The Language of Science

How the words we use have evolved over the past 175 years

Annotated data visualization of the most popular words used in Scientific American, from 1845 through 2020.

Moritz Stefaner and Christian Lässer

The most popular words used in the pages of Scientific American displayed by frequency, from 1845 through 2020

Moritz Stefaner and Christian Lässer

Since at least the 17th century, science has struggled with words. Francis Bacon, visionary of a new, experimental natural philosophy, called language an “idol of the marketplace”: a counterfeit currency we trade in so habitually that we no longer notice the gap between words and the world. True to its Baconian ideology, the Royal Society of London, one of the world's oldest scientific societies, made nullius in verba (roughly, “on no one's word”) its motto soon after it was established in 1660. Satirist Jonathan Swift parodied the Royal Society's suspicion of language in Gulliver's Travels, published in 1726: instead of conversing, some members of the Academy of Lagado carry around a sack of things that they exchange instead of words. Science aspired to show, not tell.

Yet science has never been speechless. Scientific journals also began in the 17th century, and since then, science has been all about communication—first and foremost between scientists and other scientists, but also with a broader public fascinated by the latest discoveries, inventions and speculations about fossils, electricity, atoms, computers, genes and galaxies. How to communicate about the world in words? Into the crack between words and things sprang images: woodcuts, engravings, lithographs, photographs, diagrams, graphics of all kinds. Modern science is ingeniously, intrinsically and extravagantly visual. No wonder “see” is a word whose popularity spans all 175 years of writing about science and technology in Scientific American.


On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.


It is entirely in keeping with the visual spirit of scientific communication that the very words used in all 5,107 issues of Scientific American since 1845 should be turned into an image. Like the patterns in marbled paper, the word frequencies undulate, soaring and plunging as a function of time to track the way science talked about itself to itself. Epistemic virtues (which are to knowledge what moral virtues are to goodness) such as “certainty,” flanked by its boon companions “universal,” “rational” and “truth,” spiked in the middle decades of the 19th century, whereas clusters such as “imagination,” “intuition,” “conjecture” and “interpret” peaked suggestively between the 1950s and the 1970s. After World War II, when the most prominent scientists of the day—Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Linus Pauling—reflected on the wider significance of their science for a nonspecialist audience, values and assumptions taken for granted in research journals came out into the open in the pages of Scientific American.

Just as revealing as the jagged peaks and troughs are the trajectories of words that have persisted over time: “average,” “exception,” “cause,” “experiment,” “observation,” “standard,” “skill” and, yes, “see.” Instead of the Alps, these word landscapes resemble gently rolling hills: they have their ups and downs, but for the most part they are as steady as the horizon. They represent the enduring practices of science that survive revolutions in theories and even shifts in epistemic virtues.

Scientific images are multipurpose tools: they represent things, relationships, even arguments. But just as a map does not duplicate the territory it represents, words do not mirror the world in every detail. Although the relative frequencies of words used are highly suggestive, they cannot convey the texture of the magazine issue by issue. A reader nowadays might wonder: Where are the women? Why are some fields of research missing? Who paid for science back then? No image can tell the whole story, if only because the story that interests us changes over time. When images do succeed, they enlist sight in the cause of insight—in this case, a rippling physiognomy of 175 years of science for the curious public. —L.D.

Line charts depicting print frequency of the words “certainty,” “interpret” and “see” in Scientific American over time.

Moritz Stefaner and Christian Lässer

The relative frequency of revealing and interesting terms in Scientific American, from 1845 to the present.

Moritz Stefaner and Christian Lässer

175 Scientific American word-of-the-year frequency line charts, paired with an annotated character-count timeline.

Moritz Stefaner and Christian Lässer (graphics), and Jen Christiansen (captions)

To learn more about how the data were collected, analyzed and visualized, see “How to Turn 175 Years of Words in Scientific American into an Image.” To search for your own favorite words and to explore other juxtapositions, visit “Explore 175 Years of Words in Scientific American.”

Moritz Stefaner, based in Germany, is an independent designer and consultant with a background in cognitive science and interface design. His work balances analytical and aesthetic aspects in mapping complex phenomena to support data–driven decision-making.

More by Moritz Stefaner

Lorraine Daston is a director emerita at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Her current projects include work on the meaning of modernity in the history of science and on the relation between moral and natural orders. She is author of several books, including Objectivity (Zone Books, 2007), co-written with Peter Galison, which is about how objectivity became the cardinal epistemic virtue in science.

More by Lorraine Daston

Jen Christiansen is author of the book Building Science Graphics: An Illustrated Guide to Communicating Science through Diagrams and Visualizations (CRC Press) and senior graphics editor at Scientific American, where she art directs and produces illustrated explanatory diagrams and data visualizations. In 1996 she began her publishing career in New York City at Scientific American. Subsequently she moved to Washington, D.C., to join the staff of National Geographic (first as an assistant art director–researcher hybrid and then as a designer), spent four years as a freelance science communicator and returned to Scientific American in 2007. Christiansen presents and writes on topics ranging from reconciling her love for art and science to her quest to learn more about the pulsar chart on the cover of Joy Division's album Unknown Pleasures. She holds a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a B.A. in geology and studio art from Smith College. Follow Christiansen on Bluesky @jenchristiansen.com

More by Jen Christiansen
Scientific American Magazine Vol 323 Issue 3This article was originally published with the title “The Language of Science” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 323 No. 3 (), p. 26
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0920-26