The individual will need some way to record their observations to do science, some sort of a database. This probably involves something with characteristics of a language even if it’s just to communicate their observations accurately to themself in the future, or just organise their observations so that they’re amenable to analysis and testing new hypotheses.
I guess you could do some rudimentary science with non-language/non-abstract recording, like marking a single subjects height height on a wall, or putting sticks in the ground to mark sunrise and sunsets across the year or collecting stuffed animals. But eventually you’ll want to record more complex data and do more complex analysis, or get so many specimens that you’d need an abstraction like labels and a card index or something.
The individual doesn’t need language tho. He can use subtler stuff. A society needs language to do science. That’s a huge difference.
The individual will need some way to record their observations to do science, some sort of a database. This probably involves something with characteristics of a language even if it’s just to communicate their observations accurately to themself in the future, or just organise their observations so that they’re amenable to analysis and testing new hypotheses.
I guess you could do some rudimentary science with non-language/non-abstract recording, like marking a single subjects height height on a wall, or putting sticks in the ground to mark sunrise and sunsets across the year or collecting stuffed animals. But eventually you’ll want to record more complex data and do more complex analysis, or get so many specimens that you’d need an abstraction like labels and a card index or something.
Society uses maths to do science wherever possible; “the language with which god has written the universe”.