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Nomenclature Quotes

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Nomenclature Quotes

“Some of the city legislators, whose concern for appropriate names and the maintenance of the city's landmarks was the principal part of their political life, saw to it that "Doctor Street" was never used in any official capacity. And since they knew that only Southside residents kept it up, they had notices posted in the stores, barbershops, and restaurants in that part of the city saying that the avenue running northerly and southerly from Shore Road fronting the lake to the junction of routes 6 and 2 leading to Pennsylvania, and also running parallel to and between Rutherford Avenue and Broadway, had always been and would always be known as Mains Avenue and not Doctor Street. It was a genuinely clarifying public notice because it gave Southside residents a way to keep their memories alive and please the city legislators as well. They called it Not Doctor Street, and were inclined to call the charity hospital at its northern end No Mercy Hospital since it was 1931, on the day following Mr. Smith's leap from its cupola, before the first colored expectant mother was allowed to give birth inside its wards and not on its steps.”

HumourNomenclatureRacial Division
Book:Song Of Solomon
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“Not everyone embraced the [Linnaean] system warmly. Many were disturbed by its tendency toward indelicacy, which was slightly ironic as before Linnaeus the common names of many plants and animals had been heartily vulgar. The dandelion was long popularly known as the “pissabed” because of its supposed diuretic properties, and other names in everyday use included mare’s fart, naked ladies, twitch-ballock, hound’s piss, open arse, and bum-towel. One or two of these earthy appellations may unwittingly survive in English yet. The “maidenhair” in maidenhair moss, for instance, does not refer to the hair on the maiden’s head.”

Nomenclature
Book:A Short History of Nearly Everything
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“Linnaeus’s other striking quality was an abiding — at times, one might say, a feverish — preoccupation with sex. He was particularly struck by the similarity between certain bivalves and the female pudenda. To the parts of one species of clam he gave the names vulva, labia, pubes, anus, and hymen. He grouped plants by the nature of their reproductive organs and endowed them with an arrestingly anthropomorphic amorousness. His descriptions of flowers and their behavior are full of references to “promiscuous intercourse,” “barren concubines,” and “the bridal bed.”

Nomenclature
Book:A Short History of Nearly Everything
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“As with Dalton and the atom, neither Bateson nor Johannsen had any understanding of what a gene was. They could not fathom its material form, its physical or chemical structure, its location within the body or inside the cell, or even its mechanism of action. The word was created to mark a function; it was an abstraction. A gene was defined by what a gene does: it was a carrier of hereditary information. “Language is not only our servant,” Johannsen wrote, “[but] it may also be our master. It is desirable to create new terminology in all cases where new and revised conceptions are being developed. Therefore, I have proposed the word ‘gene.’ The ‘gene’ is nothing but a very applicable little word. It may be useful as an expression for the ‘unit factors’ . . . demonstrated by modern Mendelian researchers.” “The word ‘gene’ is completely free of any hypothesis,” Johannsen remarked. “It expresses only the evident fact that . . . many characteristics of the organism are specified . . . in unique, separate and thereby independent ways.”

TerminologyNomenclatureThe GeneScientific Language
Book:The Gene: An Intimate History
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“As I grow wiser and more skeptical, I realize that almost everything in nomenclature comes full circle. The question remains whether I can outlast the taxonomists.”

WisdomSkepticismWiserPlantsNomenclatureTaxonomyViburnumDirrPlant Identification
Book:Manual of Woody Landscape Plants: Their Identification, Ornamental Characteristics, Culture, Propagation and Uses
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“Let us make an arbitrary decision (by a show of hands if necessary) to define the base of every stratigraphical unit in a selected section. This may be called the "Principle of the Golden Spike." Then stratigraphical nomenclature can be forgotten and we can get on with the real work of stratigraphy, which is correlation and interpretation.”

IfsMayRealShowsHandsScienceDecisionPrinciplesForgottenGoldenInterpretationUnitsSectionsArbitrarySelectedGeologyCorrelationReal WorkNomenclature
Author:D. V. Ager
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“To discover the laws of operative power in material productions, whether formed by man or brought into being by Nature herself, is the work of a science, and is indeed what we more especially term Science.”

MenLawScienceTermMaterialsProductionsNomenclature
Book:Lectures on the Progress of Arts and Science, Resulting from the Great Exhibition in London ...
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“A schism has taken place among the chemists. A particular set of them in France have undertaken to remodel all the terms of the science, and to give every substance a new name, the composition, and especially the termination of which, shall define the relation in which it stands to other substances of the same family.”

