Editing Simon Stevin (section)

=== Philosophy of science ===
Stevin's aim was to bring about a second age of [[wisdom]], in which mankind would have recovered all of its earlier knowledge. He deduced that the language spoken in this age would have to be Dutch, because, as he showed [[empirical]]ly, in that language, more concepts could be indicated with [[monosyllabic]] words than in any of the (European) languages he had compared it with.<ref name=EB1911/> This was one of the reasons why he wrote all of his works in Dutch and left the translation of them for others to do. The other reason was that he wanted his works to be practically useful to people who had not mastered the common scientific language of the time, Latin. Thanks to Simon Stevin the [[Dutch language]] got its proper scientific vocabulary such as "[[:nl:wiskunde|wiskunde]]" (''"kunst van het gewisse of zekere"'' the art of what is known or what is certain) for [[mathematics]], "[[:nl:natuurkunde|natuurkunde]]" (the "art of nature") for [[physics]], "[[:nl:scheikunde|scheikunde]]" (the "art of separation") for [[chemistry]], "[[:nl:sterrenkunde|sterrenkunde]]" (the "art of stars") for [[astronomy]], "[[:nl:meetkunde|meetkunde]]" (the "art of measuring") for [[geometry]].