Ross 1964 Scientist The Story of A Word

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Scientist: The story of a word

Sydney Rossa
a
Rensselaer Povtechnic Institute, Troy, New York
To cite this Article Ross, Sydney(1962) 'Scientist: The story of a word', Annals of Science, 18: 2, 65 — 85
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A N N A L S OF SCIENCE
A QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY SINCE THE RENAISSANCE
VOL. 18 June, 1962 No. 2

(Published April, 1964)
SCIENTIST: T H E STORY OF A WORD

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By SYDNEY ROSS, B.Sc., Ph.D. *
[PLATES III-V]
This is a question of words and names.

I know the strife it brings.
Kipling, Gallio' s Song
TH~ appellation scientist is considered a title of honour, hotly contended

for by economists, engineers, physicians, psychologists, and others. The
word itself is widely believed to have been classical for centuries ; yet it
is actually of recent origin and had a hard fight to establish itself against a
number of competitors. The argument, which is now an old and forgotten
controversy, was chiefly about its etymology ; but the history of a word
is never solely a matter of etymology : the need for a new word is socially
determined, right at the start, and auy subsequent changes of denotation,
as well as the cluster of connotations surrounding it, are also in response to
demands from society. The word cannot be isolated from its historical
background; indeed some key words offer a concise and suggestive
clue to the historian or sociologist.
The present account of the history of the word scientist is not simply
an excursion into philology, though philology necessarily has a prominent
part in the story. When an appellation is accepted or rejected as the
designation of a group of people, ostensible reasons for and against may
be based on philology, but the motives, which are not usually admitted
consciously, are dictated by quite another consideration, namely, the
image t h a t the word provokes. To the historian of science the present
story is significant because it marks in a dramatic way the transition of
the cultivation of science from the hands of the amateur to those of the
professional. The designation scientist, with its overtones of specialism
* Professor of Colloid Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York.
Ann. of Sci.--.-Vol, 18: No. 2. F.
66 Sydney Ross on
and professionalism (cf. dentist, pediatrist, etc.) was not in accord with
the persona that the gifted amateur had of himself and his scientific
pursuits ; his ideal was that of a man liberally educated, whose avocation
was science as an intellectual cum philanthropic recreation, to which he
might indeed devote most of his time without ever surrendering his claim
to be a private gentleman of wide culture. In particular, to be thought
of as pursuing science for money was distasteful. Even men like Davy
and Faraday, who actually earned their livelihoods by the practice of
science, were so imbued by this attitude as to reject opportunities of
enriching themselves by patenting or otherwise restricting the publication
of their inventions. The genuine amateurs and the actual professionals,

who still maintained the same ideals as the amateurs, chose science for
its own sake and regarded themselves as benefactors of mankind ; they
scorned
To heap the shrine of luxury and pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.
They did in fact use similar lofty expressions in describing their ideals.
To them the word scientist implied making a business of science ; it
degraded their labours of love to a drudgery for profits or salary.
The old ideals died hard, but they could not survive the educational
reforms that placed technical education on the same footing as education
for the learned professions of medicine, law, and theology. To the
student preparing for a career, science was now presented merely as
another alternative profession ; and the word scientist carried no less
desirable connotations than did physician, lawyer, or clergyman.
I. Evolution of Science
By way of introduction to our story of scientist we should glance at
the words science and scientific. Science entered the English language in
the Middle Ages as a French importation synonymous with knowledge.
It sool~ gained the connotation of accurate and systematized knowledge,
by a semantic infection fl'om the technical meaning that the earliest
Latin translators of Aristotle had conferred on the adjective scientificus.
This latter word was understood by the Schoolmen in terms of the
Aristotelian theory of knowledge. One had ' scientific knowledge' when
h ~. had arrived at it demonstratively, t h a t is, by a syllogism t h a t started
from necessary first principles grasped by pure reason or intuition (vog~).
In the temporal order of acquisition these principles are attained by
induction from experience; the demonstrative syllogism t h a t follows
is then an exercise of deductive logic. Demonstration is not to be under-
stood as we might today, i.e., by experiment, but, in the same sense as
the quod err~t demonstrandum of Euclid.
Scientist : The Story of a Word 67
The adjective scientific means ' pertaining to science, ' but its etymo-
logical meaning is ' productive of science. ' This peculiarity has been
traced (see the O.E.D. under scientific) to a phrase in Aristotle's Posterior
Analytics, I, ii (71b), where it is said that when certain conditions are met
a syllogism will be demonstrative ' for it will produce knowledge ' ; such
a syllogism was called by the translator (supposed to be Boethius, 6th
century) ' syllogismum epistemonicon, id est facientem scire ' ; and later
in the text, remembering the phrase, he translated a~ ~marV/~ow~a~
&rroSd~e~ by ' scientificae demonstrationes.' This looks as if the Greek
adjective dmar~//zowKd~(pertaining to knowledge ; reed. Latin scientialis)
when it refers to demonstrable knowledge should be translated by scienti-

