Language of the Sciences

As I was helping a child I know, figure out where she went wrong with her science exam, an exercise I am profoundly ill equipped to assist in, one particular answer caught my attention. To the question of what is momentum, the answer, albeit an incorrect one, was momentum is speed. As a lawyer with a keen interest in science and technology, my understanding of concepts in science is basic and rudimentary at best. But the question that popped up in my mind was, if momentum and speed are one and the same, why would the English language have two different words for it? Furthermore, upon a reflection of how one uses the word “momentum” in everyday language, a part me guessed that it must be a function of mass and velocity. Turns out I was not incorrect in my inquiry and guess work. 

It begs the question, are the kids of today disabled in their ability to learn due to a crisis of language. My niece often bombards me with terms such as “dark academia” and “lawyer aesthetic”, terms that I cannot grasp or comprehend because they are so far off from the traditional English language. That’s the world my niece lives in, where the words my generation uses and the words her generation uses are different, but yet are meant to refer to the same things. But where the language of the teenagers have evolved, the language of the sciences and so many other disciplines remain the same. Could this be the reason why the child (the author of the momentum=speed answer), could not employ her everyday language skills to negate the assumption that momentum and speed are one and the same?

This brings us to a larger problem in the education system, the aversion or the trivialization of language as a subject of study. The Indian Education System suffers from an affliction which convinces its educators and consumers alike that the pursuit of language, whether as a primary vocation or even as an interest, must not come at the cost of the pursuit of sciences which is often branded, incorrectly, as the only viable source of success and livelihood. Yet what connects a student to the subject he or she is trying to master, is the medium of language. As a medium of instruction and exchange of ideas, a language is what enables us to comprehend the world around us, which includes the subjects of study. If the medium is fractured or compromised in anyway, a student’s ability to comprehend the ideas at the end of that medium is also compromised. This disconnect isolates our children from the world around them and ends up affecting their ability, adversely, to comprehend concepts and dwell deep into them. 

In the short story, “Story of my Life” by Ted Chiang, which became a movie called “Arrival”, the author makes a case for how our very perception of time and other concepts of physics is shaped by our language. By the end of the plot of the movie, when the protagonist finally grasps the language of the aliens, her understanding of time changes from one that is linear to one that is not, allowing her to travel freely between the past, present and the future. I find this to be particularly intriguing for ever since the time I started raising my dogs, learning their language, has opened my eyes to an entire new reality of the world of animals and to some extent plants, their behaviour and emotions, which was otherwise blind to me. I am surprised at how much I am able to read my dog’s emotions just by her facial expressions and how small or big her eyes are. Anecdotally speaking, language has indeed shaped my consciousness, from one that could perceive human beings only, to one that is a little less limited now. 

If we are to truly produce the intellectual leaders of tomorrow, the average Indian parent must first learn to refrain from judging subjects as “useful” or “useless”. Inter-disciplinary approaches to complex problems are increasingly yielding useful dividends. We may indeed live in the era of specialization, but it is certainly not a time where we have the luxury of knowing something at the cost of not knowing anything else.