The Establishment of Chinese Terms for Chemical Elements : 1901-1932(<Special Issue> Globalization and Diversity in Modern Chemical Sciences)
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概要
- 論文の詳細を見る
This paper aims to shed some light on the establishment of Chinese terms for elements making use of two exclusive sets of historical sources and documents. One corpus is built up from 32 chemical textbooks published between 1901, when Chemical Terms and Nomenclature was established, and 1932, when The Nomenclature of Chemistry was approved. The other set presents the arguments for or against a particular name for some elements. Some fascinating conclusions are drawn from this investigation. There are especially two among others. For one thing, the year 1920 saw a significant turn in the uses of Chinese terminology for elements in chemistry textbooks. In what we call the "prophase, " the majority of Xu Shou's terms were used, while in the "anaphase, " the terms appearing in The Chinese Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry approved in 1915 by the Ministry of Education were generally adopted. For another thing, the selection of a Chinese term for an element depends on a variety of factors, such as existing linguistic tradition, minimizing the number of strokes, finding a pronunciation appropriated to Chinese phonetics, avoiding graphemic and phonetic confusion, etc. However, which factor should be given the first priority hangs on particular element, time and person. In addition, one should note that the decisions established by The Nomenclature of Chemistry (1932) were not always that reasonable and convincing. It is thus suggested that the successful standardization of chemical terms on this occasion be principally due to the foregoing formation of an authoritative chemical community.
- 日本科学史学会の論文
- 2007-03-27