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.
Using e-mail, I can communicate with scientists all over the world.
What we eat has changed more in the last 40 years than in the previous 40,000. The survival of the current food system depends upon widespread ignorance of how it really operates.
Drug company payments to doctors are a small part of a much larger strategy by Big Pharma to clean our pockets.
That which is not measurable is not science. That which is not physics is stamp collecting.
There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower.
Enormous numbers of people are taken in, or at least beguiled and fascinated, by what seems to me to be unbelievable hocum, and relatively few are concerned with or thrilled by the astounding-yet true-facts of science, as put forth in the pages of, say, Scientific American.
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