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.
