Latin, the Enlightenment, and science

Subject:	Latin, the Enlightenment, and science
Date:	Thu, 24 Dec 2009 05:58:48 -0800 (PST)

The use of Latin in the sciences and other learned fields basically
ceased in the 18th and 19th centuries. I have long wondered why people
accepted the use of national languages exclusively in this endeavor
where international understanding is more imperative than any other.
It is true, that the use of Latin by 1700 had already passed almost
everywhere else, but its last remaining use should still have been
enough to support it, given that Latin was the one language that every
educated man in the Western world knew, and that Latin, having such a
long tradition of use, was at least suitable for scientific and
technical purposes as any other language at the time.

And so, some explanations suggest themselves. The first is that the
predominant advocates and defenders of Latin, from the Renaissance to
now, are from the humanities; and so once Latin had disappeared from
live literary use, their support was no longer important. The second
is to blame it on the French: they abandoned Latin earlier than anyone
else, and are well-known to have an inflated view of the greatness of
their own language. But that does not seem to explain how it happened
everywhere else: had they wanted to emulate the French, they would
have started writing in French, and if they had wanted to oppose them,
they should have re-emphasised the role of Latin.

Now, of course, I can't propose the revival of Latin for these
purposes: English has virtually replaced it as the international
scientific language. But it look a long time during which dealing with
many different languages was a considerable problem, and it seems as
though this should have been avoided.

Andrew Usher