BASIC FOR GEOLOGY by Phillis M. Rossiter
PART I
Geology is the third of the sciences for
which a special list of 50 words has been
made, for use together with the 100
" General Science" words first printed
in Basic English Applied,(Science) (Kegan
Paul, 1931) and the 850 general Basic
Words. The purpose of this book is to
give examples of expert work in the different
branches of geology put into the
1,000 word selection which may be used
for a given science (of which 50 words are
limited to use in that science),and at the
same time to give the reader a general
idea of the position of the language of
geology from the international point of
view. In making it, the same system has
been used as that outlined in Basic English
and Basic English Applied,the work falling
naturally into three divisions -- the selection
of words necessary for a specialist ;
the discovery of words in international
use among workers in the science ; and
the testing of the word-machine put
together in this way on representative
examples of expert writing.
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In doing the earlier part of this work
(and specialty in making the " geology
list ") one of the greatest troubles of
selection was that of putting a right
limit to the field of 'geology.'
The name seems to have been used first by
de Saussure in 1779 (though not in English
till twenty years later), and in its hundred
and fifty years of existence under this
name the science has taken in the edges of
an increasing number of other branches of
knowledge. There is a tendency for such
edges to become new sciences,and for this
reason the expert in geology has now to
have some knowledge of such widely-
different fields as those covered by
Paleontology (the meeting-place of geology
and the sciences of living things, Botany
and Zoology), by Mineralogy, Petrology,
and Crystallography (all of which have
connections with Physics and Chemistry)
and by the young science of Geo-physics
(with its relations with Astronomy and
Astrophysics.) At the present time a new
division is being marked out somewhere
between Geology and the old Geography,
named Physiography or Physical
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Geography, though it is still not generally
given the name of a 'science" All these
fields have certain connections with
geology, however the range of that name
may be limited ; and it might seem that
a science with such a number of outside
connections would have no chance of
being made clear with a short list of fifty
special words used in addition to the
hundred words listed for general science
purposes.
In fact the making of a special list for
geology puts in front of those interested
in the question of the use of Basic English
as an international language for science
part of the answer to the question which
comes up so frequently when these special
lists for the sciences are under discussion: --
What do you do when a number of special
lists seem to be needed for the complete
field of one science?
The answer
here and, happily, with
some other sciences,is that the troubles
caused by such family relations are smaller
than they seem to those who have gone
no farther than theory' In theory the
worker in geology would have to go
through the slow business of getting into
memory fifty words for every one of these
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new branches, in addition to the fifty
necessary for geology. But in fact this
does not take place. The development of
these separate branches of the earlier
'geology' has chiefly taken place in the
past seventy years ; and as the outcome of
the better organization of the international
distribution of ideas, a great number of
the new inventions of names have been
taken over by other countries at the same
time as the theories and discoveries which
made them necessary.
In this way geology has come to have a
very long list of international words: (1)
words, that is, whose sense is clear to all
those who have the sort of knowledge
which makes them able to take an interest
in books or papers on geology. In the
newer branches of the science the East
has taken the new names from the West,
while in the West they have gone straight
into general use. In this way, though the
learner does not have a knowledge of
the sense of the word at the 'magma'
start, when he has got the idea of what
it is, he has no other name for it. In other
words, the knowledge needed is that of
geology, not that of language: the international
word puts the English, Russian.
Japanese,or African learners on the same
level. (2)
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____________
(1) . Where these (and any other fixed international
words from any other science) are used
in this book they have been starred when first
used, though this has not been done with the
names of rocks, minerals, or divisions of beds
because of their great number. See pp. 145-164.
(2) This detailed argument seems necessary
here because it is a not uncommon error to have
the belief that with international words a process
of learning is needed like that of learning the
English for ' foot' or yellow" .
In the quick growth of the science of
geology between 1800 and 1900 the experts
of England were first in the field (specially
after the loss of authority of the German
school of Werner), so that their inventions
of names were taken over in other languages
and are still used wherever this science is
given attention. First Smith, and then
after him Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick, and
Lapworth, with Logan in America' gave
names which are used all over the earth :
and this has been done in the new
sciences, till geology today is in the happy
position of being one of the most international
of the sciences. This will be
made clearer by giving a rough idea of
the position of the special branches,
Paleontology, Crystallography, Mineralogy,
Petrology before coming to the
question of Stratigraphy.
