In science, etymology is the study of word origins and meanings.
Overview
In many cases of new scientific words, the etymologies are very precise, the date of introduction and precise meaning of the word given in public proclamation, an example being “entropy” (Rudolf Clausius, 1865), in other cases word origins are elusive, often buried in personal discussions, jokes, hidden stories, or destroyed texts, and or humor, among other barriers to understanding, an example being Americans John Neumann telling Claude Shannon, sometime in the early to late 1940s, to call his new logarithmic formulations of telegraph wire coding transmissions, which can be sent according to an agreed upon coding system to convey information, by the name “entropy” (i.e. Shannon entropy, as we have been forced to use), supposedly on the logic that “no one really knows what this word means, so in any debate you will always have the advantage”. This latter example is most likely the most tarnished and misapprehensible etymologies in all of science.
See also
● Hmolpedia (etymology)
● Thermodynamics (etymology)
● Chemistry (etymology)
● Entropy (etymology)
● Human thermodynamics (etymology)
External links
● Etymology – Wikipedia.
