Conversation

Sep 24, 2020

i continue to have no idea why this is but it’s always been weird to me how much better physicists are than mathematicians at naming things. mathematicians study “riemannian manifolds” or “shimura varieties” or whatever and physicists study “lasers” and “black holes” twitter.com/liminal_warmth

This Tweet is unavailable.

121

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

)

@QiaochuYuan

Sep 24, 2020

i guess it’s kinda cute that mathematicians are so insistent on honoring other mathematicians by naming stuff after them but it gets old after awhile. there’s a lack of imagination to it. very few mathematicians who seriously try to name things good, except like conway

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

)

@QiaochuYuan

Sep 24, 2020

the worst names in any scientific field i’m aware of are probably the ones in anatomy tho. “dorsolateral prefrontal cortex”? “thoracic vertebrae”? fuck off with that nonsense. it’s fucked up gatekeeping to give these high-falutin’ hoity-toity names to stuff everybody has

Anders Sandberg

@anderssandberg

Sep 24, 2020

They are very descriptive Latin. The cingulate gyrus is a ridge that looks like a belt. The fusiform gyrus is spindle-shaped, and the angular gyrus is you guessed it. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - up and to the side really frontal bark. Amygdala is almond shaped.

Anders Sandberg

@anderssandberg

Sep 24, 2020

The mammillary bodies do look like a pair of breasts on the bottom of the brain. Locus coeruleus really is blueish, and substantia nigra is dark. OK, there are some clunkers: zona incerta - I have no clue where it is.

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

)

@QiaochuYuan

Replying to

@anderssandberg

nobody knows latin anymore tho!

7:27 AM · Sep 25, 2020Twitter Web App

Replying to

A surprising number of people do, and even use it for things. la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicipaedi (But, yeah, medical people and lawyers often just learn the the terms rather than the language.)