ficus. Subsequent commentators of Aristotle, and translators of other
works by the same author, were perhaps glad to receive a term that
pointed out the Aristotelian distinction between demonstrable knowledge
and intuitive knowledge, and for this benefit chose to disregard the literal
interpretation of their text, which they should have rendered by scientialis,
in favour of the freer but more significant rendering, scientificus, which
thus in a single word conveyed Aristotle's idea of the type of certain
knowledge arising from demonstrable proof. Or perhaps they did not
think of any of this but slavishly reiterated Boethius's term without
being aware t h a t it would be inappropriate in other contexts. At all
events, by being used consistently with the same meaning, scientificus,
regardless of its etymology, became a technical term of the Schoolmen,
meaning 'pertaining to demonstrable knowledge, or science.' The
word entered the Romance languages (It. scientifico ; Fr. scientifique)
with this meaning, but came into English only as late as 1600.
The linguistically curious phrase scientific knowledge was not a
t a u t o l o g y : its purpose was to create a distinction between common
knowledge and scientific knowledge. From now on, science and
knowledge were not to be considered as synonymous : science stood for
a particular kind of knowledge--firmer and less fallible knowledge--
whether that knowledge is to be derived, as Aristotle had taught, by
straight deductive logic, with the geometry of Euclid as a model ; or
whether, as Bacon was the first to apprehend, it must gradually evolve,
using observation and experiment, by refining and clarifying its former
partial truths. I f we date the inauguration of the latter insight as 1620,
with the publication of the Novum Organum, we can appropriately date
its full realization as 1830, the year in which Herschel published his
Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. This book enthusiastically
endorsed the Baconian rejection of scholasticism, basing its case on the
achievements of the new method ; achievements of which Bacon had
been granted only a Pisgah sight. From ]620 to 1830, then, we find a
shifting of the philosophical point of view about the source of scientific
~2
68 S y d n e y Ross on
knowledge, which is reflected b y a corresponding change in the significance

accorded to the word science.
The sciences, as u n d e r s t o o d b y the Scholastic philosophers in the
Aristotelian sense, were specialized branches of philosophy, and included
the seven sciences of mediaeval l e a r n i n g : g r a m m a r , logic, rhetoric,
arithmetic, music, geometry, and a s t r o n o m y . When the n u m b e r of
sciences was enlarged, t h e y were classified under the headings of natural,
moral, and first philosophy (or metaphysics). B u t we actually find
Grosseteste, the 13th-century advocate of experimental science, maintain-
ing t h a t ' d e m o n s t r a t i v e ' knowledge was not possible in the natural
sciences and therefore seeking to d e n y t h e m the title of sciences : ' n a t u r a l

philosophy offers its explanations p r o b a b l y r a t h e r t h a n scientifically . . . .
Only in m a t h e m a t i c s is there science and demonstration. ,1
This heritage of Aristotelian t h o u g h t was also in Locke's mind when
he wrote : ' I a m apt to doubt, t h a t so far however h u m a n i n d u s t r y m a y
advance useful and experimental philosophy in physical things, scientifical
will still be out of our reach ; because we w a n t perfect and a d e q u a t e Ideas
of those v e r y bodies which are nearest to us and most under our com-
mand. ' 2 And again, ' This way of getting and improving our knowledge
in substances only b y experience and history, which is all t h a t the weak-
ness of our faculties in this state of mediocrity, which we are in this
world, can a t t a i n to, makes me suspect t h a t n a t u r a l philosophy is not
capable of being m a d e a science. ,a A recent writer, commenting on the
last clause of this sentence, expressed surprise t h a t Locke was ' so sceptical
a b o u t the possibilities of physics, only a few years after the publication
of Newton's Principia. ,4 B u t Locke was far from feeling a n y such
scepticism ; the misunderstanding arises b y reading the m o d e r n signifi-
cance of science into Locke's use of the word. N e w t o n himself, it will
be remembered, had cast the Principia into the form of Euclid's Geometry
in a tacit effort to elevate n a t u r a l philosophy to the r a n k of a ' science '
E v e n as late as the n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y we find Hegel denying to physics
the title of science ; the physicists merely shrugged ; what would have
disturbed Newton, amused Helmholtz.
Such rigorous definitions and nice refinements h a r d l y affect c o m m o n
speech. Science retained as one of its meanings a n y knowledge acquired b y
study, or any skill acquired b y practice. J a n e Austen used it in t h a t way :
' Every savage can dance, ' [said Mr Darcy.] Sir William only s m i l e d . . .
' I doubt not that you are an adept in the science yourself, Mr Darcy. '
1 Grosseteste's c o m m e n t a r y on the Posterior Analytics, I, xi ; quoted f r o m A. C. Crombie,

