"Eminently readable, really, really good. Somewhat constrained in scope: mostly focusing on chemistry, mostly constrained to major language which are have been significant vehicular languages (doubtless at least a little bit because these are those that Gordin has knowledge of) � which constrains how deep the histories of making science whilst speaking a marginalized native tongue can go.
   Which is to say, I will happily read several thousand more pages in the field.

English has attained its current position owing to a series of historical transformations that it also in turn shaped, exploiting a perception of neutrality that it gained through being distinctly non-neutral in either its British or American guise. There is a circularity to studying language and history together, scrambling our notions of time even in the buttoned-down domain of science. The history of scientific languages ends here, until it no longer does.

  a conversation i actually had, paraphrased:

"cicero invented the latin word for quantity, apparently"
"that is such a cicero thing to do"

"

"This book was so relatable it had me sobbing in my work bathroom. "