Once upon a time classical studies were what a basic education comprised of, and as a result anyone with any sort of education knew a lot more about antiquity (Greek and Roman philosophy, art, languages, etc) than I even want to know. People were a lot more “interdisciplinary.”
The education shift we experienced is because of how much more we have to teach due to new theories and discoveries, as well how much harder it would be to teach “the classics” alongside everything else. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but that shift definitely resulted in a weaker emphasis on the humanities.
This shift in education is easily observable through the change in the way things are named in the science. For example, Magnesium, element 12, discovered in 1618 was named after Magnes in Greek mythology who was killed by Odysseus. On the other hand the naming of elements 104 through 109, discovered during the Cold War, were a lot less sophisticated and a lot more silly. Silly because naming them was a 30 year long controversy over whether or not they should be named after an American or Russian scientist followed by the suffix “ium” (ex. “Lawrencium”). Maybe, had these scientists been better versed in the Classics, naming the elements would have been much easier and more artful.
Biology follows the same trend. Zoologist Carl Linnaeus, often called poetic, created the taxonomic system for classifying life. An example would be”ecdyzoa,” coming from the Greek for “to take off” which is used for animals that shed or molt. The thought put into naming “ecdyzoa” is very different from the thought put into “TaqMan” probe, named after PacMan because it kinda looks like PacMan following an enzyme called “Taq Polymerase.”
While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the way scientific nomenclature has changed over the centuries. I do think it is interesting how the way education has changed over the centuries worked to further polarize the disciplines.