Medieval and Early Modern Science, roy. second edn., Now York. 1959, vol. ii., p.16.
2 J o h n Locke, Essay on human understanding, Bk. IV, Chap. 3, Sect. 26.
a Idem,, ibid., Bk. IV, Chap. 12, Sect. 10
4 A. E. Boll, Newtonian, science, London, 1961, p. 136.
But another meaning was also current in the language of 18th- and
early 19th-century England. The elaim made by Newton and rejected
by Locke was now conceded : any kind of knowledge acquired by
observation or experiment was freely called seientific and admitted to
the company of the older sciences, which had not yet lost their claim
to that title. The precise classifications of the philosophies and their
constituent Sciences were the technical jargon of the Universities;
outside the elassrooms a related, though looser, usage held--the terms
philosophy and science were interchangeable in certain connexions : e.g.,
experimental science or experimental philosophy ; and moral science or
morM philosophy. A book published in 1821 illustrates t h a t one word

had become merely an elegant variation for the other : ' Elements of
the Philosophy of Plants : containing the Scientific Principles of Botany ;
Nomenclature, Theory of Classification, Phytography, Anatomy, Chem-
istry, Physiology, Eeography, and Diseases of Plants : with a History
of the Science, and Practical illustrations (By A. P. Decandolle and K.
Sprengell) '. The period of synonymity lasted about fifty years, approxi-
mately 1800-1850; increasingly during that time the consensus of
opinion, perhaps influenced by the example of French usage, favoured
the allocation of philosophy to the theological and mctaphysicM, and
science to the experimental and physical branches of knowledge. We
see the latter word brought into prominence with its modern meaning
in the creation of the British Association for the Advancement of Science
(1831). Two volumes in m y possession aptly illustrate the change:
they are both collections of preprints or reprints on various topics of
physics ; the first, bound M)out 1825, is lettered Philosophical Tracts ;
the other, bound in the eighteen-sixties, is. lettered Scientific Memoirs.
The growth of the linguistic distinction had its origin in the difference
between the methods of physical science and of metaphysical philosophy.
Each of them cannot be called both science and philosophy for long without
confusion ; if ' natm'al philosophy ' is to be cMled ' physical science ',
then ' moral science ' must perforce become ' moral philosophy '. At the
same time a strong predisposition existed in favour of science because of
the tangible benefits derived from it, compared to the barrenness of
philosophy, so t h a t the exchange of names was probably felt to be also
a re-arrangement of relative ranks in the hierarchy of knowledge.
Carlyle, writing anonymously for the Edinburgh Review in 1829, pointed
out a trend in a tone t h a t is familiar to our own days of 1964 : ~
It is admitted, on all sides, that the Metaphysical and Moral Sciences
are falling into decay, while the Physical are engrossing, every day,
more respect and attention . . . . This condition of the two great depart-
ments of knowledge ; the outer, cultivated exclusively on mechanical
5IT. Carlyle],EdinbwrghReview, 1829, 49, 444-7.
70 Sydney Ross on
principles--the inward finally abandoned, because, cultivated on such

