This is a project I am thinking of working on in the future.
Is anyone familiar with attempts to codify and create an explicit syntax for reporting science?
E.g. like you would have specific commands and functions in programming, but for science?
I feel like not only the way we write introductions and discussions, but also the methods and results can be very implicit in science.
This format would force you when you report e.g. a correlation to write "We obseved a significant/non-significant (P = ??) correlation (r/rho = ??) between X and Y"
Similarly, it would force you to build specific sentences in the introduction. Something like the book ' Academic phrasebank'
My question is, has there something like that been done before for science, or for human language in different fields where accuracy is needed (e.g. law) ?
Also NOT something like 'Rmarkdown' or LaTeX which just format your text. I'm asking about allowing only explicit phrases to be used that have an exact meaning.
Hi Georgios,
This sounds interesting. As an editor, I have always thought about something like this to make my job easier...or obsolete. There is nothing like this available, that I know of. It would certainly help some researchers or academics that don't have a firm grasp of the English language. But instead of "forcing", I think suggesting sentences or variations would be a better option. The main concerns would be that you end up with a dry/boring manuscript. One can argue that this has already happened with enforced styles by journals/disciplines over time. If you compare a paper from today with one written 100 years ago, you can see a big difference in style.
HI Georgios,
I figger you are not the first to come to this concept.
Propositional calculus is a branch of logic. It is also called propositional logic, statement logic, sentential calculus, sentential logic, or sometimes zeroth-order logic. It deals with propositions (which can be true or false) and argument flow. Compound propositions are formed by connecting propositions by logical connectives. The propositions without logical connectives are called atomic propositions.
Unlike first-order logic, propositional logic does not deal with non-logical objects, predicates about them, or quantifiers. However, all the machinery of propositional logic is included in first-order logic and higher-order logics. In this sense, propositional logic is the foundation of first-order logic and higher-order logic.
[IF MORE] then [GOTO]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propositional_calculus
[AND]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-classical/
[AND]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_language
[END]
Maybe read some of this first to avoid inventing hot water again.
Cheers and Good [LUCK]
The propositional calculus has only sentences (propositions) and complex sentences derived from these by the use of connectives like 'not', 'and', and so on. There are no units like paragraphs, sections, or headings; no figures or tables, no notes, no references, or any of the units that are essential to scientific reports; there's also nothing like the table of contents, chapters, appendices, indexes, and so on that are expected in scientific books.
You might want to experiment with XML (extensible markup language), which in turn is based on SGML (standard generalized markup language); XML allows you to create whatever units you need for a specific purpose. For instance, given my article example, you could create tags for demarcating the component parts of a document consisting of a title, author's names, the body of the article, sections, paragraphs, sentences, subordinate clauses, and so on. You may be able to learn XML from a textbook, although a formal course would give you practice in using it for projects of increasing complexity.
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