Latin as the Language of Science and Learning

Philipp Roelli

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9783110745832
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book investigates the role of the Latin language as a vehicle for science and learning from several angles. First, the question what was understood as 'science' through time and how it is named in different languages, especially the Classical ones, is approached. Criteria for what did pass as scientific are found that point to 'science' as a kind of Greek Denkstil based on pattern-finding and their unbiased checking. In a second part, a brief diachronic panorama introduces schools of thought and authors who wrote in Latin from antiquity to the present. Latin's heydays in this function are clearly the time between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries. Some niches where it was used longer are examined and reasons sought why Latin finally lost this lead-role. A third part seeks to define the peculiar characteristics of scientific Latin using corpus linguistic approaches. As a result, several types of scientific writing can be identified. The question of how to transfer science from one linguistic medium to another is never far: Latin inherited this role from Greek and is in turn the ancestor of science done in the modern vernaculars. At the end of the study, the importance of Latin science for modern science in English becomes evident.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements and practicalities
• Introduction
• Part 1 Semantics of the term ‘science’
• 1 Modern languages: Wissenschaft, science, наука, επιστήμη
• 2 Terms for ‘science’ in Greek and Latin
• 3 The wider semantic field of ‘science’ in the classical languages
• 4 What is science and how does it relate to Denkstil?
• 5 The demarcation problem
• Part 2 Diachronic panorama of Latin science and learning
• 6 Introductory remarks on Denkstile, epochs, and genres
• 7 Greek science and its language in Antiquity
• 8 Foundations of Roman science in Latin
• 9 The age of the artes liberales
• 10 The adoption of the Greek Denkstil
• 11 University science: An Aristotelian Revolution
• 12 New approaches in the Renaissance
• 13 New science in the old tongue
• 14 The demise of Latin as language of science
• 15 Niches where Latin survived longer
• 16 From Latin to vernacular science
• Part 3 Changes in the language of science
• 17 Introduction to the linguistics of scientific language
• 18 Linguistic development studied in a general scientific corpus
• 19 Conclusions on the Latin used in scientific texts
• 20 Specific corpora: Arithmetic, historiography, scientific poetry
• 21 How are new scientific concepts expressed?
• 22 How was Greek science imported into other languages?
• 23 The reuse of Latin in the modern languages of science
• 24 On the relation between science, culture, and language
• Summary and concluding remarks
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Bibliographies
• General Index