GivingScienceNamesTermTakenParticularRelationFranceSubstanceCompositionChemistNomenclatureTerminationSchism
Book:Memoirs, 2: Correspondence and Private Papers
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“Now, as Mandelbrot points out, ... Nature has played a joke on the mathematicians. The 19th-century mathematicians may not have been lacking in imagination, but Nature was not. The same pathological structures that the mathematicians invented to break loose from 19th-century naturalism turn out to be inherent in familiar objects all around us.”

MayHas BeensScienceTurnsImaginationBreakCenturyObjectsJokesStructureFamiliarInherentMathematicianLacking19th CenturyNaturalismNomenclature
Author:Freeman Dyson
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“Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits.”

MayMeanEnoughScienceStrongInfluenceHabitWeakStructurePossessionWideYieldStablePhasesStrong EnoughEquilibriumNomenclaturePlasticity
Book:The Principles of Psychology
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“That small word "Force," they make a barber's block, Ready to put on Meanings most strange and various, fit to shock Pupils of Newton.... The phrases of last century in this Linger to play tricks- Vis viva and Vis Mortua and Vis Acceleratrix:- Those long-nebbed words that to our text books still Cling by their titles, And from them creep, as entozoa will, Into our vitals. But see! Tait writes in lucid symbols clear One small equation; And Force becomes of Energy a mere Space-variation.”

WritingLongStillsBookPlayLastsScienceEnergyForceSpaceClearCenturyStrangeReadyFitMereVariousTricksBlockSymbolsTitlesPhrasesShockEquationsVariationCreepsNewtonPupilsBarbersNomenclatureSmall WordsViva
Author:James Clerk Maxwell
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“Scientists often invent words to fill the holes in their understanding.These words are meant as conveniences until real understanding can be found. ... Words such as dimension and field and infinity ... are not descriptions of reality, yet we accept them as such because everyone is sure someone else knows what the words mean.”

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Author:Scott Adams
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“For in disease the most voluntary or most special movements, faculties, etc., suffer first and most, that is in an order the exact opposite of evolution. Therefore I call this the principle of Dissolution.”

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Book:Selected Writings of John Hughlings Jackson: On Epilepsy and epileptiform convulsions
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“One [idea] was that the Universe started its life a finite time ago in a single huge explosion, and that the present expansion is a relic of the violence of this explosion. This big bang idea seemed to me to be unsatisfactory even before detailed examination showed that it leads to serious difficulties.”

LifeIdeasBigsScienceUniverseViolenceSeriousHugeDifficultyExpansionFiniteBangsExplosionsExaminationRelicsNomenclature
Book:The nature of the universe
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“We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'.”

IfsWantNeedsShouldIdeasScienceNamesBitsSoundMemoriesRootsForgivingGreekRelatedGenesCreamImitationUnitsRhymeConsolationSuitableForgive MeNounsTransmissionMemesNomenclatureClassicists
Book:The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition
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“The attempt of Lavoisier to reform chemical nomenclature is premature. One single experiment may destroy the whole filiation of his terms; and his string of sulphates, sulphites, and sulphures, may have served no end than to have retarded the progress of science by a jargon, from the confusion of which time will be requisite to extricate us.”

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Book:The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private
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“You have heard of the new chemical nomenclature endeavored to be introduced by Lavoisier, Fourcroy, &c. Other chemists of this country, of equal note, reject it, and prove in my opinion that it is premature, insufficient and false. These latter are joined by the British chemists; and upon the whole, I think the new nomenclature will be rejected, after doing more harm than good. There are some good publications in it, which must be translated into the ordinary chemical language before they will be useful.”

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Author:Thomas Jefferson
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“Your remarks upon chemical notation with the variety of systems which have arisen, &c., &c., had almost stirred me up to regret publicly that such hindrances to the progress of science should exist. I cannot help thinking it a most unfortunate thing that men who as experimentalists & philosophers are the most fitted to advance the general cause of science & knowledge should by promulgation of their own theoretical views under the form of nomenclature, notation, or scale, actually retard its progress.”

ThinkingMenShouldHelpingFormScienceCausesViewsProgressRegretPhilosopherScalesVarietyChemistryChemicalsUnfortunateRemarksTheoreticalHindranceRetardNomenclatureUnfortunate Things
Author:Michael Faraday
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“The mathematics clearly called for a set of underlying elementary objects-at that time we needed three types of them-elementary objects that could be combined three at a time in different ways to make all the heavy particles we knew. ... I needed a name for them and called them quarks, after the taunting cry of the gulls, "Three quarks for Muster mark," from Finnegan's Wake by the Irish writer James Joyce.”

