alt Hacker News> "at the time, he was probably mostly thinking of “white European cultures”, and while we can acknowledge how backwards and fucking goofy this is now, we can still admit that Linnaeus’ ideology was simply flawed like his time and NOT throw out the baby with the proverbial bath water"
In the 18th century someone living in Europe making science books would definitely be using Latin, maybe French if you were a modernist, as that was the language of science publication and communication. I don't see how this is either backwards or goofy?
It's similar to use English on an internet blog post nowadays (as the author does), since there's many more Chinese or Spanish native speakers than English, but English IS the language of international communication.
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Of all the things you could criticize as backwards in 18th century biology, the choice of using Latin is probably the silliest. It was the language of learning. It's a practical choice that you and I would make if we were transported to that time.
The way I parsed the sentence, the backwards and goofy part is just the """he was probably mostly thinking of “white European cultures”""", not the choice of Latin. Just a concilatory disclaimer to avoid being cancelled for talking good things about someone born before the abolition of slavery.
Luckily the author continues with
> I say this because a few unthinking “performative leftist” nitwits as of late have decided to attack the science of taxonomy itself).
It's an interesting topic, though. If Latin is backwards because of assocation with European cultures, what are biologists nowadays proposing to replace it with? Some kind of universal coding system like ISBN or DOI?
More scientific lectures should be delivered with a blue collar Chicago dialect and accent.
Simlish was intentionally designed to be linguistically neutral, so we didn't have to laboriously translate all the game audio into dozens of languages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simlish
For the same reason, botanical nomenclature should obviously be standardized in Simlish. Sul sul, Laganaphyllis simnovorii!
Laganaphyllis simnovorii is the scientific name of the Cowplant, literally suggestive of a plant that devours Sims. It first appeared under that name in The Sims 2: University as a Natural Science career reward. The Sims 3 Store also uses the full name officially.
https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Laganaphyllis_simnovorii
>This bizarre bovine vegetation is large enough to swallow your next-door neighbor whole. In fact, it WILL eat your neighbors. Your friends will be hard-pressed to resist the tantalizing vine-cake of the carnivorous Laganaphyllis Simnovorii. After it has consumed some prey, milk it for sweet, rejuvenating nectar of life. A swig of this liquid refreshment will add precious days to a Sim's life and wash away any regret they may have over their visitor's fate.
A proposed technical lexicon:
Plant: floragerb. Flora: floragerbia. Vegetation: verdigerbium. Fruit: pomofroob. Vegetable: olerinoob. Root: radixgerb. Stem: caulob. Leaf: folinurb. Flower: anthofleeb. Seed: seminib. Pollen: pollinoob. Spore: sporib. Cell: cellubo. Cell wall: muracellum. Chlorophyll: chlorofleebin. Photosynthesis: photofroobulation. Cellular respiration: respiragerbation. Germination: germinoobulation. Pollination: pollifleebation. Fertilization: gametogerbination. Transpiration: evapofleebulation. Xylem: xyloob. Phloem: phleebum. Stoma: stomabo. Phylogeny: ancestragerbics. Morphology: formagerbology. Binomial nomenclature: duonominoobulation.
Because latin was common only for part of one continent where he happened to be and not to the rest of the world while english happens to be spoken all over the globe due to a big goofy empire that went places.
However, let's keep out the culture wars from a post mainly about plants.
Agreed. The author in question (Linnaeus) was from Sweden and professor at a Swedish university (Uppsala). Latin was used across the board in "traditional" sciences in northern Europe at that time and in fact the distinction of disciplines was not as clear as it is today. Linnaeus was a professor of medicine formally but focused on botany. He traveled a lot and had many international "contacts", especially in the Netherlands. His correspondence was usually a mix of Swedish and Latin (which I find interesting because I assume Swedish was not widely studied at the time) but his professional publications were in Latin.
But it was an interesting time as slowly native languages became more common. The chair for economic sciences at Uppsala was specifically to be taught in Swedish (1741).
Southern and central Europe were ahead of the curve a bit and it was more common to see French, English and German for example (French and English scientific journals date back to the 1660s).
For more information, I can recommend "Languages of science in the eighteenth century" by Britt-Louise Gunnarsson which specifically focuses on Linnaeus. It's Open Access: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/97831102...