principles, it is found to yield no result--sufficiently indicates the intel-
leetuM bias of our time, its all-pervading disposition towards t h a t line
of enquiry. I n fact, an inward persuasion has long been diffusing itself,
and now and then even comes to utterance, t h a t except the external,
there are no true sciences ; t h a t to the inward world (if there be any)
our only conceivable road is through the o u t w a r d ; that, in short,
what cannot be investigated and understood mechanically, cannot be
investigated and understood at all.
Carlyle h a d i n d e e d c o r r e c t l y i n t e r p c t e d t h e signs o f t h e times. As a
small i n d i c a t o r o f t h e t r e n d , t h e w o r d s c i e n c e in c o m m o n s p e e c h c a m e
t o h a v e t h e d o m i n a n t m e a n i n g o f ' n a t u r a l a n d p h y s i c a l science,' while

o t h e r a p p l i c a t i o n s s a n k into disuse.
T h e g r o w i n g prestige o f p h y s i c a l science in t h e 19th c e n t u r y explains
w h y it c o u l d t h u s a r r o g a t e t o itself t h e w o r d p r e v i o u s l y used f o r all
k n o w l e d g e . T h e usage, once established, g a v e linguistic s u p p o r t t o t h e
e t u d e belief, a d v e r t e d t o b y Carlyle, t h a t t h e o n l y t r u e k n o w l e d g e is
t h a t o f t h e m a t e r i a l w o r l d as e x p l o r e d b y p h y s i c a l science ; t h e e u l t u r M
i m p l i c a t i o n s o f this o p i n i o n h a v e r a m i f i e d t h r o u g h o u t r e c e n t h i s t o r y ,
political as well as intellectual, a n d h a v e m a d e no small c o n t r i b u t i o n
t o o u r c o n t e m p o r a r y disquiet. O u r g r e a t - g r a n d f a t h e r s , w h o m i g h t h a v e
p r o t e c t e d us a g a i n s t t h e unjustifiable v e r b a l u s u r p a t i o n , were s i n g u l a r l y
c o m p l a i s a n t . R u s k i n alone seems t o h a v e s c e n t e d d a n g e r a n d g r o w l e d a
w a r n i n g , in 1875, t o o late t o a r r e s t t h e t r e n d :~
I t has become the permitted fashion among modern mathematicians,
chemists, and apothecaries, to call themselves 'scientific men,' as
opposed to theologians, poets, and artists. They know their sphere
to be a separate one ; but their ridiculous notion of its being a peculiarly
scientific one ought not to be allowed in our Universities. 7 There is a
science of Morals, a science of Itistory, a science of Grammar, a science
of Music, and a science of Painting ; and all these are quite beyond
comparison higher fields for h u m a n intellect, and require accuracies of
intenser observation, t h a n either chemistry, electricity, or geology.
J. Ruskin, Ariadne florentina, 1874, in Works, ed. Cook and Wedderburn, London,
1906, vol. xxii., p. 396 n.
As an undergraduate of Oxford in tile 1830s Ruskin was familiar with a peculiarly
Oxonian use of the word science, which was currently applied to the study of Aristotle's
Ethics, Butler's Analogy of religion, etc. (i.e. morM philosophy), logic, and cognate studies,
included in the course of study for a degree in the school of Literae Humaniores. Here we
find science used in strict accord with Grosseteste's interpretation of Aristotle ; the usage
was therefore a relict of the 13th century ; it was maintained until ca. 1850. (Is this a
record for academic conservatism ?) Ruskin, returning to Oxford as a professor in 1870,
stoutly opposed all encroachments by modern science, and resigned his chair in 1884 as an
expression of his disapproval when a laboratory for physiology was established by the
University.
Again, in 1878, writing of modes of investigation ' v u l g a r l y called

scientific,' he a d d e d : s
The use of the word scientia, as if it differed from knowledge, [is] a
modern barbarism; enhanced usually by the assumption that the
knowledge of the difference between acids and alkalies is a more respect-
able one than that of the difference between vice and virtue.
I I . I n t r o d u c t i o n of Scientist
W i t h the new meaning of science the need to designate a m a n of
science became more pressing. H i t h e r t o philosopher had served, but,
as I have said, philosophy h a d n a r r o w e d in meaning to exclude n a t u r a l

philosophy, except in the minds and m o u t h s of an older generation.
A n English m a n of science who called himself a philosopher now did so
r a t h e r self-consciously, or hastened to qualify the name with the adjectives
' experimental ' or ' natural. ' The F r e n c h word philosophe was immedi-
ately b r o u g h t to mind, and those designated b y t h a t word were n o t men
of science, besides having been notorious atheists. The n a m e scientist
was first p r o p o u n d e d in the Quarterly Review for March, 1834. The
a n o n y m o u s reviewer made the suggestion, too jocularly, however, to be
t a k e n entirely in earnest, in the course of a review of Mrs Somerville's
book On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences. F r o m T o d h u n t e r ' s
b i o g r a p h y 9 we learn t h a t t h e reviewer was William Whewell, F.R.S.
Whewell wrote : 10
The tendency of the sciences has long been an increasing proclivity
of separation and dismemberment . . . . The mathematician turns
away from the chemist ; the chemist from the naturalist ; the mathemati-
cian, left to himself, divides himself into a pure mathematician and a
mixed mathematician, who soon part company ; the chemist is perhaps
a chemist of electro-chemistry; if so, he leaves common eh(;mica!
analysis to others; between the mathematician and the chemist i~
to be interpolated a 'physicien' (we have no English name for him),
who studies heat, moisture, and the like. And thus science, even mere
physical science, loses all traces of unity. A curious illustration of thb~
result may be observed in the want of any name by which we can
designate the students of the knowledge of the material world collec-
tively. 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 at York, Oxford, and Cambridge, in the last
three summers. There was no general term by which these gentlemen
s j . Ruskin, The Nineteenth Century, 1878, 4, 1072 n. Reprinbed in Works, ed. Cook and
W e d d e r b u r n , London, 1908, vol. xxxiv., p. 157 n.
9 I. T o d h u n t e r , William Whewell, an account of his writings, with selections from his
llterary and scientific correspondence, London, 1876, vol. i.,p. 92. The editor of the Quart.erly
Review, J. G. Loekhart, h a d prescribed ' a lightish p a p e r ' for the review of Mrs Somerville's
book, a n d he c o m m e n d e d Whewell for his ' spirited ' contribution.
10 [W. Whewell], The Quarterly Review, 1834, 51, 58-61.
72 S y d n e y i~oss on
could describe themselves with reference to their pursuits. Philosophers

was felt to be too wide and too lofty a term, and was very properly for-
bidden them by Mr. Coleridge, both in his capacity of philologer and
metaphysician ; sarans was rather assuming, besides being French instead
of English ; some ingenious gentleman [Whewell himself] proposed that,
by auMogy 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 ; others attempted to translate the term by which the members
of similar associations in Germany have described themselves, but it
was not found easy to discover an English equivalent for natur-forscher.
The process of examination which it implies might suggest such undig-
nified compounds as nature-poker, * or nature-peeper, for these naturae

curiosi ; but these were indignantly rejected.
Proposed in this way, especially with the detractive association of
sciolist a n d atheist t h r o w n in for a h u m o r o u s effect, the suggestion was
obviously frivolous a n d could not have been considered seriously tbr a
m o m e n t . Six years later, in his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences,
Whewell made the suggestion again, this time more soberly, in the
following passage : 1~
The terminations ize (rather than ise), ism, and ist, are applied to
words of all origins : thus we have to pulverize, to colonize, Witticism,
Heathenism, Journalist, Tobacconist. Hence we may make such words
when they are wanted. As we cannot use physician for a cultivator
of physics, I have called him a Physicist. 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.
C o m m e n t s were not slow in coming. F a r a d a y wrote :12
1 perceive Mso another new and good word, tile sc'tent'est. Now can
you give us one for the French physicien? Physicist is both to my mouth
and ears so awkward that I think I shall never be able to use it. The
equivalent of three separate sounds of i in one word is too much.
H a d F a r a d a y forgotten criticism ? As for hailing scientist as ' g o o d , '
t h a t was mere p o l i t e n e s s : F a r a d a y never used the word, describing
himself as an experimental philosopher to the end of his career. L o r d
Kelvin, when his a t t e n t i o n was d r a w n to physicist some fifty years later,
* W h e n the G e r m a n association m e t at JJcrlin, a caricature was circulated there, repre-

senting the ' collective w i s d o m ' employed in the discussion of their mid-day meal wil~h
e x t r a o r d i n a r y zeal of mastication, a n d dexterity in l~he use of the requisite implements, to
which was affixed the l e g e n d - - ' Wie die natur-forscher natur-forsehen,' which we v e n t u r e
to translate ' the poking of the nature-pokers ' [Whewell's note].
~1 W. Whewell, The philosophy of the inductive sciences, London, 1840, vol. i., p. cxiii.
12 Notes and records of the Royal Society, 1961, 16. 216.
also disapproved. H e preferred naturalist, which he found defined in

