INVENTING SCIENCE BY INTRODUCING THE WORD “DISCOVERY”. In an essay with the headline “THE SECOND BIG BANG”, Robert Crease reviewed THE INVENTION OF SCIENCE by David Wooton in the Wall Street Journal (December 12-13). “The second big bang” refers to what Professor Wooton argues is the beginning of the scientific revolution. He dates the change to the 1500’s and 1600’s and posits a simple cause for the change. Crease summarizes the book: “According to Mr. Wooton, revolutions in ideas start with revolutions in words.” Wooton focuses on the word “discovery”, whose current meaning first appears in English in 1553—taken from the Portuguese word “descobrir”. Wooton calls the new usage “the discovery of discovery”. Before then, Columbus had used the word “invenio” for his discoveries and Galileo the word “exploro”. With the new concept, “Voyages of exploration became voyages of discovery.”
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