Re: paleonet Discussion: Anglo-Saxon Science versus the rest of the world

["Niko Malchus" <nikolaus.malchus@xxxxxx>]

Dear Xavier, Dear Paleonetters,



Interesting question:



European science ows much to Arab science. Who knows, if Karl Martell had
not won 739 in Poitiers (SW France), perhaps Arab would have been THE
scientific language for some centuries in Europe. However, it remained Greek
and Latin. In the 17-19th century perhaps besides the oficial court language
French.



Before the II World War German was an international scientific language.



Today it is English. Why not Spanish?



I think the reasons are obvious: Science itself and its wide distribution
are rather costly. Simply for this economic reason, it is almost inevitable
that the scientific language is that of the economically most powerful.
English colonialism certainly considerably helped in this respect.



With this preamble to Your questions:



Qu.: Do you think that the Anglo-saxon dominates the palaeontological world?
if
so why?

-By output certainly, by quality? The more money, the more scientists, and
the more freedom scientists have to choose their research field, the results
of which may not be directly applicable to produce more money. In part, it
is also a statistical issue. A lot of scientists, many research fields, many
and divers publications. There is simply a greater chance that there is
something useful among it. I think, this is one of the basic characters of
(biologic) evolution itself.



Qu: Do you think that Anglo-saxon palaeontologists marginalised the others?



-Involuntarily by Anglo-saxons, I guess, there might be some truth in it.
Somehow intrinsic.

First, the output of interesting papers is so enormous, that You have to
choose and perhaps never see some papers that might be important for your
research. So what are Your choosing criteria? Pure scientific or perhaps
also what is not written in English, or too costly to translate, or too time
consuming to get a copy of, is ignored rightaway?

Second: The cladistic method might be another example. Hennig published his
work in 1950. It was written in German. And Hennig lived in the former
German Democratic Republic. Two important handicaps. I think it was not
before Brundin's paleogeography work 1966, where he used Hennigs method and
published in English, when cladistics became so enormously popular.

Qu: Do you think that Scientific magazines should be published in at least
two
languages as Castillina and English?

-I guess You mean simultaneously, because there are quite a number of
(European only?) journals that allow publication in 2 or 3 languages.
Simultaneous in two languages is simply irrealistic in most occasions for
economic reasons. Also, You publish to be read by as many colleagues as
possible. In a way it is quite stupid to cut Your own wings, isn't it.

On the other hand, I would love to have a bunch of papers/books translated
from Russian/Japanese/Chinese into a language I can understand, which would
probably be English, simply because there are less people that understand
German.

Don't know if all this helps

Anyway, Have a nice one,

Niko