most common language of new scientific output. English as a common language also has its advantages, not least because it helps neutralise linguistic and cultural differences between peoples. But Gordin wisely asks whether having one dominant language may not have undesirable consequences for creativity and diversity in science?
March 24, 2016
I really enjoyed this book. It starts with the argument over who created the periodic table of the elements--an argument, the author shows, that was at root a translation problem, complicated by language snobbery. That story also fixes the approximate beginning of the author's chronology, at a time when Latin was no longer king but was still widely used in science, when less common languages were still OK to publish in, but when to be a serious scientist you had to have some facility in 2 or 3 languages: specifically German, French or English, in about that order.
The author then conducts us through WW I and II, the development of cheap translation stables, the beginnings of machine translation and its connection to U.S. and Soviet military concerns, the beginning of American technical dominance, and finally the advent of the Internet--all of which contributed to the current remarkable hegemony of English as almost the only important language of the natural sciences. He includes a well-documented discussion of the temporary but vigorous surge of Esperanto (and Ido) at the beginning of the 20th century as a proposed unifying language of science, and notes the irony of rejecting a politically neutral, regular language for fear of diminishing all the national languages, and rejecting Latin as too difficult, but ending up with a non-neutral and decidedly difficult language anyway, to the detriment of all the national languages but one. (Note, an Esperanto medical journal lives on, though publishing relatively few papers ... and it prints abstracts for every article in English as well as in Esperanto.)
The author chose the format of the book to make a point: every chapter is headed by a quote, usually in a language other than English, for whose translation most readers will have to turn to an appendix. If you don't like that, he reminds you that it affords you a glimpse into the experience of the non-English-speaking scientist. Most quotes in the text are translated into English, with the original in the endnotes.
Recommended for all scientists (especially monolingual Anglophones) as well as polyglots, idealists and logophiles.
Warning, a quite skippable rant follows.
Most of the burden of the current state of affairs is of course borne by those who learn English as a second language, but the author points out real and potential problems for native Anglophones, too. One such problem he doesn't address is the (surprisingly rare) painful experience of hearing a scientific presentation in very broken English that, if given in the speaker's native language, would at least be comprehensible to _someone_ in the audience. (Of course a skilled interpreter would be even better.) Another frustration is having second-language English speakers stubbornly insist that they have it right when they don't. I hear this attitude most from folks whose first language is (another) Germanic one. My personal peeves with these folks include pronouncing 14 as "FORdeen" rather than for?-Teen, so that it is almost indistinguishable from 40, and starting sentences with "already," as in "already for the past 8 years" or "already since 1995," when the idiomatic expressions might be "for 8 years now" or "by 1995."
The author then conducts us through WW I and II, the development of cheap translation stables, the beginnings of machine translation and its connection to U.S. and Soviet military concerns, the beginning of American technical dominance, and finally the advent of the Internet--all of which contributed to the current remarkable hegemony of English as almost the only important language of the natural sciences. He includes a well-documented discussion of the temporary but vigorous surge of Esperanto (and Ido) at the beginning of the 20th century as a proposed unifying language of science, and notes the irony of rejecting a politically neutral, regular language for fear of diminishing all the national languages, and rejecting Latin as too difficult, but ending up with a non-neutral and decidedly difficult language anyway, to the detriment of all the national languages but one. (Note, an Esperanto medical journal lives on, though publishing relatively few papers ... and it prints abstracts for every article in English as well as in Esperanto.)
The author chose the format of the book to make a point: every chapter is headed by a quote, usually in a language other than English, for whose translation most readers will have to turn to an appendix. If you don't like that, he reminds you that it affords you a glimpse into the experience of the non-English-speaking scientist. Most quotes in the text are translated into English, with the original in the endnotes.
Recommended for all scientists (especially monolingual Anglophones) as well as polyglots, idealists and logophiles.
Warning, a quite skippable rant follows.
Most of the burden of the current state of affairs is of course borne by those who learn English as a second language, but the author points out real and potential problems for native Anglophones, too. One such problem he doesn't address is the (surprisingly rare) painful experience of hearing a scientific presentation in very broken English that, if given in the speaker's native language, would at least be comprehensible to _someone_ in the audience. (Of course a skilled interpreter would be even better.) Another frustration is having second-language English speakers stubbornly insist that they have it right when they don't. I hear this attitude most from folks whose first language is (another) Germanic one. My personal peeves with these folks include pronouncing 14 as "FORdeen" rather than for?-Teen, so that it is almost indistinguishable from 40, and starting sentences with "already," as in "already for the past 8 years" or "already since 1995," when the idiomatic expressions might be "for 8 years now" or "by 1995."
