The members of the British Royal Society, founded in 1660, dreamed of a plain language, a language that could faithfully describe the natural world and hence the phenomena that constituted the objects of scientific inquiry.  Put differently, they envisioned (and thought it possible to achieve) a language free of valuation, of expression and poetry, of context and rhetoric.  Having identified the experimental method and inductive reasoning as the proper methods to advance knowledge, Thomas Sprat, spokesman for the Society, took special pains to warn experimenters against using expressive language:
 

The ill effects of this superfluity of talking, have already overwhelm'd most other Arts and Professions, insomuch, that . . . I can hardly forbear . . . concluding, that eloquence ought to be banish'd out of all civil Societies, as a thing fatal to Peace and good Manners.  . . .  Who can behold, without indignation, how many mists and uncertainties, these specious Tropes and Figures have brought on our Knowledge? . . .  And, in few words, I dare say; that of all the Studies of men, nothing may be sooner obtain'd, than this vicious abundance of Phrase, this trick of Metaphors, this volubility of Tongue,which makes so great a noise in the world.  But I spend words in vain; for the evil is now so inveterate, that it is hard to know whom to blame, or where to begin to reform.  (Sprat 1667, rpt. 1958, pp. 111-112)

The Royal Society's efforts to codify usage among researchers did not go unnoticed, however.  In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift provided a biting satire of the Royal Society's hopes to create a transparent language.  In the following passage, Swift's hero, Gulliver, describes language experiments he witnessed at the Grand Academy of Lagado:
 

We next went to the School of Languages, where three Professors sat in Consultation upon improving that of their own Country. The first Project was to shorten Discourse by cutting Polysyllables into one, and leaving out Verbs and Participles; because in Reality all things imaginable are but Nouns. The other, was a Scheme for entirely abolishing all Words whatsoever . . . since Words are only Names of Things, it would be more convenient for all Men to carry about them, such Things as were necessary to express the particular Business they are to discourse on . . . . [M]any of the most Learned and Wise adhere to the new Scheme of expressing themselves by Things; which hath only this Inconvenience attending it; that if a Manís Business be very great, and of various Kinds, he must be obliged in Proportion to carry a greater Bundle of Things upon his back unless he can afford one or two strong Servants to attend him.  I have often beheld two of those Sages almost sinking under the Weight of their Packs . . . who when they met in the Streets, would lay down their Loads, open their Sacks, and hold conversation for an Hour together (Swift 1726; rpt. 1970, pp. 155-158).

Believing the value of language to reside solely its ability to mirror the object world, the Professors of Lagado saw no reason to continue using language at all, since things must surely be more trustworthy than the words used to describe them.

 The Royal Society's wish to confine words to their strictly referential function, we hold, remains very much with us today and, in fact, can be found in the admonitions of those writing about research in education and the social sciences, and, more generally, in the prescriptions of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (4th Edition, 1994, hereafter referred to as the APA Manual).  Our purpose in this paper is to show, first, that the current dispute among various research perspectives in education has parallels in both the near and distant past and, second, with respect to how findings are reported by researchers in education and the human sciences, the style in which a research article is written sends a clear message regarding what is to be considered legitimate epistemology.