Science Communication: Definitions VS Metaphors

A hundred years ago, Charles Darwin could write books discussing the central problems of biology in language which was scientifically precise and still accessible to the general public. In those days the subject matter of biology was plants and animals. The language of Darwin was intelligible to experts and non-experts alike. One did not need a degree in {55} botany to understand the difference between a fern and a flower. Darwin could assume that his readers were familiar with the world of...

 Jargon Scares People Away from Science

I would have you to observe that the difficulty & mystery which often appear in matters of science & learning are only owing to the terms of art used in them, & if many gentlemen had not been rebuted by the uncouth dress in which science was offered to them, we must believe that many of these who now shew an acute & sound judgement in the affairs of life would also in science have excelled many of those who are devoted to it & who were engaged in it only by necessity &...

 Technical Terminology Raises the Bar to Entry into a Subject

The increasing technicality of the terminology employed is also a serious difficulty. It has become necessary to learn an extensive vocabulary before a book in even a limited department of science can be consulted with much profit. This change, of course, has its advantages for the initiated, in securing precision and concisement of statement; but it tends to narrow the field in which an investigator can labour, and it cannot fail to become, in the future, a serious impediment to wide inducti...