June 25, 2023
Today nearly all scientific findings are communicated in one language, English. Only a hundred and twenty years ago the situation was different, every scientist needed to be able to read articles in English, German and French. Actually the table on page 6 tells the story best. You see the three languages at the same level more a less (English leading) in 1880. By 1920 German was leading. But from then on there is a decline in French and German and a steady rising of English with a short rising of Russian from 1930 to 1970 (up to 20%) and to a lesser degree Japanese.
Gordin tells the story of how this change came about. He starts with the language that more or less played the role of modern English at the beginning of the age of science, namely Latin. (He even learned Latin, or so he says, just to be able to write this chapter.) But why exactly Latin lost its role as lingua franca does not become totally clear. And Gordin is obviously not as interested in this question as in the development of the 20th century.
I always thought that the dominating role in the sciences Germany lost during the thirties. But actually the trend started with the First World War. For one thing American scientists who would learn German as a matter of course stopped learning, being actually discouraged.
(Why French lost its appeal to scientists at the same time we do not learn.)
The chapters on Russian and Esperanto/Ido are the best. How Russia established Russian as a scientific language is a great story in itself. And the sub plot about the discovery of the Periodic table by Mendeleev (and the problems establishing priority due to the language barrier) would serve as a background for an interesting movie.
For me the most interesting chapter is on Esperanto. Before World War I there was a very serious change of establishing Esperanto (or its descendant Ido) as a world language of science. How the active proponents of the movement degenerated into nationalist with the outbreak of the war is one of the saddest stories I ever came across.
Is it a good thing that scientists need to learn only one language now? Gordin is not sure. And neither am I.
Gordin tells the story of how this change came about. He starts with the language that more or less played the role of modern English at the beginning of the age of science, namely Latin. (He even learned Latin, or so he says, just to be able to write this chapter.) But why exactly Latin lost its role as lingua franca does not become totally clear. And Gordin is obviously not as interested in this question as in the development of the 20th century.
I always thought that the dominating role in the sciences Germany lost during the thirties. But actually the trend started with the First World War. For one thing American scientists who would learn German as a matter of course stopped learning, being actually discouraged.
(Why French lost its appeal to scientists at the same time we do not learn.)
The chapters on Russian and Esperanto/Ido are the best. How Russia established Russian as a scientific language is a great story in itself. And the sub plot about the discovery of the Periodic table by Mendeleev (and the problems establishing priority due to the language barrier) would serve as a background for an interesting movie.
For me the most interesting chapter is on Esperanto. Before World War I there was a very serious change of establishing Esperanto (or its descendant Ido) as a world language of science. How the active proponents of the movement degenerated into nationalist with the outbreak of the war is one of the saddest stories I ever came across.
Is it a good thing that scientists need to learn only one language now? Gordin is not sure. And neither am I.
November 7, 2024
(For the comfortably monolingual English part of this review, see below.)
Mi ne scias, на каком языке лучше писать рецензию на эту книжку, given the subject matter and the deliciously multilingual footnotes; in jeder Sprache kriegt es aber von mir 5 groβe Sterne.
Gordins bok är verkligen fullstoppad med intressanta fakta som, как отмечает другой рецензент, man inte kände till. In meinem Fall waren es zum Beispiel the fascinating controversy surrounding the mistranslation of периодичность (stufenweise statt periodische Funktionen) в одной из первых немецких публикаций Менделеева о периодической таблице элементов as well as the cover-to-cover translation industry, которая существовала в США в разгар Холодной войны и made a number of Soviet science journals available in English to researchers in the US and elsewhere (was wohl auch - ironischerweise - zur Dominanz des Englischen als Wissenschaftssprache beigetragen hat). Ankaŭ la (memkompreneble angla) lingvo de Gordin estas a pleasure to read. Если б не работа и т. п., прочёл бы всю книжку в один присест, come un giallo ben scritto e scorrevole.
