Erudition and ego...
What the scientific, erudite types have to realize:
When an Ordinary Person sees a beautiful grasshopper, s/he is quite interested.
But if told that it is a Cyrtacanthacris tatarica tatarica, and that the classification is Animalia > Arthropoda > Insecta > Orthoptera > Acridoidea > Acrididae > Cyrtacanthacridinae > Cyrtacanthacris > Cyrtacanthacris tatarica (Linnaeus, 1758) > Cyrtacanthacris tatarica tatarica (Linnaeus, 1758) (I am not joking), s/he would 1) be totally zapped and bewildered, 2) lose interest.
Of course, a side effect would be 3) being very impressed by the person who is giving that information...which may have actually been just gleaned off the Internet (as I did.)
This whole thing of having ids in a long-dead language and translating that Latin (and Greek) in a suitably pseudo-friendly, condescending way to These Lesser Mortals is something I find many scientists (and pseudo scientists from WhatsApp University) guilty of.
And it's true of every field of human endeavour. I appear much more knowledgeable if, instead of saying, "enjoy this rAgam", I say, "listen to the prayOgams of Podalangapriya"; more learned-sounding if, instead of "enjoy the rocky landscape", I say, "Look at the mixture of metaingenious rock and the patterns of the earlyite (not the laterite)"; instead of "Look at how beautiful that fish-shaped cloud is", I say, "Cumulonimbus clouds take on so many interesting forms"..and so it goes.
Not you, of course, and never me...but Those Others 😃
When an Ordinary Person sees a beautiful grasshopper, s/he is quite interested.
But if told that it is a Cyrtacanthacris tatarica tatarica, and that the classification is Animalia > Arthropoda > Insecta > Orthoptera > Acridoidea > Acrididae > Cyrtacanthacridinae > Cyrtacanthacris > Cyrtacanthacris tatarica (Linnaeus, 1758) > Cyrtacanthacris tatarica tatarica (Linnaeus, 1758) (I am not joking), s/he would 1) be totally zapped and bewildered, 2) lose interest.
Of course, a side effect would be 3) being very impressed by the person who is giving that information...which may have actually been just gleaned off the Internet (as I did.)
This whole thing of having ids in a long-dead language and translating that Latin (and Greek) in a suitably pseudo-friendly, condescending way to These Lesser Mortals is something I find many scientists (and pseudo scientists from WhatsApp University) guilty of.
And it's true of every field of human endeavour. I appear much more knowledgeable if, instead of saying, "enjoy this rAgam", I say, "listen to the prayOgams of Podalangapriya"; more learned-sounding if, instead of "enjoy the rocky landscape", I say, "Look at the mixture of metaingenious rock and the patterns of the earlyite (not the laterite)"; instead of "Look at how beautiful that fish-shaped cloud is", I say, "Cumulonimbus clouds take on so many interesting forms"..and so it goes.
Not you, of course, and never me...but Those Others 😃