Abstract
THE biologist, even the most mathematical, envies and admires the greater precision of statement and language that is possible for the physicist, and the physicist in his turn is apt to plume himself on the fact that his sciences, as compared with those of the biologist, are the exact sciences. Some biologists interested in precision of terminology have been wondering what the physicist may mean by the term “semi-absolute”—;a term which will be found applied to volts in the title of a paper recently read before the Royal Society (NATURE, December 25, 191.3, p. 495, column 1). On the face of it, semi-absoluteness is no more easy to conceive than is semi-infinity, and one is therefore tempted to regard the phrase akin to the “quite all right” of the modern young lady, the “quite a few” of the American, and other such degeneracies of modern speech. That view must, of course, be wrong, but an explanation would be comforting to more than one.
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ENQUIRER Semi-absolute. Nature 92, 530 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/092530b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/092530b0
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