Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.
Interpretation
Language serves as a tool to express scientific ideas, with words acting as signs for those concepts.
In this quote, Samuel Johnson emphasizes the fundamental role of language in the realm of science. He suggests that language itself is not the essence of science but rather a means to convey and articulate scientific ideas. Words function as symbols that represent complex concepts and thoughts, highlighting the importance of effective communication in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding.
In practice
In a presentation about scientific discoveries, you might start with this quote to emphasize the importance of language in conveying complex ideas.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
In more than one respect, the exploring of the Solar System and homesteading other worlds constitutes the beginning, much more than the end, of history.
Quantum physics thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe.
We only know God in His works, but we are forced by science to admit and to believe with absolute confidence in a Directive Power-in an influence other than physical, or dynamical, or electrical forces.
The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.
One can say, looking at the papers in this symposium, that the elucidation of the genetic code is indeed a great achievement. It is, in a sense, the key to molecular biology because it shows how the great polymer languages, the nucleic acid language and the protein language, are linked together.
There are as many species as the infinite being created diverse forms in the beginning, which, following the laws of generation, produced many others, but always similar to them: therefore there are as many species as we have different structures before us today.
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