The Use of Scientific Terms

Abstract

PROF. LODGE has made a valuable statement regarding scientific terms in last week's NATURE as follows:—“The words used in the current language of biology are extremely classical and as unlike the language of daily life as can be contrived. This is done to keep free from the misunderstandings arising out of the attempt to give to popular words a scientific, i.e. an accurate meaning.” Botanists have not always been as careful as Prof. Lodge would have us believe, and as an instance to the contrary I would cite the following: I was recently lecturing on forest utilisation, and used the word bark in its ordinary meaning of the outer envelope of a tree. One of the students in the class interrupted me to point out that I was speaking loosely, as bark is now a scientific term, meaning the transformed outer envelope of a plant, the German Borke, after the growth in it of corky or stony tissues.