There is an error, on the other hand, into which practical men fall when they object to the technical language of the scientist. There are many things in science which cannot be made plain to the non-scientific mind. The difficulty lies not in the terminology employed, but in the lack of the basal concepts necessary for the advanced thinking which must be employed. Says Robert Galloway, “Words when employed in science, unlike their employment in common use, have a meaning steadily fixed and precisely determined; this precision in the meaning of scientific terms necessarily requires on the part of those who can make proper use of them _accurate habits of thought_; this is an indispensable qualification for attainment in any science; there is no dispensing with it, consequently one who does not know the language of a science, and who has not been taught to think accurately with respect to it, cannot understand properly what may be told or shown him about the facts or principles of that science.”
From this point of view it is easy to see the use which the teacher should make of technical terms. Circumlocutions and explanatory phrases may be helpful in developing fundamental ideas, but the corresponding technical terms should be associated with the ideas as soon as these assume clear, definite shape. Language is the atmosphere in which thinking lives; technical language is as necessary to the scientific thought as the air we breathe is to the physical life. In one of his letters to a young man whose education had been neglected, De Quincey renders an important service to the science of teaching. “In assigning to the complex notion X the name transcendental, Kant was not simply transferring a word which had previously been used by the school-men to a more useful office; he was bringing into the service of the intellect a new birth; that is, drawing into a synthesis, which had not existed before as a synthesis, parts or elements which exist and come forward hourly in every man’s mind. I urge this upon your attention, because you will often hear such challenges thrown out as this (or others involving the same error): ‘Now, if there be any sense in this Mr. Kant’s writings, let us have it in good old mother English.’ That is, in other words, transfer into the unscientific language of life scientific notions which it is not fitted to express. The challenger proceeds upon the common error of supposing all ideas fully developed to exist _in esse_ in all understandings, ergo, his own; and all that are in his own he thinks we can express in English. Thus the challenger, in his own notions, has you in a dilemma, at any rate; for, if you do not translate it, then it confirms his belief that the whole is jargon; if you do (as, doubtless, with the help of much periphrasis, that will be intelligible to a man who already understands the philosophy), then where was the use of the terminology? But the way to deal with this fellow is as follows: My good sir, I shall do what you ask; but before I do it I beg you will oblige me by (1) translating this mathematics into the language of chemistry; (2) translating this chemistry into the language of mathematics; (3) both into the language of cookery, and, finally, solve me the Cambridge problem, Given the captain’s name, the year of our Lord, to determine the longitude of the ship? This is the way to deal with such fellows.”