On a somewhat more serious note, the book left me as ambivalent as ever about the de facto monolingual world of modern cutting-edge science. On the one hand, it is impractical to expect researchers to be functionally fluent in several languages rather than one or two. For instance, it has taken this humble reviewer more than 20 years of his life to reach a point where he can pen this silly show-offy многоязычный отзыв, т. е. multilingual review, without resorting to dictionaries or translation software. On the other hand - and quite regardless of any considerations of linguistic fairness (which invariably involve only the other "big" languages anyway) - there might be something to the idea that monolingualism can impair our collective scientific imagination. In a very real sense, all languages (including a posteriori creations such as Esperanto) are relatively random accretions of relatively random features. To be sure, you can say anything in any language if you put your mind to it, but putting your mind to it might well be easier depending on the linguistic driftwood at your disposal. It is just about conceivable that random similarities of form and semantic idiosyncrasies in language X can nudge you towards connections and metaphors that wouldn't occur to you if you were jotting down or discussing your science in language Y.
Gordin mentions this concern near the end of the book, without giving it much space. But then again, maybe that's exactly as much space as it deserves. Maybe I'm just trying to rationalize my understandable but ultimately silly yearning for a time when I could have done philosophy or linguistics in my first language (as it happens, one of only a handful of big "imperial(ist)" languages) and still expected to be noticed by people with other mother tongues.
Как бы то ни было und wie auch immer, отличная книжка. Очень советую.
July 8, 2015
Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done Before and After Global English does everything you wanted to. Michael Gordon charts the map of scientific language from consolidation of the triumvirate – English, French, German – in the 1850’s, all the way to the forecasted future. Everywhere in between is strung together by multilingual transactions of scientists in pursuit of universal truth and entire populations at the whim of geopolitical dynamics.
Perhaps we should begin with the lamentations of the French linguist Louis Coturat, near the end of the 19th century, as he pits the most sufficiently advanced technology against this ageless, human problem of communication:
“What is the good of telegraphing from one continent to another, or telephoning from one country to another, if the two correspondents do not have a common language in which they can converse?”
And on the plight of the scientist? “To keep themselves acquainted with the special scientific work and studies which interested them, all savants would have to be polyglots; but to become polyglots they would have to abandon every other study, and therefore they would be almost destitute of knowledge of their special subjects.” (p107).
Science must have a means of transporting itself from one scientist to another, and with this, Gordon defines the vehicular language, or the auxiliary language. In opposition, people – both ordinary people and scientists alike – best express their own thoughts in a way that is comfortable and meaningful to them, a natural language. One is for the mind, and the other for the heart (p113). These are the forces that push language-choice throughout history. From Latin roots to warring 20th century fragments, the chosen language of science has shifted dramatically over this time. In the final chapter and conclusion, Gordin explains this trend toward Global English and questions its implications.
This book is a well-documented body of research, but the way it’s been assembled, and the underlying theme are intriguing, stimulating, and current. Science is like humans – messy. It takes a good writer to clean it up just enough to be presentable, but not so much that it’s no longer exciting. Michael Gordin has done just that.
Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done Before and After Global English
Michael D. Gordin, University of Chicago Press, 2015
Book Review by Allen Barkkume
Perhaps we should begin with the lamentations of the French linguist Louis Coturat, near the end of the 19th century, as he pits the most sufficiently advanced technology against this ageless, human problem of communication:
“What is the good of telegraphing from one continent to another, or telephoning from one country to another, if the two correspondents do not have a common language in which they can converse?”
And on the plight of the scientist? “To keep themselves acquainted with the special scientific work and studies which interested them, all savants would have to be polyglots; but to become polyglots they would have to abandon every other study, and therefore they would be almost destitute of knowledge of their special subjects.” (p107).
Science must have a means of transporting itself from one scientist to another, and with this, Gordon defines the vehicular language, or the auxiliary language. In opposition, people – both ordinary people and scientists alike – best express their own thoughts in a way that is comfortable and meaningful to them, a natural language. One is for the mind, and the other for the heart (p113). These are the forces that push language-choice throughout history. From Latin roots to warring 20th century fragments, the chosen language of science has shifted dramatically over this time. In the final chapter and conclusion, Gordin explains this trend toward Global English and questions its implications.
This book is a well-documented body of research, but the way it’s been assembled, and the underlying theme are intriguing, stimulating, and current. Science is like humans – messy. It takes a good writer to clean it up just enough to be presentable, but not so much that it’s no longer exciting. Michael Gordin has done just that.
Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done Before and After Global English
Michael D. Gordin, University of Chicago Press, 2015
Book Review by Allen Barkkume
December 29, 2017
Gordin gibt dem Leser in diesem Buch einen kurzen Überblick über die Sprachen, in der Naturwissenschaft betrieben wird. Diese Geschichte ist so umfang- und facettenreich, dass Gordin nicht einmal so tut, als wäre seine Schilderung komplett; der gekonnt erzählte Überblick vor allem russischer, deutscher, amerikanischer und französischer Perspektiven vermittelt aber ein gutes Gefühl dafür, welche Kräfte, Chancen und Konflikte sich um die Sprachfrage in der Wissenschaft bis heute renken. Nach dem ersten Kapitel, das uns in rasendem Tempo durch die Jahrtausende von griechisch über arabisch zum Lateinischen führt, beginnt die eigentliche Erzählung Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, mit Dmitri Mendelejew und dem Erstarken des Russischen als Wissenschaftssprache. Weiter geht es durch die Jahrzehnte, vom langsamen Verfall der deutschen Sprache dank des Versailler Vertags und der Nationalsozialisten zur Explosion der Forschung in UdSSR und USA, den harten Wirklichkeiten des kalten Krieges und dem Aussterben einst verbreiteter Fremdsprachenkenntnisse in Amerika. Zum Schluss finden wir uns in der Gegenwart, wo denn auch sonst, wieder, und wir müssen uns schwere Fragen stellen: Wie neutral ist das Englische? Wie unterschiedlich sind Wissenschaftsenglisch, Literaturenglisch und Straßenenglisch? Könnten native speakers, wie die meisten Wissenschaftler weltweit, in Vorträgen ein vereinfachtes Wissenschaftsenglisch benutzen, und wäre das überhaupt wünschenswert?
Insgesamt ist das Buch leicht lesbar, bisweilen spannend, und durchweg interessant. Ich kann es jedem, der sich ein bisschen für Sprachen und den Wissenschaftsbetrieb interessiert, empfehlen.
Insgesamt ist das Buch leicht lesbar, bisweilen spannend, und durchweg interessant. Ich kann es jedem, der sich ein bisschen für Sprachen und den Wissenschaftsbetrieb interessiert, empfehlen.
July 29, 2016
There are so many things in this book that I didn't know. Latin as a scientific language wasn't popular because of its use by the Catholic Church. Arabic was once poised to become the European scientific language of choice. Volapük, a constructed language, which I had never heard of, was very popular at the end of the 19th century, then almost disappeared. Esperanto missed its opportunity because its supporters started arguing, with some defecting to Ido. German scientists were banned from international scientific life after the Great War, which caused a crash in the use of German.
I could go on for a while. A great read.
I could go on for a while. A great read.
February 20, 2019
I'm not a scientist myself, but I work with scientific literature, both in Polish and English. Therefore, "Scientific Babel" was very interesting for me also from a professional point of view. It was insightful and well-written, and I learned a good deal from it - I've heard of Esperanto, of course, but I didn't know the story behind its creation and all the debates about auxiliary languages in the scientific community.
November 14, 2024
Very interesting book on the languages of science.
The focus of the book is not the same as Montgomery's Science in Translation, - i.e. the way translation has been a important tool for scientific progress -, but rather a look into all the languages that were at some point considered to be the language of science and how that came about.
Some chapters offered more room for reflection, like the machine translation one and also why German lost its place as a scientific language.
The focus of the book is not the same as Montgomery's Science in Translation, - i.e. the way translation has been a important tool for scientific progress -, but rather a look into all the languages that were at some point considered to be the language of science and how that came about.
Some chapters offered more room for reflection, like the machine translation one and also why German lost its place as a scientific language.
October 2, 2020
Skip read to sections of interest. Still not sure how accurate this is for world science as China gets very little coverage. Either way very enlightening and as computer translation gets better and better maybe almost irrelavent. (Thought the author did well touching on this and many other relevent areas
July 7, 2019
Great overview of the history of scientific languages, including an interesting section on the relationship between science and constructed languages, which I had only previously known about via Conlag Critic on Youtube.
Book took 5h3m
Book took 5h3m
August 11, 2022
Expansive, meticulous, revealing
April 4, 2025
In a time when science in the US is being gutted, this is a book you ought to read, if you think you have a good understanding of how science works globally. Unless you’re at least 80 yrs old, you don’t. Before WWII, science was much more disparate and diverse and perhaps rigorous in some ways because of it (when you had to look over your shoulder more for all the things being discovered ‘elsewhere’. I have little doubt that we’ll be a lot closer to that world a decade from now.