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THE SCIENCES OF GEOLOGY
PALAEONTOLOGY
In this branch the general international
systems of Zoology are naturally used. The
name-system of Linnaeus, in which two
Latin names (generally) are given to a
species,is clear to all those interested in
science, and nothing is able to take its
place. The wider group-names, Classes,
Orders, and Phyla, are taken over in the
same way.(3) One word from paleontology
has, however, been seen to be necessary,
that is, cast ; this together with shell from
the General Science list will be of great
use to the writer of general geology.
CRYSTALLOGRAPHY
This science is a very late development,
and its words have the good points noted
earlier in this account. The names of the
crystal systems, based on solid geometry,
are international: so is the system for
numbering and lettering the faces and
axes of crystals. Wherever such work is
done, the names used in the investigation
of the effects of crystals on rays of light
are generally the same ; but four words
have been put into the list which are not
the same in other languages,that is to say,
birefringence, extinction, intercept, and
interpretation, so that work about the side
of crystallography nearest to geology
might be given in Basic without increasing
the number of footnotes.
____________
(3) The writer has made no investigation of the
words taken from Zoology which are used in
Paleontology. They make a great group,
on which much more work is necessary.
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MINERALOGY
The names of a great number of
minerals are international by now, though
it is only natural that those which have
been used or mined for a long time have
different names in the languages of Europe.
[[[ Stopped editing the OCR scan of Part I. ]]]
Skip ahead a few dozen pages to the end of Part I.
to the middle of page 44
. . .
The two lists, in their Present form,
(a) NECESSARY WORDS
age, ash, block, cast, cleavage dip, dyke, fault, foliation inclusion, limestone, ore.
outcrop overlap, schist, section, shale, shear sill, slate, strike, texture, thrust, unconformity,
vein, fossil, igneous, sedimentary
(b) SECOND-LEVEL WORDS
birefringence, clay, contour, extinction, flint, floor fracture, glacier, gravel, ground, hill, intercept,
interpenetration, lake, mud, outlier, plain, scarp, shore, thickness, twin, valley
Or, putting them under the headings used in the earlier discussion, we have:--
(l) Everyday names used in their general senses :--
(a) fossil, limestone, ore, slate, vein 5
(b) clay, flint, flood, glacier, hill, lake,
mud, plain, shore, valley 10
(2) Fictions used in their general senses :--
(a) age, section 2
(b) contour, interpenetration, thickness 3
(3) Common words used in special senses :--
(a) ash, block, cast, dyke, fault, igneous,
overlap, sedimentary, shale, sill l0
(b) gravel, scarp, twin 3
(4) Names of fictions used in a special way :--
(a) cleavage, foliation inclusion, texture, thrust 5
(b) Extinction, fracture, ground 3
(5) Special words not in general use :
(a) unconformity, dip, outcrop, schist, shear, strike 6
(b) birefringence, intercept, outlier 3
= 50
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With this list and the General Science list, in which is a number of words of the
greatest use in geology,it has been possible to put a representative selection of short
papers on different branches of geology into Basic, and these examples of international
science make the body of the book. It will be seen that there is nothing
to keep the expert from the invention of special words when necessary: all he has
to do is to give a clear account (in a footnote) of what the new word or word-group is a
sign of ; when, if it comes through the test of general use, it naturally becomes
part of the international language of geology. The same thing has taken place
with some hundreds of words which were not part of the English language in 1800.
No one has any serious doubt that more words than are truly necessay are in use
in geology (as in other sciences) ; and one of the purposes of this book is to make the
suggestion that workers in a science with such a store of internationally used words
have only to give a little more attention to their special language to give themselves a
wider hearing, and to make their theories and discoveries part of the general knowledge
with much less work, trouble, and error than are experienced under present
conditions. The existence of any science is dependent on the free exchange of ideas.
Anything which makes that exchange simpler and quicker is acting for the good
of Science.
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