INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE 

 AND SCIENCE 



CHAPTEE I 



THE NEED FOE A COMMON SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE 



ALL who are occupied with the reading or writing of 

 scientific literature have assuredly very often felt the want 

 of a common scientific language, and regretted the great 

 loss of time and trouble caused hy the multiplicity of 

 languages employed in scientific literature. 



The remarkable and regrettable feature of this state of 

 affairs is that we once possessed, and have now lost, such a 

 common language, namely, Latin. Even in the first third of 

 the last century Gauss wrote a portion of his mathematical and 

 physical papers in Latin, and up to the middle of the last 

 century the dissertations of the scientific candidates at the 

 German universities were translated into Latin by their 

 philological colleagues, since the former were no longer 

 sufficiently conversant with that language. The fall of Latin 

 as the language of scholars and men of science could not, 

 however, be prevented, nor does there exist the faintest 

 chance of its ever recovering its lost position. The reasons 

 for this are known to all. The rise and development of 

 science, for the expression of whose ideas the language of 

 Cicero no longer sufficed, the fall of scholasticism, with its 

 Church Latin, the diffusion of knowledge amongst people 

 not possessing a university training, the foundation of 

 technical high schools, and, finally, the growing national 



I.L. B 



