March 02, 2023, 07:03
GeoffLatin and Grek in biology
While reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, I noticed that at one point she erroneously called a Greek-derived activity a Latin one. It then occurred to me that Latin names are for taxonomy, but Greek is used for an organism's traits, as in "photophilic" for a characteristic of plants that must have direct sunlight. How/why did this come about?
March 11, 2023, 07:07
zmježdPartially a remnant of everybody doing serious writing in Latin. Taxonomy and the ISV (Internation Scientific Vocabulary) seems evenly devided between Greek and Latin. Cf.
Homo sapiens but also
Australopithicus africanus. Also Latin-derived terms like [lateral[/i],
dorsal, and
ventral, &c.
Addendum: the ISV also kind of replaces Latin as the main scientific language by providing terms in other languages that are easily recognizable.
March 11, 2023, 09:17
GeoffOK, thanks. I'm still unsure why there was a division of terms between the languages of description and function, but you've given me more of an answer than I've been able to find on my own.