January 24, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



135 



the foundations of scientific progress. If 

 a man knows what a thing really is, he can 

 say so, describing it, for example, as being 

 black or white; if he does not know, he 

 masks his ignorance by stating in a few 

 Greek or Latin terms that it partakes of 

 the general quality of grayness. Writers 

 get into the habit of using words that they 

 do not clearly understand themselves and 

 which, as a consequence, must fail in con- 

 veying an exact meaning to their readers. 

 Many persons who possess only the smat- 

 tering of a subject are apt to splash all 

 over it with words of learned sound which 

 are more quickly acquired, of course, than 

 the reality of knowledge. Huxley said 

 that if a man does really know his subject 

 "he will be able to speak of it in an easy 

 language and with the completeness of con- 

 viction, with which he talks of an ordinary 

 everyday matter. If he does not, he will 

 be afraid to wander beyond the limits of 

 the technical phraseology which he has 

 got up." If any scientific -wi'iter should 

 complain that simplicity of speech is im- 

 practicable in dealing with essentially 

 technical subjects, I refer him to the course 

 of lectures delivered by Huxley to working- 

 men, lectures winch conveyed original in- 

 vestigations of the greatest importance in 

 language which was as easily understood 

 by his audience as it was accurate when 

 regarded from a purely professional stand- 

 point. 



Science has been well defined as ' organ- 

 ized common sense ' ; let us then express its 

 findings in something better than a mere 

 jargon of speech and avoid that stupidity 

 which Samuel Johnson, himself an arch- 

 sinner in this respect, has fitly described 

 as ' the immense pomposity of sesquipeda- 

 lian verbiage.' George Meredith, a great 

 mint-master of words, has recorded his 

 objection to ' conversing in tokens not 

 standard coin. ' Indeed the clumsy latinity 

 of much of our scientific talk is an inherit- 



ance from the schoolmen of the past; it is 

 the degraded currency of a period when 

 the vagaries of astrology and alchemy 

 found favor among intelligent men. 



Vagueness of language produces loose- 

 ness of Imowledge in the teacher as well as 

 the pupil. Huxley, in referring to the use 

 of such comprehensive terms as ' develop- 

 ment ' and ' evolution, ' remarked that 

 words like these were mere ' noise and 

 smoke,' the important thing being to have 

 a clear conception of the idea signified by 

 the name. Examples of tliis form of error 

 are easy to find. The word ' dynamic ' has 

 a distinct meaning in physics, but it is 

 ordinarily employed in the loosest possible 

 manner in geological literature. Thus, the 

 origin of a perplexing ore deposit was re- 

 cently imputed to the effects produced by 

 the ' dynamic power ' which had shattered 

 a certain mountain. ' Dynamic ' is of 

 Greek derivation and means powerful, 

 therefore a 'powerful power' had done 

 this thing ; but in physics the word is used 

 in the sense of active, as opposed to ' static ' 

 or stationary, and it implies motion result- 

 ing from the application of force. In the 

 ease quoted, and in many similar instances, 

 the word ' agency ' or ' activity ' woiild 

 serve to interpret the hazy idea of the 

 writer, and there is every reason to infer, 

 from the context, that he substituted the 

 term 'dynamic power 'merely as afrippery 

 of speech. It is much easier to talk grand- 

 iloquently about a ' dynamic power ' which 

 perpetrates unutterable things and recon- 

 structs creation in the twinkling of an eye 

 than it is to make a careful study of a 

 region, trace its structural lines and de- 

 cipher the relations of a complicated series 

 of faults. AAHien this has been done and a 

 writer uses comprehensive words to sum- 

 marize activities which he has expressly 

 defined and described, then indeed he has 

 given a meaning to such words which war- 

 rants him in the use of them. 