This book is about what languages new science was expressed in back in the day. The current Anglophilic science that we’ve pursued for the past 40 to 70 yrs (depending on where you were doing science) is NOT the historical norm! And you probably need a better understanding of how science looks and works when US science isn’t leading. Really worth a read by early career scientists and science policy makers, now! Not your usual history of science, but all the more important because of that.
This book is about what languages new science was expressed in back in the day. The current Anglophilic science that we’ve pursued for the past 40 to 70 yrs (depending on where you were doing science) is NOT the historical norm! And you probably need a better understanding of how science looks and works when US science isn’t leading. Really worth a read by early career scientists and science policy makers, now! Not your usual history of science, but all the more important because of that.
January 30, 2016
The year I lived in Europe, it was a common scene to gather 'round a table with friends from all over the world. There were swiss-german speakers, french speakers, bereber, russian, etc. and most of the time we all used a foreign language to communicate: English. Add to that the fact we were in Finland, not Britain, the US or any English speaking country. Whenever this happened, which was pretty much every day for that year, I got to wonder "why English?".
This book by Michael Gordin tries to answer the question, and although it's centered around "scientific languages", there's not a real focus on science. The book instead focuses most on the linguistic aspects and how modern history helped shape the trends in scientific languages which eventually lead to more than 90% of scientific papers written in English nowadays. The book focuses on historical characters, but also throws a final chapter which questions whether one scientific language is good for science and for English.
This book by Michael Gordin tries to answer the question, and although it's centered around "scientific languages", there's not a real focus on science. The book instead focuses most on the linguistic aspects and how modern history helped shape the trends in scientific languages which eventually lead to more than 90% of scientific papers written in English nowadays. The book focuses on historical characters, but also throws a final chapter which questions whether one scientific language is good for science and for English.
December 4, 2016
This book is readable and interesting, but it's not so much a history of "how" science was done *in* multiple languages so much as a history of how linguistic nationalism and linguistic anxiety affected the development of science. Whorfianism is discussed as a scientific concern, but not actually analyzed. Also, the focus is on chemistry, and readers should not expect the narrative to paint an at all accurate picture of cross-linguistic relations outside the Gesetzeswissenschaften.
However, this is still a fascinating overview of some important topics, including the worldwide and total boycott of German scientists after WW1, and the bizarre Soviet developments that led Stalin to denounce strong Whorfism way back in 1950.
Despite the highly scientific tone in most of the book, the author consistently characterizes Russian as a language "impossible" to learn and expresses disbelief that Russians are able to learn it.
However, this is still a fascinating overview of some important topics, including the worldwide and total boycott of German scientists after WW1, and the bizarre Soviet developments that led Stalin to denounce strong Whorfism way back in 1950.
Despite the highly scientific tone in most of the book, the author consistently characterizes Russian as a language "impossible" to learn and expresses disbelief that Russians are able to learn it.
May 6, 2016
A fascinating study of the quest for an international scientific language. I was especially impressed with the attention given to Esperanto and Ido (even if the author was a bit too dismissive of Esperanto). Its raises a lot of interesting points, especially about the tendency for native English speakers to assume that everyone speaks English and the barriers non-native English speakers face. Overall, a very interesting read that I couldn't put down.
July 30, 2015
A captivating read, a fascinating subject, and exquisitely written.
March 23, 2018
English is the language of science today. No matter which languages you know, if you want your work seen, studied, and cited, you need to publish in English. But that hasn’t always been the case. Though there was a time when Latin dominated the field, for centuries science has been a polyglot enterprise, conducted in a number of languages whose importance waxed and waned over time—until the rise of English in the twentieth century. So how did we get from there to here? How did French, German, Latin, Russian, and even Esperanto give way to English? And what can we reconstruct of the experience of doing science in the polyglot past? With Scientific Babel, Michael D. Gordin resurrects that lost world, in part through an ingenious mechanism: the pages of his highly readable narrative account teem with footnotes—not offering background information, but presenting quoted material in its original language. The result is stunning: as we read about the rise and fall of languages, driven by politics, war, economics, and institutions, we actually see it happen in the ever-changing web of multilingual examples. The history of science, and of English as its dominant language, comes to life, and brings with it a new understanding not only of the frictions generated by a scientific community that spoke in many often mutually unintelligible voices, but also of the possibilities of the polyglot, and the losses that the dominance of English entails. Few historians of science write as well as Gordin, and Scientific Babel reveals his incredible command of the literature, language, and intellectual essence of science past and present. No reader who takes this linguistic journey with him will be disappointed.
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