/sci/ - Science & Math » Thread #10098921

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Greek lingo in science sucks

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 10:29:55 2018 No.10098921 View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>10098924 >>10099119 >>10099140 >>10100279

>use the Greek name for everything in science even though Greeks didn't discover jackshit
Let's keep giving greeks credit for chromosomes and whatnot just because it sounds cool or something. They didn't discover this at all. They didn't discover DNA.
Whose great idea was it to name all this stuff in Greek?
Giving credit where it's not due.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 2018 10:32:34 No.10098924 Report

Quoted By: >>10098925

>>10098921
Look up Democritus, Lepponicus, Heraclitus, and Parmenides.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 2018 10:33:55 No.10098925 Report

Quoted By: >>10101222

>>10098924
>Philosophers
Yeah philosophy is not hard science

SAGEGOESINALLFIELDS

SAGEGOESINALLFIELDS Sat 27 Oct 2018 10:40:19 No.10098931 Report

Quoted By: >>10098951 >>10101225

Yeah, let's call chromosome "color(ed) body" instead, sounds so much more rad.
Don't discount the aesthetic appeal greek and latin provide. It's a way of expanding terminology without sounding like a complete retard.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 2018 11:01:22 No.10098951 Report

Quoted By: >>10099065

>>10098931
>Latin and Greek sound cool so we use them
Nothing more brainlet than this

SAGEGOESINALLFIELDS

SAGEGOESINALLFIELDS Sat 27 Oct 2018 12:26:44 No.10099065 Report

Quoted By: >>10099067

>>10098951
It's useful AND has aesthetic purpose.
Its universal nomenclature makes sure people around the world use the same terms.
I love how "rational people" love to discredit the human experience of things, even as simple as pronouncing words, to claim that how things are done are not relevant to the results or what those things should convey/accomplish.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 2018 12:28:43 No.10099067 Report

Quoted By: >>10099255 >>10101355

>>10099065
I doubt the Japanese are happy about having to use Greek nomenclature.
It's not even optimised.
It would have been better to create new terms just for science.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 2018 12:33:18 No.10099075 Report

Quoted By:

desu we need to make the Greeks feel good about something, nothing's going well for them at the moment. Be nice.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 2018 13:17:45 No.10099119 Report

Quoted By:

>>10098921
>Prove me wrong
>Epsilon is just the letter E in a different font

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 2018 13:42:51 No.10099135 Report

Quoted By: >>10100262

The alternative is that every single new discovery, idea, and concept is named in a different language and we end up with an absolute mess of nonsense everywhere.

The Greeks may not have invented or discovered the things in question, but at least everything doesn't look like ass.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 2018 13:48:24 No.10099140 Report

Quoted By:

>>10098921
Lots of English words have Greek origins like electricity come from elektros meaning amber. Ancient Greeks discovered that rubbing a piece of amber with a cloth would make it attract feathers (static electricity).
So in a way, they discovered electricity but not really.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 2018 14:52:50 No.10099224 Report

Quoted By: >>10099420 >>10099424

Greek and Latin are used because they are dead languages. Therefore, the meaning of the words and characters don't change.

When you dont do this, your terms are appropriated and conflated. E.g. sex = gender now.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 2018 15:07:21 No.10099255 Report

Quoted By:

>>10099067
>I doubt the Japanese are happy about having to use Greek nomenclature.
They actually are.
Japanese absolutely LOVE using foreign words for things.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 2018 16:48:03 No.10099420 Report

Quoted By:

>>10099224
No

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 2018 16:51:07 No.10099424 Report

Quoted By:

>>10099224
Nope

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 2018 23:23:37 No.10100262 Report

Quoted By:

>>10099135
like how they abandoned greek/roman mythology, and now we have Kuiper Belt objects like Makemake and Teharonhiawako

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 2018 23:31:30 No.10100279 Report

Quoted By: >>10100328

>>10098921
We get multiple pieces of notation from various languages. Arabic gave us a standard way to talk about base 10 numerals and more importantly 0. The concept of emptiness, of base case, etc. has been the cornerstone of counterexamples to claims of universal statements, theorems, etc.

More to the point, the Greek alphabet is used because their mathematics and alphabet are a big part of mathematical culture and history. They're used because they are unabashedly associated with mathematics, and when looking at them, it is clear that you are looking at mathematics.

Also, a lot of the Greek was used because it had specific connotations. Lowercase epsilon and delta is associated small distances and discrepancies (evident if you've taken any level of analysis), uppercase delta associated with change, alpha and beta associated with random specification (like a and b, or alice and bob in a written example), sigma a sum, etc. . Sometimes physics and CS tends to use different notation, but even then, they don't stray far away from the original connotation.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 27 Oct 2018 23:50:00 No.10100328 Report

Quoted By: >>10100433 >>10101412

>>10100279
Yeah we use lambda theta sigma and tau. But not because we have to. I'd much rather use a instead of alpha or b instead of beta. Or h instead of lambda.
We just have to pay homage to the Greeks and we're never told why.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 28 Oct 2018 00:28:57 No.10100433 Report

Quoted By:

>>10100328
These things have strong association with specific concepts. We don't *have* to, but being able to use them and associate them with their common use makes reading mathematical text a lot clearer.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 28 Oct 2018 08:24:00 No.10101222 Report

Quoted By:

>>10098925
They still were right, just because some greek dude was thinking "Hey maybe it's like this" and some autistic nerds from the future confirmed it doesn't mean they should get no credit.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 28 Oct 2018 08:25:37 No.10101225 Report

Quoted By:

>>10098931
Not to mention no one still latin and greek isn't doing any real science so it leaves two full alphabets of characters for the rest of the world to use without confusion.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 28 Oct 2018 09:45:46 No.10101355 Report

Quoted By: >>10101374

>>10099067
the japs can suck it then
maybe if the white men didn't discover all the important things you'd have a point

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 28 Oct 2018 10:05:54 No.10101374 Report

Quoted By:

>>10101355
I mentioned the Japanese because they're getting 1/3 or so of every Nobel prize in stem right now. The white man ain't shit.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 28 Oct 2018 10:48:29 No.10101412 Report

Quoted By: >>10102078

>>10100328
Would you rather be limited to just 26 characters (25 if you're avoiding O) for all the hundreds of concepts in mathematics or would you rather have 26 plus an additional 24? Greek letters are both distinct enough from Latin chatacters, and recognizable.
>never told why
Have you ever gone through grade school and high school?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 28 Oct 2018 18:52:06 No.10102078 Report

Quoted By:

>>10101412
>Have you ever gone through grade school and high school?
Obviously I'm a middle school dropout. I bet you could spot it by all stuff in this thread aye?

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