THE QUESTION OF NOMENCLATURE 67 



discuss the necessary principles, after which the details 

 could be worked out and finally subjected to the examina- 

 tion and approval of the whole body. To make matters at 

 once more definite, I think the exact sciences ought to be 

 first taken into consideration, for in their case the fixation 

 of concepts is most highly developed. There is no need 

 for a replacement of the well-known Latin nomenclature 

 employed in the descriptive sciences, nor would any attempt 

 in this direction have any likelihood of success. We must 

 look rather to the distant future, when all other sciences 

 will have already adapted themselves to the international 

 idiom for the translation of the Latin names into the forms 

 of the international language (retaining the stems, however) 

 in order to produce for esthetic reasons a uniform system 

 throughout the whole of science. 



On the other hand, I consider it absolutely necessary to 

 subject the concepts of logic and the theory of cognition to 

 the same process of scientific delimitation and fixation. In 

 the first place, these sciences belong, at least theoretically, 

 to the exact sciences ; and, in the second place, work in these 

 departments of knowledge is rendered extraordinarily difficult 

 by the fact that their concepts are expressed in the terms 

 used in daily life, whose elastic nature constantly frustrates 

 exact work. 



Conversely, this great process of purification cannot fail 

 to bring to light much that is of value for the theory and 

 systematisation of scientific concepts. For one must be 

 quite clear on a subject oneself before one can make it clear 

 to others. Indeed, even a simple classified list of possibili- 

 ties, in which one has earnestly sought to omit nothing of 

 importance, constitutes in itself a scientific advance, which 

 is rendered all the more desirable by the fact that in general 

 people have troubled very little about questions of this sort. 

 It may be already foreseen, and indeed with pleasure, that 

 such problems are not to be solved offhand, and will 



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