Difference between revisions of "Scientist"
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(Remove tendentious nonsense, even though what's left is a silly tautology. Make it less silly by adding origin of the word.) |
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:As we cannot use ''physician'' for a cultivator of physics, I have referred to him as a ''Physicist.'' | :As we cannot use ''physician'' for a cultivator of physics, I have referred to him as a ''Physicist.'' | ||
:We need very much[sic] a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a ''Scientist.'' Thus we might say that as an Artist is a Musician, Painter, or Poet, a Scientist is a Mathematician, Physicist, or Naturalist.<ref>Whewell, William (1858), ''Novum Organon Renovatum: Being the second part of the philosophy of the inductive sciences,'' J. W. Parker and Son, [http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC22881657&id=xYMKAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA14-PA338&lpg=RA14-PA338&dq=%22william+whewell%22+scientist p. 338]</ref> | :We need very much[sic] a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a ''Scientist.'' Thus we might say that as an Artist is a Musician, Painter, or Poet, a Scientist is a Mathematician, Physicist, or Naturalist.<ref>Whewell, William (1858), ''Novum Organon Renovatum: Being the second part of the philosophy of the inductive sciences,'' J. W. Parker and Son, [http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC22881657&id=xYMKAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA14-PA338&lpg=RA14-PA338&dq=%22william+whewell%22+scientist p. 338]</ref> | ||
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| + | Prior to this, scientists were usually called "natural philosophers" or "natural historians." (The oldest scientific journal in the world, established in 1665, is entitled ''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.'' Among its early numbers are letters from Leeuwenhoek describing his discovery of microorganisms). | ||
==References== | ==References== | ||
<references/> | <references/> | ||
Revision as of 23:59, February 24, 2007
A scientist is a practitioner of science.
The invention of the word scientist is often credited to William Whewell (1794-1866), who was himself a scientist as well as a moral philosopher and Anglican priest. In 1858, he wrote:
- As we cannot use physician for a cultivator of physics, I have referred to him as a Physicist.
- We need very much[sic] a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a Scientist. Thus we might say that as an Artist is a Musician, Painter, or Poet, a Scientist is a Mathematician, Physicist, or Naturalist.[1]
Prior to this, scientists were usually called "natural philosophers" or "natural historians." (The oldest scientific journal in the world, established in 1665, is entitled Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Among its early numbers are letters from Leeuwenhoek describing his discovery of microorganisms).