J o h n s o n ' s Dictionary ( 17 5 5) as 'a person well versed in natural philosophy.'
Armed with this authority, chemists, electricians, astronomers, and
mathematicians may surely claim to be admitted along with mere
descriptive investigators of nature to the honourable and conwmient
title of Naturalist, and refuse to accept so un-English, unpleasing,
and meaningless a variation from old usage as physicist. ~
I t was, of course, too late b y 1890 to t u r n the clock back to that extent.
B u t c o n t e m p o r a r y c o m m e n t had been equally devastating : Blackwood's
Magazine ~ h a d this to say : ' T h e word physicists, where four sibilant
consonants fizz like a squib . . . . '
At first b o t h of Whewell's new words were slow to be adopted. F o r

a time savant came near to being naturalized : the review periodicals
got as far as printing it without the italic t y p e t h a t formerly set it off as
a foreign word. ~ B u t physicist and scientist were too much in accord
with the needs of the times to be neglected indefinitely. The latter
word appears indeed to have been coined independently b y other writers :
it appeared in Blackwood's Magazine ~6 in 1840, probably independently
of W h e w e l t ; in 1849, the American astronomer B e n j a m i n A. Gould
proposed it, unaware t h a t he was not its first introducer ; and in 1853,
F i t z e d w a r d Hall, the American philologist, thinking it a fancy of his
own, made use of it in a short-lived I n d i a n periodical, Ledlie's Miscellany,
vol. 2, p. 169.17 In America scientist was immediately at home ; the
Americans were not troubled, even had t h e y been generally aware of it,
t h a t their seemingly innocent import was the outcome of a heinous
linguistic impropriety.
Whewell h a d never been one to entertain fine-drawn scruples about
so-called philological anomMies : convenience in use had more weight
with him t h a n the anMogies of language, especially as there could be no
pleasing a g r a m m a r i a n with a n y neologism: to a grammarian's ear,
all such extensions of the language, no m a t t e r how conformable to
analogy, could not seem otherwise t h a n as solecisms. Whewell held
t h a t although anomalies, such as h y b r i d words or incorrect formations,
1~ Sir W. T h o m s o n , Mathematical a~d physical pal~crn, London, 1890, vol. ii., p. 318.
~4 Blachwood'8 Magazine, 1843, 54, 524.
t~ I n F r e n c h the distinction between le philosophe and le sgavant h a d already been
established in its modern sense quite early in the 18th century. I n the post-Darwin period,
1860-1900, le scientiste appeared, to designate a believer in the philosophy of scicntific
materiMism, e.g., Littr6 a n d Berthelot.
~ Blackwood's Magazine, 1840, 48, 273.
17 The O.E.D. given this reference incorrectly as Leslie's Miscellany. The word appeared
in an unsigned article b y Hall, in the course of which he spoke sharply of British travellers
who published criticisms of the St,a,tes on their r e t u r n . One category of these visitors w a s
described b y the phrase ¢ atrabilious scientist, s ' ; Hall p r o b a b l y had Sir Charles Lyell in
m i n d as the archetype of this class.
74 Sydney Ross on
should be avoided as much as possible, they are to be admitted whenever

manifestly advantageous terms, easy to acquire and convenient to use,
are unattainable without them. For the scientific study of tidal pheno-
mena, for example, he hesitated not to offer the hybrid tidology, is He
had coined scientist with the same non-doctrinaire and masculine attitude,
well aware that philologically it is of dubious legitimacy. The suffix -ist
is derived originally from Greek words, through their latinized versions.
No Greek word corresponds to the Latin scientia, and the ancient Romans
would not have endured 8cientistes or scientista, as a new type of hybrid :
in order to acclimatize it they would have required, normally, the pre-
existence of a Greek verb ending in--l~e~v or --l~aO~, such as fi~Tr'rt~v,

