Old-style writing
Why don’t we write like that anymore?
When I read scientific articles, I look for technical knowledge. That’s not true.
I also care about beauty, elegance and humbleness (or boldness, when needed).
See this excerpt from a 1927 article1:
‘Many experiments with filters of various kinds were carried out, and, much to my disappointment, it was found that no combination of filters permitted the accurate measurement of light of different spectral qualities’
Or this one from 19302:
I have never succeeded in demonstrating conclusively that the light can be dimmed over its whole range from full bright to complete darkness without producing a response, although this can probably be done when the difficulty of preventing the animal from reacting to other stimuli over such a long period of time is overcome.
Or this 1912 Science article3 about the photochemistry of the future (today?):
Modern civilization is the daughter of coal, for this offers to mankind the solar energy in its most concentrated form; that is, in a form in which it has been accumulated in a long series of centuries. Modern man uses it with increasing eagerness and thoughtless prodigality for the conquest of the world and, like the mythical gold of the Rhine, coal is to-day the greatest source of energy and wealth.
I feel today’s neutrality and alleged ‘seriousness’ risks becoming too dry and artificial, which adds to the disconnection between science and ‘people’ (whatever that may be).
As a matter of fact, from now on, I’ll keep this post alive, as a collection of these kinds of expressions, and will update it (hopefully) as I run into more examples.
Lowndes 19354
“That the endopod is prehensile, I have convinced myself beyond any doubt by simply watching the living specimens seize their food.”
LeBlanc et al 19975
“In view of the danger of type I error with so many regression analyses, we do not wish to suggest that these organisms are consumed.”
Footnotes
A. Brooker Klugh “A Comparison of certain methods of measuring light for ecological purposes” https://doi.org/10.2307/1930149↩︎
Clarke “Change of phototropic and geotropic signs in Daphnia induced by changes of light intensity” https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.7.2.109↩︎
Ciamcian, G. “The Photochemistry of the Future.” Science 36 (1912): 385–94. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.36.926.385↩︎
Lowndes, A. G. “The Swimming and Feeding of Certain Calanoid Copepods.” Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 105, no. 3 (1935): 687–715. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1096-3642.1935.tb01688.x↩︎
LeBlanc, Jennifer S., William D. Taylor, and Ora E. Johannsson. “The Feeding Ecology of the Cyclopoid Copepod Diacy Clops Thomasi in Lake Ontario.” Journal of Great Lakes Research 23, no. 3 (1997): 369–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0380-1330(97)70919-5↩︎