The Language of Science

For those who don’t know me well, I’m a proud Scot. Sentimental about the dramatic mountains and purple hills. The brume and murk that engulfs the lush forests. The open fires and cottage smoke.? The sweet amber product of barley, water, and peat.

My West Coast Scottish origin and upbringing means that my mother tongue is English. One of the most populous languages. One of the most creative. But also one of the most challenging and rule-averse. For example, a word used in the first sentence of this paragraph – tongue – contains the idle ‘ue’. The spelling vs the pronunciation of the word ‘colonel’. The ‘who vs whom’ business. I do not envy my European friends currently learning ‘the King’s’. ?

This knotty language (silent k this time!) is the world’s dominant scientific language. New breakthroughs, terminologies, articles etc. will almost certainly be published in English. But it hasn’t always been this way. The annals of science have travelled through multiple sets of languages: Italian, Latin, Russian, Ancient Greek, German, English, Dutch, French, Ottoman, Japanese, Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Danish, Swedish. This is no longer the case. As Michael Gordin puts it in his educational book ‘Scientific Babel’, scientists are likely the world’s biggest monoglot community. ?

English was far from the dominant scientific language at the start of the 20th century. That accolade belonged to German. English, although malleable and expressive, does not possess qualities that make it uniquely suited to be the Language of Science. It has achieved this status by chance. The tale of scientific language during the 20th century is less the rise of English and more the deterioration of German.

Pre-World War 1, Americans were ardent foreign language learners. Post-World War 1, the learning of foreign languages fell off a cliff – for German and also French (a popular science language at the time). Meaning that American scientists coming of age in the 1920s had scant exposure to any other language apart from their mother tongue. Significantly, this coincided with the American scientific superpower taking shape in earnest.

Following the Second World War, many other nations around the world dismantled their German educational structures, with English being the favoured choice to replace German as the first foreign language taught to children.

Although the inexorable gravitational pull of the US – generated by its wealth and scientific prominence – has been a major factor in English becoming the Language of Science, the neutral reputation of English has also been important. English has no centralised body to regulate its usage. It is incredibly pliant, absorbing words and idioms from multifarious languages. And – perhaps most importantly – the association with science (esteemed for objectivity, impartiality, and progress) has awarded Anglophony with the halo of neutrality. ?

Whether English is indeed a neutral language or not is open to debate – such a debate being outside the scope of this article. What is difficult to dispute, though, is the asymmetry of English being the Language of Science. A small segment of the community gain fluency easily during childhood, whereas the majority are forced to exert great effort to learn the nuance-rich lingua franca.

While not an ugly language, English can certainly not be described as ‘pretty’ either. If a global vote is offered to remedy the curse of Babel* and unite the ‘children of men’ under one common tongue, my vote would either go to French or Italian. Both being beautiful, artistic, soulful languages.

*As the Christian Old Testament story goes, all people historically spoke the same language. This (supposedly) brought unity and allowed them to collaborate efficiently – one day observing the House of Commons would disprove this theory! The text continues saying that a ‘grand tower’ was attempted by the people of the world with the aim of reaching the heavens. Seeing this, God became concerned with the ingenuity and brainpower people had developed. He was disturbed that ‘man’ was growing too powerful. To halt progress of the construction, he ‘cursed’ all workers by making them speak different languages. The tale concludes by declaring that the tower could not be finished due to humanity’s inability to communicate in the same tongue. People spread out across the world, speaking their different languages, and giving birth to the linguistic diversity we see today. These fossilized philosophies still make for entertaining reading. ?

From the beginning of recorded history, there has been a desire to create a single language that will unite humankind. Why this is a sought-after outcome, I do not know. I am not an advocate of monolingualism. Quite the opposite. Being multi/bilingual has the benefits of giving people access to a ‘different self’. Has social, psychological, and lifestyle advantages. Expands worldviews. Let’s people connect with culture and geography in a more meaningful and deeper way. And – as mounting evidence is showing – can protect against cognitive decline in older age. ?