ao¢l~tv, &~o~vl~eaOo~, ~o?l~EaO~t. The agent-nouns formed from these
verbs consist of the agential suffix-r~ added to the verb stem, as in
fl~zrTta--r~, dipper; aoCta-T~, clever man, sophist; &~wvt~-~,
combatant, competitor; hoT~a-r~,, calculator. English words derived
therefrom include baptist, sophist, antagonist, and philologist, is The
word scientist is, therefore, a Latin-Greek hybrid or, at best, a formation
from incorrect Latin.
Had Whewell been timid, he would have selected an alternative free
from this objection, or perhaps a form for which he could find some
ancient precedent: sciencer, sciencist, scientiate, scient, scientman, and
scientific (sb. analogous to academic, classic) had all, at one time or
another, been used previously. But they had not served. The form of
any word in -ist can be discriminated from its form in -or by the profes-
sionM or systematic sense t h a t is implied by the more learned ending :
compare philologist and philologer, copyist and copier, cyclist and cycler :
hence scientist is more suitable than sciencer, and indeed, because of
this implication, more suitable than any other word that lacks it. Another
i s , :Not even his high a u t h o r i t y can reconcile ine to the b a r b a r o u s c o m p o u n d tidology. '
I. T o d h u n t e r in ref. 9, voL 1, p. 86. Some other of Whewell's words incurred the scorn of a
more formidable c r i t i e - - H . W. Fowler. A l t h o u g h Lyell is b l a m e d in the following passage,
Whewell w a s the original offender (see ref. 20) :
Pleistocene, pliocene, miocene, are regrettable BARBARISMS. I t is w o r t h while to
m e n t i o n this, n o t because the w o r d s themselves can n o w be either m e n d e d or
ended, b u t on the chance t h a t the m e n of science m a y some day wake u p to their
duties to the l a n g u a g e - - d u t i e s m u c h less simple t h a n t h e y are a p t to suppose.
T h a t b a r b a r i s m s should exist is a p i t y ; to e x p e n d m u c h energy on denouncing
these t h a t do exist is a waste ; to create t h e m is a grave m i s d e m e a n o u r ; a n d the
greater the need of the w o r d t h a t is made, the greater its m a k e r ' s guilt if he miscreates
it. A m a n of science m i g h t be expected to do on his great occasion w h a t the ordinary
m a n c a n n o t do every day, ask the philologist's h e l p ; t h a t the f a m o u s eocene-
plelstoeene n a m e s were made b y ' a good classical s c h o l a r ' (see Lyell in D.N.B.)
shows t h a t w o r d - f o r m a t i o n is a m a t t e r for the specialist. H . W . Fowler, A dictionary
of modern English usage, Oxford, 1926.
19 O.E.D. u n d e r -/at, a n d ref. 2 4 , p. 28.
possibility in ist, sciencist, is ugly because of sibilance. Whewhell's flair

for the appropriate word is evident here, as in other words of his coinage ;,0
his attempts to ' bid the new be English, ages hence, ' were successful
precisely for the reason given by Pope in the next line of the couplet :
' For Use will father what's begot by Sense. ' Those undefinable qualities,
the genius of the language and the climate of opinion, determine what
is meet and proper and reject all else, despite the scholars. I n this
case, the scholars and their journalistic echoers had much to say.
III. Objections to Scientist

The argument that followed about scientist came too late to affect the
shift in usage by which all knowledge save t h a t of the material world
had been excluded from science ; that change had been accomplished
a generation or two earlier, had been almost universally accepted and
was no longer open to debate. But by establishing scientist as a specific
designation, the new position of science would be buttressed and immeasur-
ably strengthened. Was there no champion to repudiate this exclusive
title held by a small group of professional men, the knowledge of other
men being deemed no better than nescience or ignorance ? There were,
significantly enough, no opponents to scientist who objected to it on that
score. They seized on the irregularity of its construction: 'scients
or savants but, please, Mr Cocks, not scientists.' 21 They also played,
for all it was worth, their conviction (alas! a false one) that it had a
trans-Atlantic origin. Those who objected to scientist wished to uphold
the worth and dignity of the study of science. By inescapable mental
association, attributes of the word and of the thing are equated. The
ignobility of scientist, as long as it was felt to be so, lessened the stature
of those designated by it. After many years the current ran the opposite
way, and the name acquired the honour paid to the individuals who
carried it. At first, however, and until ca. 1910, careful writers in Britain
used scientist only as a colloquialism, the phrase ' man of science ' being
used in formal discourse or writing: for example, the title-pages of
the earliest volumes, from 1888 to 1914, of the great Oxford English
Dictionary carry the line : ' With the assistance of many scholars and
men of science. '
20 Mr P. J. Wexler has found t h a t the O.E.D. credits Whewell with the first recorded
use, and in m a n y cases with the invention, of 21 words (and doubtless m a n y others), to
which Mr Wexler has added 41 more first attestations from Whewell's books a n d letters.
See ' The great nomenclator : Whewell's contributions to scientific terminology ' in Notes
and Queries, N.S., 1961, 8, 27. Whewell would not, however, have a p p r o v e d the implication
in the title of Mr Wexlor's paper t h a t nomenclature and terminology are s y n o n y m s ; he
distinguished between t h e m emphatically a n d repeatedly.
~1 O.E.D. u n d e r scient, citing Ibis, Oct. 1894, p. 555.
The American advocacy of scientist also militated against its accep-

