Philosophy used to be the general designation assigned to anyone who thought alot. This was before science and the delineation of disciplines of thought. Physi

Philosophy used to be the general designation assigned to anyone who thought alot. This was before science and the delineation of disciplines of thought. Physicists used to be known as natural philosophers. As the conceptual tools and frameworks they used became so refined and distant from the sort of thinking people normally do that the intelligent layman couldn't contribute, it became clear the activity of the natural philosophers was not just philosophizing, it was doing physics. Thus the physicist was born. Basically any time a field develops, in that a specific set of related questions is identified and pursued, the devotees to the field become identified with the field. Biologists, linguists, psychologists, physicists, chemists... They are all essentially philosophers, all thinking critically about problems that concern them, but we want to be precise with our language so we develop more specific words to describe them and their actions.