Whether we like it or not, English is now a permanent fixture of the intellectual landscape. It is a ‘universal’ and ‘hypercentral’ language. What gives it this status is not that it has many native speakers (Spanish and Mandarin have more), but rather it is used by the greatest number of non-native speakers in the world. As Jonathan Arac – the literary critic – points out, English in language is like the dollar bill in economics – it serves as the medium through which knowledge can be transferred from the local to the global.

If we must have one international Language of Science, then English does seem well placed. As David Crystal notes in his book ‘The Stories Of English’, there are more words dedicated to scientific descriptions than for any other function. The size of the English vocabulary makes it possible to communicate any scientific phenomena in any discipline. And English’s last trick is that it is subject to constant modifications and updates. Allowing it to progress at the same rate as technological advancement and stay relevant. Speaking of which, let’s discuss some recent additions to the Life Sciences lexicon. Which – hopefully unsurprising to you by now – are in English.

Pertinent Terminology

In no particular order.

In Silico – a term used to refer to experimentation performed by computers. The term In Silico being an acknowledgement of the importance of silicon in the creation of computer chips. It is related to the more recognised biological terms In Vivo (from the Latin ‘in the living’ – work performed on a living organism) and In Vitro (from the Latin ‘in glass’ – work performed outside of a living organism). As we continue to ride the wave of technological change, virtual trial setups and virtual patients will become more commonplace, reducing the reliance on (but not eradicating) animal and human trials.

CRISPR – Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats – a technology that can be used to edit genes. CRISPR is being compared to the invention of the transistor – the technology which transformed computers. CRISPR has been proven to disrupt, delete, or correct genetic errors, potentially improving the health and quality of life of many people. Like those with spinal muscular atrophy, sickle cell patients, and even individuals that have a genetic condition that causes high cholesterol. A solution to the latter would significantly reduce the risk of heart disease, from which 180 people die each day in the UK.

CReATiNG – Cloning, Reprogramming, and Assembling Tiled Natural Genomic DNA – A method that reduces the cost of constructing synthetic chromosomes. The field of synthetic genomics (which involves building chromosomes and genomes from scratch) has historically relied on using chemically synthesized DNA pieces… until now. CReATiNG uses natural pieces of DNA as parts to assemble whole chromosomes. This will make advanced genetic research more accessible and, crucially, lower costs and technical barriers for biotech SMEs working on medicine discovery, biofuels, and environmental remediation – one exciting development is creating bacteria that consume pollutants, for example.

The OMICS revolution. The suffix ‘omics’ has been getting a workout recently. A respite does not appear to be on the horizon. The success of the human genome project has given rise to a multitude of ‘omics’ disciplines. The goal of which are to analyse the components of a living organism in its entirety. The ‘four big omics’ are: ?

-????????? Genomics: the genome is the instructions for making and maintaining an organism. It is written in chemical code (known as DNA). All living things – plants, viruses, humans etc. – have a genome. Genomics is the study of an organism’s genome (complete genome, that is) to get a fuller picture of how it can affect our health

-????????? Transcriptomics: Examines the complete set of RNA transcripts produced by the genome using high-throughput methods such as microarray analysis

-????????? Proteomics: Used to understand the functions of individual proteins and how changes in protein abundance affect complex biological systems

-????????? Metabolomics: Looks at the complete set of small molecule metabolites in an organism

We will likely be welcoming other omics disciplines into the family soon. For example, Redoxomics – previously used to detect only a few oxidized byproducts in proteomics, redoxomics is emerging as a new field in biochemistry, examining oxidant and antioxidant systems in living organisms/biological systems. This medical specialty has particular application for people with Type 2 Diabetes.

Neuromorphic Computing Devices. Computers whose structures and functions are inspired by the human brain, consisting of neurons and synapses. The primary advantage of neuromorphic computing is it enables Artificial Intelligence to be more autonomous, so that it can interpret and adapt to changing situations, rather than simply working from formulaic algorithms.

To end, a stock term I hear almost daily is ‘Generative AI’. But if asked – and I have conducted my own primary research – many are unable to give a satisfactory definition. For future reference, Generative AI is artificial intelligence that is capable of generating new content (text, images) in response to a submitted prompt, by learning from a large reference database of examples. ?

2024 is expected to be an exciting year in Life Sciences. We will be encountering fresh terminology soon… undoubtedly in English.