On 29/9/2006,  Jann O'Connor wrote:

I have just returned from the Agrifoods Industry Skills Council conference in Melbourne.  

One of the speakers had a slide on the comparison of production of cotton, wool, artificial fibres and synthetics over two time periods.  At the time I asked my colleague (BAg) what the difference was with regard to artificial and synthetic fibres.  She said "I was about to ask you!).  As the question was not relevant to the presentation - just my need to know - I did not ask him during questions time.  I thought I could catch up with him last night at the conference dinner of today - but he disappeared.

I have tried the ABARE website (when his numbers came from) without finding out the answer.

Can anyone help?

Peter Macinnis replied:

It may be instructive to Google these three words: awful, artificial and amusing, perhaps with the word Wren or cathedral thrown in.

Follow the leads and you will discover an amusing tale that is probably apocryphal, but which underlines the way words change.  It was either one of the Stuart kings or Queen Anne, or maybe nobody . . . but artificial ain't what it used to be.

I suspect that rayon, which I think is not assembled from sub-units in a vat in quite the same way as polymers, is one that was called artificial, while polymers are synthetic -- but I would suggest that to all intents and purposes, the words mean the same thing today, even if they were once differentiated.

Words change their senses, as William Caxton noted:

"And also my lorde abbot of westmynster ded do shewe to me late certayn euydences wryton in olde englysshe for to reduce it in to our englysshe now vsid.  And certaynly it was wreton in suche a wyse that it was more lyke to dutche than englysshe I coude not reduce ne brynge it to be vnterstonden.  And certaynly our langage now vsed varyeth ferre from that. whiche was vsed and spoken when I was borne.  For we englysshe men ben borne vnder the domynacyon of the mone, whiche is neuer stedfaste but euer wauerynge wexynge one season and waneth & dycreaseth another season.  And that comyn englysshe that is spoken in one shyre varyth from a nother. In so moche that in my dayes happened that certayn marchauntes were in a shippe in tamyse for to haue sayled ouer the see into zelande and for lacke of wynde thei taryed atte forlond and wente to lande to refreshe them.  And one of theym named sheffelde a mercer cam into an hows and axed fore mete, and specyally he axyd after eggys And the good wyf answerde that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry, for he also coude speke no frenshe, but wold haue hadde egges and she vnterstode hym not.  And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde haue eyren then the good wyf sayd that she vnderstod hym wel.  Loo what sholde a man in thyse days now wryte, egges or eyren certaynly it is harde to playse euery man by cause of dyuersite & chaunge of langage."


He who wold vse 'eyren' in my presence shall have from me a standing ovation.  He shall be stood against a wall and pelted with eggys and regret that he did not vnterstand that I hath chaunged the mening.



Alan Emmerson added:

Gracious me! Does no one have a dictionary.

Artificial means made by art, that is, man-made as distinct from natural. . Synthetic means assembled from its component parts. Imitation means having the appearance of.

Artificial means made by art, that is, man-made as distinct from  natural. . Synthetic
means assembled from its component parts.
Imitation means having the appearance of.

Alan Emmerson replied:

My point in chiming in to this thread was that the threaders are making a false distinction. I should have been more explicit.

Put another way, the categories are not mutually exclusive. Look at the antonyms. Imitation,real.  Artificial, natural. Synthesised, decomposed.

.I suppose the current difficulty boils down to whether the etymology of "synthetic", as distinct from "synthesis" is justifiably taken to encompass " exclusively man-made." I say I don't think so. For example, we say natural carbohydrates are synthesised by plants. In consequence:

Something can be at the one time imitation and artificial and synthetic. For example, imitation silk made by man from petrochemicals.

Silk made by an animal other than Bombyx mori would be synthetic, might be called imitation but would not be not artificial. Artificial diamonds are synthesised from graphite. So are natural diamonds. Imitation diamonds might be synthesised from silicon dioxide. Artificial spinel is synthetic and identical to natural spinel. A particular sample of spinel may be either artificial or natural, whereas spinel in general is both artificial and natural. Artificial carbohydrates are made by man's decomposition of natural carbohydrates .Graphite fibre is artificial and made by decomposition of natural fibre. And so on.


Alan Emmerson replied:

True., dictionaries do change slowly. In the 1970s the Pocket OED used to have the word engineer only as a verb. But each is intended as an authoritative guide to more effective use of the language and as an instrument of self teaching. .

However, feigned or assumed as a fourth meaning for artificial is in both of my 30 year old dictionaries. It may mean false as opposed to real, or affected as opposed to sincere. Perhaps a better , enveloping, meaning would be "not natural". As in artificial insemination.

There's a nice distinction isn't there between in hand, in train and under way or, God spare us, "on the radar". I can still see the press conference which spawned that doozie.


Alan Emmerson responded:

Of course the jewellery industry generally calls man made stones synthetic - because they generally are. What's more, many of the synthesised crystals do not occur naturally.

However, my text book on mineralogy ( Pearl R.M,. Rocks and Minerals, Barnes and Noble, NY 1956) freely uses the terms natural, man made, artificial, and synthetic together while maintaining a full distinction of meaning.
Eg " Mullite has long been produced artificially by heating sillimanite ..." and "Fluorescent minerals are synthesised for use in television screens and lighting tubes ..." It draws attention to synthetic crystals that can't be called artificial something because the crystal does not occur naturally. Rochelle salts was perhaps the first being itself replaced by ammonium dihdrogen phosphate. Consider also the pigments Artificial ultramarine , artificial crocoite and artificial greenockite have been synthesised for many years..

