著者

山崎 清巳

出版者

久留米工業大学

雑誌

久留米工業大学研究報告 (ISSN:03896897)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.21, pp.71-75, 1997-12-20

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This paper will investigate whether or not the important English terminologies of "species" and "genus" are translated correctly into Japanese. If we don't possess proper Japanese words for these terminologies, then our Japanese-language contributions to related fields will remain severely limited. "Species" and "genus" are very important terminologies in the fields of philosophy and logic. "Species" is included within "genus" according to Aristotlian logic. "Species" comes from "eidos" and "genus" from "genos" of ancient Greek. "Eidos" has "to see" and "genos" has "born and to produce" as etymological meanings. "Eidos" is fitted to "SHU (種)" and "genos" to "RUI (類)" in Japanese. But "SHU" means "seed"; "RUI" means "similar and hard to distinguish between". Therefore, "genos" should be fitted to "ZOKU (属)" in Japanese, because "ZOKU" means "born and blood relation". If we refit "eidos" to "RUI" and "genos" to "ZOKU", then many problems are overcome. For example, "RUI" and "ZOKU" become the verbs "RUIsuru" and "ZOKUsuru", respectively, while "the human species" closely corresponds to "JIN-RUI" etc. And we can find many cases in which "eidos" better corresponds with "RUI" and "genos" with "ZOKU". If we refit "SHU" to "RUI" and "RUI" to "ZOKU", then we can more easily understand "Categories" and "Metaphysics" by Aristotle, or Japanese books such as "ZO WA HANA GA NAGAI" by Mikami, A.