Another condition which I have mentioned in [Aphorism XX.], as valuable in technical terms is, that they should be susceptible of such grammatical relations as their scientific use requires.
This is, in fact, one of the grounds of the Aphorism which we have already borrowed from Mr. Owen, that we are to prefer single substantives to descriptive phrases. For from such substantives we can derive adjectives, and other forms; and thus the term becomes, as Mr. Owen says, a better instrument of thought. Hence, he most consistently mentions it as a recommendation of his system of names, that by them the results of a long series of investigations into the special homologies of the bones of the head are expressed in simple and definite terms, capable of every requisite inflection to express the proportion of the parts.
I may also, in reference to this same passage in Mr. Owen’s appeal in behalf of his terminology, repeat what I have said under [Aphorism X.]: that the persons who may most properly propose new scientific terms, are those who have much new knowledge to communicate: so that the vehicle is commended to general reception by the value of what it contains. It is only to eminent discoverers and profound philosophers that the authority is conceded of introducing a new system of terms; just as it is only the highest authority in the state which has the power of putting a new coinage into circulation. The long series of investigations of which the results are contained in Mr. Owen’s table of synonyms, and the philosophical spirit of his generalizations, entitles him to a most respectful hearing when he appeals to the Professors and Demonstrators of Human Anatomy for an unbiassed consideration of the advantages of the terms proposed by him, as likely to remedy the conflicting and unsettled synonymy which has hitherto pervaded the subject.
There is another remark which is suggested by the works on Comparative Anatomy, which I am now considering. I have said in various places that Technical 355 Terms are a necessary condition of the progress of a science. But we may say much more than this: and the remark is so important, that it deserves to be stated as one of our Aphorisms, as follows:
Aphorism XXV.
In an advanced Science, the history of the Language of the Science is the history of the Science itself.
I have already stated in previous Aphorisms ([VIII.] and [XI.]) that Terms must be constructed so as to be fitted to enunciate general propositions, and that Terms which imply theoretical views are admissible for this purpose. And hence it happens that the history of Terms in any science which has gone through several speculative stages, is really the history of the generalizations and theories which have had currency among the cultivators of the science.
This appears in Comparative Anatomy from what we have been saying. The recent progress of that science is involved in the rise and currency of the Terms which have been used by the anatomists whose synonyms Mr. Owen has to discuss; and the reasons for selecting among these, or inventing others, include those truths and generalizations which are the important recent steps of the science. The terms which are given by Mr. Owen in his table to denote the bones of the head are good terms, if they are good terms, because their adoption and use is the only complete way of expressing the truths of homology: namely, of that Special Homology, according to which all vertebrate skeletons are referred to the human skeleton as their type, and have their parts designated accordingly.
But further: there is another kind of homology which Mr. Owen calls General Homology, according to which the primary type of a vertebrate animal is merely a series of vertebræ; and all limbs and other appendages are only developements of the parts of one or another of the vertebræ. And in order to express this view, and in proportion as the doctrine has become current amongst 356 anatomists, the parts of vertebræ have been described by terms of a degree of generality which admit of such an interpretation. And here, also, Mr. Owen has proposed a terminology for the parts of the vertebræ, which seems to convey more systematically and comprehensively than those of preceding writers the truths to which they have been tending. Each vertebra is composed of a centrum, neurapophysis, parapophysis, pleurapophysis, hæmaphysis, neural spine and hæmal spine, with certain exogenous parts.
The opinion that the head, as well as the other parts of the frame of vertebrates, is composed of vertebræ, is now generally accepted among philosophical anatomists. In the History (Hist. I. S. b. xvii. c. 7, sect. 1), I have mentioned this opinion as proposed by some writers; and I have stated that Oken, in 1807 published a ‘Program’ On the signification of the bones of the Skull, in which he maintained, that these bones are equivalent to four vertebræ: while Meckel, Spix, and Geoffroy took views somewhat different. Cuvier and Agassiz opposed this doctrine, but Mr. Owen has in his Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton (1848), accepted the views of Oken, and argued at length against the objections of Cuvier, and also those of Mr. Agassiz. As I have noted in the last edition of the History of the Inductive Sciences (b. xvii. c. 7), he gives a Table in which the Bones of the Head are resolved into four vertebræ, which he terms the Occipital, Parietal, Frontal and Nasal Vertebræ respectively: the neural arches of which agree with what Oken called the Ear-vertebra, the Jaw-vertebra, the Eye-vertebra, and the Nose-vertebra.