Let us have no straw men. If you read carefully what I said, and read it in context, you will see I did not suggest quartz was marketed as imitation diamond let alone as a credible imitation. I could as well have said Titania. The point was that an imitation could be synthetic. I might add that I have in my hand a 9 carat diamond and there are several more in the drawer it came from, but they are unrecognisable as such.


Toby Fiander answered:

Alan said (and accused of contextual error, I quote in full):

However, my text book on mineralogy ( Pearl R.M,. Rocks and Minerals, Barnes and
Noble, NY 1956)   freely uses the terms natural, man made, artificial, and synthetic
together while maintaining a full distinction of meaning.
Eg " Mullite has long been produced artificially by heating sillimanite ..."  and
"Fluorescent minerals are synthesised for use in television screens  and lighting
tubes ..."    It draws attention to synthetic crystals that can't be called artificial
something because the crystal does not occur naturally.  Rochelle salts was perhaps
the first  being itself replaced by ammonium dihdrogen phosphate. Consider also the
pigments  Artificial ultramarine , artificial crocoite and artificial greenockite
have been synthesised for many years..

Let us have no straw men.  If you read carefully what I said, and read it in context,
you will see I did not suggest quartz was marketed as imitation diamond let alone as a
credible imitation. I could as well have said  Titania.  The point was that an
imitation could be synthetic.  I might add that I have in my hand a 9 carat diamond
and there are several more in the drawer it came from, but they are unrecognisable as
such.

If you use out of date references prepared in another country by a mineralogist, you will probably have odd use of the kind you proposed, which, by the way, is different from your reference.

What you said originally was this:

Artificial diamonds are synthesised from graphite. So are natural diamonds.

This is not the usage your reference proposes and it is not the current usage in the Australian jewellery industry - see references below.

 Imitation diamonds might be synthesised from silicon dioxide.

Perhaps they might be, but in the jewellery industry "imitation diamonds" is not common usage.  In industrial sphere there is no point in having a silicon dioxide mineral, diamonds are used for hardness.  What is more, the idea that silicon dioxide would be used as an imitation for diamond in the context is a bit silly, as I said previously, and not even those in the markets do that sort of thing, as a rule.

 Artificial spinel is synthetic and identical to natural spinel.

Yes, but they are not identical - almost any gemmologist, even a student, is likely to be able to pick the difference between synthetic spinel and the naturally occurring stuff.

 A particular sample of spinel may be either artificial or natural,
whereas spinel in general  is both artificial and natural.

I am not sure what distinction you are making, but the correct modern Australian usage in the jewellery industry is "synthetic spinel".

Indeed, what you quote sounds to anyone working in gemmology today abrasive and incorrect.

If you were to look at the course notes on synthetic stones (the update) provided by the Gemmological Association of Australia, the body who has for decades provided the training in gemstones in Australia, you will see the usage I describe, but nothing of the kind you have used, in any context.

Likewise, if you were to read any of the recent copies of the Australian Gemmologist, an internationally known publication edited by Graeme Brown for the GAA, you will not find the usage you have proposed.

It is not a case of straw men.  But it may be another case of why using old dictionaries is dangerous.  I pulled a couple of references off the shelf. PG Read's Dictionary of Gemmology which was first published in 1982 does not refer to the usage you made or quoted.  BTW, the spelling tells me it is an Australian reference.  Perhaps Pearls book it could be a case of mineralogists speaking to other mineralogists and not to those in the jewellery industry.

My point in chiming in to this thread was that the threaders are making a
false distinction. I should have been more explicit.

Perhaps, but that may be the point.  The words, synthetic and artificial, are used differently in different contexts - there is no blanket distinction.

The thread asked for advice in terms of fabric, I think, based on what was summarised from ABARE without any reference to which materials were included in which categories.  Jann's original post noted that the usage of the words synthetic and artificial in this context does not fit with modern usage of the terms, nor with the usage in the jewellery industry in Australia.  She was correct to do so.

Australian usage in the Australian jewellery industry is not as you have described it - nor internationally to the extent I have had contact with it. But you may like to read of Raumora synthetic rubies - these are some of the world's best and have been doped so that they can be more easily distinguished from the naturally occurring product.

The site below speaks of cultured ruby and created alexandrite made by the JO Crystal Company.  I met Judith Osmer who has recently retired from the company she founded when she was in Australia:
http://www.ramaura.com/

Probably more importantly for a fellow admirer of beautiful stones, I have handled both cut and uncut synthetic rubies, alexandrites and emeralds from this source.  It was a rewarding experience.  Osmer did not personally make the emeralds.  No one would want a bad case of beryllicosis, she said.

I have not handled uncut diamonds of 9carat weight, as you have.  I have handled a few stones that the cutter lecturing me had worked on and seen his photographs.  Several women of my acquaintance have worn diamonds on multiple carat weight - they are mostly pretty ugly, I reckon... the stones, not the... no, never mind:  forget I spoke.

Alan, the Queensland Division of the GAA would probably welcome someone with the interest and enthusiasm for the subject you obviously have:
http://www.gem.org.au/contactqld.htm

I am no longer a member, but I was for several years, and Jann is still the secretary of the national education committee or whatever it is called. That is close enough for me, these days.