WayDifferentScienceThreeNamesCryObjectsTypeNeededMarkMathematicsHeavyDifferent WaysParticlesJoyceMusterTauntingNomenclatureGullsIrish WritersQuarks
Author:Murray Gell-Mann
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“The combination of such characters, some, as the sacral ones, altogether peculiar among Reptiles, others borrowed, as it were, from groups now distinct from each other, and all manifested by creatures far surpassing in size the largest of existing reptiles, will, it is presumed, be deemed sufficient ground for establishing a distinct tribe or sub-order of Saurian Reptiles, for which I would propose the name of Dinosauria.”

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Author:Richard Owen
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“One of the principal obstacles to the rapid diffusion of a new idea lies in the difficulty of finding suitable expression to convey its essential point to other minds. Words may have to be strained into a new sense, and scientific controversies constantly resolve themselves into differences about the meaning of words. On the other hand, a happy nomenclature has sometimes been more powerful than rigorous logic in allowing a new train of thought to be quickly and generally accepted.”

MindMayIdeasSometimesHandsScienceLyingDifferencesPowerfulAcceptanceExpressionEssentialsFindingsLogicDifficultyTrainObstaclesAcceptedResolveAllowingPrincipalNew IdeasControversyRapidsSuitableNomenclatureDiffusionTrain Of ThoughtMeanings Of Words
Author:Arthur Schuster
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“The impossibility of separating the nomenclature of a science from the science itself, is owing to this, that every branch of physical science must consist of three things; the series of facts which are the objects of the science, the ideas which represent these facts, and the words by which these ideas are expressed. Like three impressions of the same seal, the word ought to produce the idea, and the idea to be a picture of the fact.”

IdeasFactsScienceThreeObjectsProduceOughtSeriesImpressionBranchesImpossibilityThree ThingsSealsSeparatingOwingPhysical ScienceNomenclature
Book:The Development of Chemistry, 1789-1914: Elements of chemistry
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“Imagine a school-boy who has outgrown his clothes. Imagine the repairs made on the vestments where the enlarged frame had burst the narrow limits of its inclosure. Imagine the additions made where the projecting limbs had fairly and far emerged beyond the confines of the garment. Imagine the boy still growing, and the clothes, mended all over, now more than ever in want of mending - such is chemistry, and such its nomenclature.”

WantMadeStillsSchoolScienceBoysGrowingImagineLimitsClothesChemistryLimbsGarmentsNomenclatureMendingEnclosure
Author:John Joseph Griffin
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“In the expressions we adopt to prescribe physical phenomena we necessarily hover between two extremes. We either have to choose a word which implies more than we can prove, or we have to use vague and general terms which hide the essential point, instead of bringing it out. The history of electrical theories furnishes a good example.”

TwoUseScienceTermHistoryExampleExpressionTheoryProveEssentialsExtremesVagueElectricalGood ExamplesNomenclatureTwo Extremes
Author:Arthur Schuster
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“[Pitchblende] consists of a peculiar, distinct, metallic substance. Therefore its former denominations, Pechblende, pitch-iron-ore, &c. are no longer applicable, and must be supplied by another more appropriate name. I have chosen that of Uranium, as a kind of memorial, that the chemical discovery of this new metal happened in the period of astronomical discovery of the new planet Uranus.”

KindScienceNamesHappenedPlanetsPeriodsDiscoveryChosenFormerSubstanceAppropriateIronChemicalsPeculiarMetalsMemorialDenominationsNomenclatureUraniumMetallicIron Ore
Author:Martin Heinrich Klaproth
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“This king [Sesostris] divided the land among all Egyptians so as to give each one a quadrangle of equal size and to draw from each his revenues, by imposing a tax to be levied yearly. But everyone from whose part the river tore anything away, had to go to him to notify what had happened; he then sent overseers who had to measure out how much the land had become smaller, in order that the owner might pay on what was left, in proportion to the entire tax imposed. In this way, it appears to me, geometry originated, which passed thence to Hellas.”

WayGivingMightScienceOrderLeftPayHappenedLandKingsTaxesEqualDrawsRiversSizeProportionOwnersDividedEgyptRevenueMeasurementGeometryImposingNomenclatureNotify
Author:Herodotus
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