On the Term "Scientist"

August 17, 2014 timothywstanley@me.com

In response, Nature’s editor, Sir Richard Gregory... solicited opinions from linguists and scientific researchers about whether Nature should use 'scientist.' The word received more support in 1924 than it had thirty years earlier. Many researchers wrote in to say that 'scientist' was a normal and useful word that was now ensconced in the English lexicon, and that Nature should use it. However, many researchers still rejected 'scientist.' Sir D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, a zoologist, argued that 'scientist' was a tainted term used 'by people who have no great respect either for science or the "scientist.”' The eminent naturalist E. Ray Lankester protested that any 'Barney Bunkum' might be able to lay claim to such a vague title. 'I think we must be content to be anatomists, zoologists, geologists, electricians, engineers, mathematicians, naturalists,' he argued. ‘"Scientist" has acquired—perhaps unjustly—the significance of a charlatan’s device.'

"The History of 'Scientist,'" The Renaissance Mathematicus - http://wp.me/py7Pg-Bv