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The word does indeed seem to be attributable to Whewell, with the OED attributing the first printed use of the word to an 1834 article by Whewell in the Quarter

The word does indeed seem to be attributable to Whewell, with the OED attributing the first printed use of the word to an 1834 article by Whewell in the Quarterly Review, in which the discussion you allude to regarding "philosophy" being too broad of a term, appears on page 59. However, you seem to have neglected to mention that this 1934 article by Whewell was a review of Mary Somerville's book (On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences). The full text of Whewell's 1834 article appears to be available [1] from a University of Kent blog post on the topic [2] [1] https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/sciencecomma/files/2015/04/whewell_1834_scientist.pdf https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/sciencecomma/files/2015/04/whewell_... [2] https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/sciencecomma/2015/04/09/whewell-and-the-coining-of-scientist-in-the-quarterly-review/ https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/sciencecomma/2015/04/09/whewell-and...

disown 6y ago
> The word does indeed seem to be attributable to Whewell I know. I said whewell coined the term. But as I noted, Laura Synder said that the term was coined by Whewell in 1833 in response to coleridge. The point was that whewell coined the term to differentiate "scientist" from "natural philosopher", not for mary somerville.
- cbkeller 6y ago
  I know. The point is that you seem to have left out some rather relevant context. If that was an accident, no problem. Some of your other comments in this thread indicate that it may be a good idea for you to review the hn guidelines > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - Arnavion 6y ago
    >The point is that you seem to have left out some rather relevant context. FYI user disown is not using the 1834 article as their source. They're disagreeing that the 1834 article was when Whewell coined the word.
    - cbkeller 6y ago
      I suppose it depends whether we want to give more weight to the first use in conversation (1833 or before), or the first use in writing (the 1834 article). The context of the first use in writing is relevant in either case.
      - dwohnitmok 6y ago
        To be fair the context of the first writing in 1834 is to directly reference its use in conversation in 1833.
        Arnavion 6y ago
        Not to mention the whole crux of this discussion was whether he coined the word for Somerville or not. If he had coined the word in 1833 because Coleridge complained about what they called themselves, then presumably it was unrelated to Somerville.
        cbkeller 6y ago
        Well, this is where it seems to get complicated. There is an 1831 letter from Whewell to Somervilles' father, asking him to thank her for the advance copy of her book which she apparently sent him, and also on behalf of the Philosophical Society for the copy she sent them [1] -- so they would have at the very least been aware of her and her book by the time of the 1833 discussion. It is definitely not clear to me that the assertion in the article is correct, but one thing they do appear to be correct about is that "man of science" appears to have attained substantial currency (or indeed dominance) as an alternative to "natural philosopher" by 1830 [2,3]. Why not keep using that? Perhaps just because it is unwieldy? On the other hand, this was 1830 -- people were not so adverse to verbosity back then. In any case, the deeper questions of why the profession was thought to need a noun at all, and of Whewell's internal motivations, seem to me still rather unanswered. [1] https://archive.org/details/b21960239/page/170/mode/2up?q=whewell https://archive.org/details/b21960239/page/170/mode/2up?q=wh... [2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whewell/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whewell/ [3] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=man+of+science%2Cnatural+philosopher&year_start=1700&year_end=2019 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=man+of+science...

disown 6y ago

> The word does indeed seem to be attributable to Whewell I know. I said whewell coined the term. But as I noted, Laura Synder said that the term was coined by Whewell in 1833 in response to coleridge. The point was that whewell coined the term to differentiate "scientist" from "natural philosopher", not for mary somerville.

cbkeller 6y ago
I know. The point is that you seem to have left out some rather relevant context. If that was an accident, no problem. Some of your other comments in this thread indicate that it may be a good idea for you to review the hn guidelines > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Arnavion 6y ago
  >The point is that you seem to have left out some rather relevant context. FYI user disown is not using the 1834 article as their source. They're disagreeing that the 1834 article was when Whewell coined the word.
  - cbkeller 6y ago
    I suppose it depends whether we want to give more weight to the first use in conversation (1833 or before), or the first use in writing (the 1834 article). The context of the first use in writing is relevant in either case.
    - dwohnitmok 6y ago
      To be fair the context of the first writing in 1834 is to directly reference its use in conversation in 1833.
      - Arnavion 6y ago
        Not to mention the whole crux of this discussion was whether he coined the word for Somerville or not. If he had coined the word in 1833 because Coleridge complained about what they called themselves, then presumably it was unrelated to Somerville.
        cbkeller 6y ago
        Well, this is where it seems to get complicated. There is an 1831 letter from Whewell to Somervilles' father, asking him to thank her for the advance copy of her book which she apparently sent him, and also on behalf of the Philosophical Society for the copy she sent them [1] -- so they would have at the very least been aware of her and her book by the time of the 1833 discussion. It is definitely not clear to me that the assertion in the article is correct, but one thing they do appear to be correct about is that "man of science" appears to have attained substantial currency (or indeed dominance) as an alternative to "natural philosopher" by 1830 [2,3]. Why not keep using that? Perhaps just because it is unwieldy? On the other hand, this was 1830 -- people were not so adverse to verbosity back then. In any case, the deeper questions of why the profession was thought to need a noun at all, and of Whewell's internal motivations, seem to me still rather unanswered. [1] https://archive.org/details/b21960239/page/170/mode/2up?q=whewell https://archive.org/details/b21960239/page/170/mode/2up?q=wh... [2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whewell/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whewell/ [3] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=man+of+science%2Cnatural+philosopher&year_start=1700&year_end=2019 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=man+of+science...