"Review of 'On the Connexion of the Physical Science'", in The Quarterly Review.

Whewell, William. First appearance in print of the word "Scientist"

Edité par London, published by John Murray, 1834

A propos de cet article

Whewell, William. "Review of 'On the Connexion of the Physical Science'", in The Quarterly Review, volume 51, pp. 54 68, 1834. London, published by John Murray; 8vo, (ii), 544pp. Bound in cloth-backed boards (which I am pretty sure are contemporary to the publication date). The title page and the last sheet are browned, otherwise this is a VERY GOOD copy of this work. [++] The Reverend Dr. William Whewell (1794-1866) was an extraordinarily gifted scholar, with interests spread everywhere. He was Master of Trinity College (Cambridge), and worked across many disciplines, a 19th c polymath's polymath along the lines of Young, Marey, Hermann von Helmholtz, and Jevons: he translated Goethe, wrote poetry, was a geologist and mineralogist, and published in the fields of economics, history of science, theology, and philosophy. [++] One great contribution by him was made anonymously in this volume of the Review in a book review of Mary Somerville's "On the Connexion."--it was the suggestion of the word "scientist" to describe those people doing new work in the older fields of "natural philosophy" and associated. Whewell read a paper at the third annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science the year before, in 1833, in response to something written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, suggesting the adoption of his word, "scientist", though the paper was not published by the association. "Scientist" famously first appears in print in this volume of the "Review", where Whewell writes: "Science.loses all traces of unity. A curious illustration of this result may be observed in the want of any name by which we can designate the students of the knowledge of the material world collectively. We are informed that this difficulty was felt very oppressively by the members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at their meetings.in the last three summers. Philosophers was felt to be too wide and too lofty a term,.; savans was rather assuming,.; some ingenious gentleman proposed that, by analogy with artist, they might form scientist, and added that there could be no scruple in making free with this termination when we have such words as sciolist, economist, and atheist but this was not generally palatable."--Quarterly Review, volume 51, page 59, via the Oxford English Dictionary [++] I'm not sure how widely the term was used in its first few years the matter of naming still seemed to be lively as we can see in Whewell's 1840 statement in his book W. Whewell Philos. Inductive Sci. I. Introd. p. cxiii,   "We need very much 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." In any event, Whewell suggested and coined the word "scientist", and this is its glorious first appearance in print.

N° de réf. du vendeur ABE-1616856627698

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: "Review of 'On the Connexion of the Physical Science'", in The Quarterly Review.
• Éditeur: London, published by John Murray
• Date de parution: 1834
• Reliure: Hardcover
• État de l'article: Very Good
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • Chemistry
  • History of Science
  • Physics