Words in 2001

They're not what you think they are.

Printing technology co-evolved with the written representation of language.

At the frontiers of science, we don't always know what may happen.

Inappropriate terms can confuse rather than aid understanding.

Did a devout clergyman inspire the fictional archetype of the diabolical scientist?

Mathematical theorems can be created by formalization of everyday expressions.

If an explanation seems wonderfully simple, it's probably too good to be true.

Early science texts carried illustrations that are master-works in their own right.

Translators of scientific texts add their own, cultural interpretations.

Could literature teach us how to release scientific writing from its straitjacket?

How a new name embodied ideals of connection and inclusiveness.

Language is stretched to its limits in an effort to describe mathematics.

The idea of scientists as impartial observers is hard to shake, but is complete detachment justified?

How an astronomer's words were transformed into a citation classic.

Preliterate societies depend on the wise words of the older generations.

Language reform played an integral role in the development of a discipline.

Top-down versus bottom-up.

Scientists have to struggle with words that don't fit reality.

How do writing systems such as China's deal with the twenty-first century?

An anthropologist's unwitting gift to literature.