English is the language of science today. No matter which languages
you know, if you want your work seen, studied, and cited, you need to
publish in English. But that hasn’t always been the case. Though
there was a time when Latin dominated the field, for centuries science
has been a polyglot enterprise, conducted in a number of languages
whose importance waxed and waned over time—until the rise of English
in the twentieth century. So how did we get from there to here? How
did French, German, Latin, Russian, and even Esperanto give way to
English? And what can we reconstruct of the experience of doing
science in the polyglot past? With Scientific Babel, Michael D. Gordin
resurrects that lost world, in part through an ingenious mechanism:
the pages of his highly readable narrative account teem with
footnotes—not offering background information, but presenting quoted
material in its original language. The result is stunning: as we read
about the rise and fall of languages, driven by politics, war,
economics, and institutions, we actually see it happen in the
ever-changing web of multilingual examples. The history of science,
and of English as its dominant language, comes to life, and brings
with it a new understanding not only of the frictions generated by a
scientific community that spoke in many often mutually unintelligible
voices, but also of the possibilities of the polyglot, and the losses
that the dominance of English entails. Few historians of science
write as well as Gordin, and Scientific Babel reveals his incredible
command of the literature, language, and intellectual essence of
science past and present. No reader who takes this linguistic journey
with him will be disappointed.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780226000329
Publisert
2018
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
University of Chicago Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter