Science integrates the results of diversified experiences and
expresses the perceived human need to maintain a coherent
perspective of the whole. As a reaction to the establishment of
a permanent and universal language embodied in the practice of
literacy, partial languages of scientific focus emerged. Those
who knew from their own self-constitution in scientific practice
that global coherence, as preserved in language, and specialized
knowledge conflict, gave up the effort to harmonize the general
framework (of language) and the specialized perspective (of
science). The understanding that the language of science is not
simply a descriptive device, but a constitutive element of
scientific practical experience, did not come easy, especially
since language kept human awareness of space and time captive to
its mechanism of representation. Seemingly, it was less
difficult to notice how measuring some phenomena (especially in
physics) changed the system observed than to understand how a
scientific hypothesis expressed in language created a framework
of subjective science. The subjectivity of the language
description corresponds to a particular practical experience
involving identification through language.
Particular developments in science are not identical in all
scientific branches. Astronomy and geometry evolved differently
from each other and from other sciences. As a result of the
inherent dynamics of conflict between means and goals of
sciences, a phase of liberation from language started. Once
language itself reached its limits in literacy, in respect to
the efficiency of the new human experiences that the current
scale of humankind brought about, new languages were needed.
Breaking the language barrier, with implicit emancipation from
literacy, is a practical experience in itself. In this
experience, two aspects of language come under scrutiny: the
epistemological and the communicational. In the epistemological
status, we evaluate how language is a medium for embodying
science and shaping the perspective of scientific inquiry. The
communicational status refers to language as a medium for sharing
knowledge. The levels of problem formulation, of solutions, of
interpretation, of experiment and validation, and of
communication are quite different. They will continue to
differentiate even more in order to be efficient. The
rationality intrinsic to this new science is no longer reducible
to finding the logos in things and phenomena, or to instill a
logos into techné. This is why the legacy of Francis Bacon-the
prophetic theoretician of experimental science-as well as of
Descartes-whose rules for understanding dominated the literate
phase of humankind's scientific practical experience-literally
cease to be relevant once we move from language to languages,
from literacy to illiteracy.