Nomenclature Quotes - Page 3

• 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.

  Richard Owen

  Character, Science, Order

  Report of the Eleventh Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science "Report on British Fossil Reptiles" (1842)

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• I must admit that when I chose the name, "vitamine," I was well aware that these substances might later prove not to be of an amine nature. However, it was necessary for me to choose a name that would sound well and serve as a catchword, since I had already at that time no doubt about the importance and the future popularity of the new field.

  Casimir Funk

  Science, Names, Doubt

  Casimir Funk (1922). “The Vitamines”

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• The advantages of a uniform statistical nomenclature, however im- perfect, are so obvious, that it is surprising no attention has been paid to its enforcement in bills of mortality. Each disease has in many instances been denoted by three or four terms, and each term has been applied to as many different diseases ; vague, inconvenient names have been employed, or complications have been registered, instead of primary diseases. The nomenclature is of as much importance in this depart- ment of inquiry as weights and measures in the physical sciences, and should be settled without delay.

  William Farr

  Names, Perfect, Attention

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• Homologue. The same organ in different animals under every variety of form and function.

  Richard Owen

  Science, Animal, Differences

  Richard Owen (1848). “On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton”, p.7

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• Laplace considers astronomy a science of observation, because we can only observe the movements of the planets; we cannot reach them, indeed, to alter their course and to experiment with them. "On earth," said Laplace, "we make phenomena vary by experiments; in the sky, we carefully define all the phenomena presented to us by celestial motion." Certain physicians call medicine a science of observations, because they wrongly think that experimentation is inapplicable to it.

  Claude Bernard

  Science, Thinking, Sky

  Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.47, Courier Corporation

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• If the hand be held between the discharge-tube and the screen, the darker shadow of the bones is seen within the slightly dark shadow-image of the hand itself... For brevity's sake I shall use the expression 'rays'; and to distinguish them from others of this name I shall call them 'X-rays'.

  Wilhelm Rontgen

  Dark, Science, Expression

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• I conceived and developed a new geometry of nature and implemented its use in a number of diverse fields. It describes many of the irregular and fragmented patterns around us, and leads to full-fledged theories, by identifying a family of shapes I call fractals.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Science, Numbers, Use

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• These microscopic organisms form an entire world composed of species, families and varieties whose history, which has barely begun to be written, is already fertile in prospects and findings of the highest importance. The names of these organisms are very numerous and will have to be defined and in part discarded. The word microbe which has the advantage of being shorter and carrying a more general meaning, and of having been approved by my illustrious friend, M. Littré, the most competent linguist in France, is one we will adopt.

  Louis Pasteur

  Science, Names, World

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• Natural history is not equivalent to biology. Biology is the study of life. Natural history is the study of animals and plants-of organisms. Biology thus includes natural history, and much else besides.

  Marston Bates

  Science, Animal, Study

  Marston Bates (2014). “The Nature of Natural History”, p.7, Princeton University Press

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• One dictionary that I consulted remarks that "natural history" now commonly means the study of animals and plants "in a popular and superficial way," meaning popular and superficial to be equally damning adjectives. This is related to the current tendency in the biological sciences to label every subdivision of science with a name derived from the Greek. "Ecology" is erudite and profound; while "natural history" is popular and superficial. Though, as far as I can see, both labels apply to just about the same package of goods.

  Marston Bates

  Mean, Science, Animal

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• I will remark in the way of general information, that in California, that land of felicitous nomenclature, the literary name of this sort of stuff is "hogwash"

  Mark Twain

  Land, Names, California

  Mark Twain, Charles Neider (1961). “Life as I find it [by] Mark Twain [pseud.] Essays, sketches, tales, and other material, the majority of which is now published in book form for the first time: edited, with an introd. and notes”

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• Since it is necessary for specific ideas to have definite and consequently as far as possible selected terms, I have proposed to call substances of similar composition and dissimilar properties isomeric, from the Greek ίσομερης (composed of equal parts).

  Jons Jacob Berzelius

  Science, Ideas, Greek

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• The future science of government should be called 'la cybernétique'.

  Andre-Marie Ampere

  Science, Government, Cybernetics

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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.

  Arthur Schuster

  Powerful, Lying, Science

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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.

  D. V. Ager

  Real, Science, Hands

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• There's a lot of interesting words, nomenclatures, in science.

  Andrew Bird

  Interesting

  "Play that funky glockenspiel" by Laura Barton, www.theguardian.com. December 3, 2007.

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• A catalyst is a substance which alters the velocity of a chemical reaction without appearing in the final products.

  Wolfgang Ostwald

  Science, Finals, Substance

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• [From uranium] there are present at least two distinct types of radiation one that is very readily absorbed, which will be termed for convenience the α radiation, and the other of a more penetrative character, which will be termed the β radiation.

  Ernest Rutherford

  Character, Science, Two

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• [Math] curriculum is obsessed with jargon and nomenclature seemingly for no other purpose than to provide teachers with something to test the students on.

  Paul Lockhart

  Teacher, Math, Purpose

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• And we daily in our experiments electrise bodies plus or minus, as we think proper. [These terms we may use till your Philosophers give us better.] To electrise plus or minus, no more needs to be known than this, that the parts of the Tube or Sphere, that are rubb'd, do, in the Instant of Friction, attract the Electrical Fire, and therefore take it from the Thin rubbing; the same parts immediately, as the Friction upon them ceases, are disposed to give the fire they have received, to any Body that has less.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Science, Thinking, Fire

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• I wish they would use English instead of Greek words. When I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is coloured by "chlorophyll," which at first sounds very instructive; but if they would only say plainly that a leaf is coloured green by a thing which is called "green leaf," we should see more precisely how far we had got.

  John Ruskin

  Science, Greek, Wish

  John Ruskin (1800). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture: Also, Lectures on Architecture and Painting; The Study of Architecture; Sesame and Lilies; Unto this Last; The Queen of the Air; The Storm-cloud of the Nineteenth Century”

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• When the words are fuzzy, the programmers reflexively retreat to the most precise method of articulation available: source code. Although there is nothing more precise than code, there is also nothing more permanent or resistant to change. So the situation frequently crops up where nomenclature confusion drives programmers to begin coding prematurely, and that code becomes the de facto design, regardless of its appropriateness or correctness.

  Amari Cooper

  Learning, Confusion, Design

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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.

  Herodotus

  Kings, Science, Egypt

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• Analogue. A part or organ in one animal which has the same function as another part or organ in a different animal.

  Richard Owen

  Science, Animal, Differences

  Richard Owen (1848). “On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton”, p.7

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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.

  Arthur Schuster

  Science, Expression, Two

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