Abstract
THE enormous waste of human time and energy, nay also of human life, that has been caused by the use of wrong or vague words, and the misuse of good words, is well known to students of human thought through the ages. Many words have changed their meanings in the course of time, and new words have been adopted with ambiguous or multiple connotations. Though one would hesitate to suggest that the legal profession has been the chief perpetrator of such intellectual delinquencies, and of their sequelæ—for the theologians and philosophers must have run them very close—there is no doubt that the loose drafting of governmental Bills and Regulations, even up to the present day, has caused great confusion and, incidentally, served to redistribute wealth in a unilateral direction. As Mephistopheles remarked, "Mit Worten lässt sich trefflich streiten, Mit Worten ein System bereiten, Von einem Wort kein Iota rauben".
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Scientific Terminology. Nature 153, 218 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/153218b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/153218b0