Latin thrived in Europe as a common language of natural science after the late medieval period. Only when the power of the Roman Catholic Church diminished during the Protestant Reformation did European savants gradually and consciously relinquish Latin as the language of science. Elites everywhere began to favor vernacular languages, beginning with Martin Luther's 1534 German translation of the Old and New Testament: In. 1751 French savant Jean d'Alembert captured the trepidation over a looming Babel in science in his introduction to l'Encyclopedie. D'Alembert worried that a natural philosopher now would need to know seven or eight different languages and so waste a lifetime before ever beginning to learn the natural knowledge expressed in all the writings.
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