Scientific Language

Someone might not be familiar with or recall hearing the term hydrosphere, but they can still understand the distinction between water and dry land, recognizing the concept of water-related parts of a planet (the hydrosphere being the totality of a world's rivers, oceans, groundwater, glaciers, and so on).  They might not have heard of or learned a definition of the phrase quantum physics, but they can still understand the concept of a microscopic unit of matter that reduces to smaller subatomic particles, even if they are not aware of how the subatomic world behaves, other than that it would have to be consistent with logical axioms.  A glance at the night sky can show a black canopy dotted with glowing points even if a person had never heard words like outer space, celestial body, and galaxy.

The phrase Joule heating might have never been introduced to them, yet he or she can still have noticed that electrical cords can produce heat.  Science is nothing compared to reason metaphysically or epistemologically, but it is a fool who thinks that familiarity with terminology is what truly means a person grasps scientific concepts or has reflected on their everyday sensory experiences.  Science on this level is before anyone with functioning senses on a daily basis.  Education is accessible only as a social construct; reason and direct experience (though not everything can be directly experienced, not everyone will have access to the same experiences, and much of experience does not have to connect with anything external to the mind anyway) are respectively what grounds knowledge of the truth and what can prompt people to think about scientific matters.

A hypothetical person who has lived away from other people and never created or learned a language could still observe that a detached tree limb falls or that one kind animal feasts in another.  Words like gravity and carnivore are wholly necessary for this.  Language has to be constructed in reference to something that is or can already be known or perceived, or else no one would even have assigned the words to anything.  While scientific concepts can only be known in the sense of what they are, what does or does not logically follow from them, and whether they probabilistically seem to be true (for science proves nothing except that certain natural phenomena appear to be the case), language does not ground any scientific awareness and does not have to be what prompts people to dwell on them.

Not knowing the words for circadian rhythm does not mean a person has not noticed how their body reacts to sunlight on a repeating basis as the day-night cycle passes.  Whether it is because of a sheltered childhood or forgetfulness or some other reason, a person might not have exposure to the arbitrary construct of language, and still they can know the concepts and experiences of these things in accordance with what can truly be known of science through reason as described above.  Melanin, hereditary trends of outward manifestation, symbiosis, phototropism, stalactites, and more can all be thought of, identified with the senses, and grasped as concepts without any sort of linguistic prompting, and language could not possibly be required to encounter the evidence for a given scientific phenomena, see its observed characteristics, or deduce its relationship to the logical axioms that all things are governed by.