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What's in a name?




On Thu, 13 Mar 1997, Leigh Palmer wrote:

My second comment is this: please don't call a session in which
students sit at keyboards looking at screens a "lab". Laboratory work
involves confronting the student with Nature. Subversion of the
language is an impediment to the students' understanding this point.

I second that emotion. However, the battle is already lost. Outsiders are
stealing words from science and giving them other meanings. Schools have
language labs (where students listen to tapes in various languages), music
labs (where they listen to music), and computer labs (where they play
computer games). There's curricula in cosmetological science, mortuary
science, etc. etc. And have you noticed how many fields have taked
'science' onto their names? We have departments of "mathematical
sciences". Sociology is now "Social Sciences". Custodians are now
custodial engineers. And socialogists taking surveys are doing "research".

One criterion is fairly reliable. If a field has the word "science" in its
name it probably isn't. Chemistry, Physics, Geology, Astronomy, Biology,
etc. have seen no need to tack on the redundant word "science" for they
*are* sciences.

-- Donald

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Dr. Donald E. Simanek Office: 717-893-2079
Prof. of Physics Internet: dsimanek@eagle.lhup.edu
Lock Haven University, Lock Haven, PA. 17745 CIS: 73147,2166
Home page: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek FAX: 717-893-2047
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