Capsule review: Scientific Babel (Michael D. Gordin)
The dominance of English in scientific communication came hand in hand with the establishment of American economic, military, and cultural hegemony, a fact which seems obvious in retrospect. Less obvious are the particulars of how this process actually happened, such as the voluntary abandonment of German in the American scientific community following the American entry into the first world war. Gordin traces such particulars in lucid and elegant prose, and one regrets his decision not to trace the path from Latin’s status as the common scientific language to the ascendancy of the trio of English, German, and French.
Rating: ★★★★★
published