The impossibility of isolating nomenclature from science and science from
nomenclature is due to the fact that all physical science is necessarily formed
of three things: the series of facts that constitute the science; the ideas
that recall them; the words that express them. The word must give birth to the
idea; the idea must paint the fact: these are three imprints of the same seal;
and, as it is words that conserve ideas and transmit them, it follows that
language cannot be perfected without perfecting science, nor science without
language, and that, however certain the facts, however just the ideas that they
may engender, they still would transmit nothing but false impressions, if we
did not have exact expressions with which to render them.
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