SECTION 21. PRECISE NA TURE OF PROBLEM TO BE INVESTIGA TED. 243 



respect. We may, nonetheless, stress the point that the terms 

 selected should embody descriptions rather than theories, and 

 that provisional terms should be replaced as soon as possible 

 by truly descriptive ones. 



At the same time we should remember the cogent reasons 

 which underlie the demand for a precise terminology. For 

 instance, the technical employment in a treatise of such a term 

 as nature, religion, or morality, generally suggests to the reader 

 ideas diverging appreciably from those in the mind of the 

 writer; and if we add to this that each generation alters its 

 general outlook to some extent, it will be%.perceived how 

 desirable it becomes that a term shall be unequivocally defined. 

 For this reason mathematical terms are alone truly satisfactory, 

 because it is impossible, or nearly impossible, to misconstrue 

 their meaning. "How much we owe to the possession of 

 names," says Lord Kelvin, "is best illustrated by how much 

 we lose how great a disadvantage we are put to in cases in 

 which we have not names. We want a name for the reciprocal 

 of resistance. We have the name 'conductivity', but we want 

 a name for the ujiit of conductivity. I made a box of re- 

 sistance coils thirty years ago, and another fifteen years ago, 

 for the measurement of conductivity, and they both languished 

 for the want of a name. . . . We shall have a word for it when 

 we have the thing, or rather, I should say, we shall have the 

 thing when we have the word." 1 John Stuart Mill remarks on 

 this subject: "Hardly any original thoughts on mental or social 

 subjects ever make their way among mankind, or assume their 

 proper importance in the minds of even their inventors, until 

 aptly-selected words or phrases have, as it were, nailed them 

 down and held them fast."- (Logic, bk. 4, ch. 6, 3.) Yet 

 unless the terminology proposed (assuming strict and correct 

 definition), especially in a new science, is indubitably appro- 

 priate, or differs but slightly from that in common use, it stands 

 in danger of being disregarded, together with the facts indicate'd 

 by it. Indeed, from the standpoint of the popularisation of 

 scientific facts, a truly consistent methodology will demand 

 that terminologies and nomenclatures 3 be not derived from 

 foreign tongues, 4 for this creates immense and yet quite un- 



1 The science of Sound is seriously hampered through lacking a term 

 intermediate between "noise" and "harmony". Similarly, an intermediate 

 term is needed between "tragedy" and "comedy". 



2 Formulae and notations are important extensions of the above. They 

 should express the greatest practicable number of facts or relations in an 

 unequivocal manner. 



3 "A nomenclature of a science is a collection of names of groups. A 

 terminology is a collection of the names (or terms) which distinguish 

 either the properties or the parts of the individual objects which the science 

 recognises." (Fowler, Logic, vol. 2, p. 92.) See, further, on this subject 

 Boyce Gibson, The Problem of Logic. 



4 The obstacles alluded to in the text might be made considerably less 

 formidable by dictionaries comprising an etymological section where words 



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