tance. F e w Englishmen would have expressed themselves so positively,
b u t m a n y would have s y m p a t h i z e d with Ruskin's observation : ' E n g l a n d
t a u g h t the Americans all t h e y have of speech, or thought, hitherto.
W h a t thoughts t h e y have not learned from E n g l a n d are foolish t h o u g h t s ;
w h a t words t h e y have not learned from England, unseemly words.' ~
Alexander J. Ellis, F.R.S., president of the Philological Society, concurred.
I n a letter published in the Academy for 19 September, 1874, he confidently
affirmed scientist to be ' an American barbarous trisyllable, ' for which
he would have s u b s t i t u t e d the disyllable scient. H e also t o o k the oppor-
t u n i t y of proposing the adoption of uty, utians, phiUogy, and phillogs,

in place of utilitarianism, utilitarians, philology, a n d philologists. I n
his translations of Helmholtz, however, Ellis used physicist, t h o u g h in
view of his desire to r e m o v e excess syllables one might well e x p e c t t h a t
he would have preferred physist, or even, as befitted an advocate of
simplified spelling a n d the founder of the periodical The Fonetic Frend,
the version fizzist.
T w e n t y years later considerable public a t t e n t i o n was d r a w n to the
word scientist. J . T . Carrington, the editor of Science-Gossip, entered a
protest against its use, in which he said :
Its application is not satisfactory, and is usually the offspring of a
paucity of erudition and expression which comes of the modern system
of cramming with text-books, and general hurry in education. Why
not speak of nomenclators as ' nameists, ' or a sempstress as a ' sewist, '
or a conchologist as a ' shellist. ' All these words may come into usc
among ' progressivists, ' but are equally abominable with 'scientists.'
This e x t r a c t was copied by several daily newspapers, and aroused some
comment, adverse to the word. Desiring an ' a u t h o r i t a t i v e declaration '
Carrington asked eight p r o m i n e n t personages for their opinions, seven of
whom at once replied. The following are the answers he received :~a
His Grace the Duke of Argyll, K.G., K.T., F.R.S.
Gosford, Longniddry, N.B. ;
December 8th, 1894.
Sir,
In reply to your question, I can only answer for myself, that I never
use the word ' Scientist ' in any serious literary work, and that I regard
it with great dislike.
Yours obediently,
Argyll.
22 j . Ruskin, Fors clavlgera, Orpington, Kent, 1874, Letter 42, p. 118. Reprinted in
Works, ed. Cook and Wedderburn, London, 1907, vol. xxviii., p. 92.
23 Science.gossip, N.S., 1894, 1, 242-3.
Scientis~ : The Story of a Word 77
The Right Hon. ~ir ,John Lubbock, Bart., M,P,. F.R.S.

High Elms, Farnborough, t~,.S.O., K e n t ;
7th December, 1894.
Sir,
I quite concur with you as to the word ' Scientist,' a n d have never
used it myself. W h y n o t retain the old word ' Philosopher. '
I am, your Obedient Servant,
John Lubbock
Professor Alfred Russel Wallace, F.R.~.

Parkstone, Dorset ;
December 8th, 1894.
Dear Sir,
I t h o u g h t the very useful American term ' S c i e n t i s t ' was now
adopted, a n d I see Dr Armstrong used it at the Chemical Society,
yesterday. As we have Biologist, Zoologist, Geologist, Botanist,
Chemist, Physicist, Physiologist and Specialist, why should we not use
' Scientist ' ? I t seems to me t h a t it has, as the Americans say, ' come
to stay, ' a n d it is too late in the day to object to it.
Yours very truly,
Alfred g . Wallace.
Mr Grant Allen, a popular writer.

The Croft, H i n d Head, Haslemere ;
December 20th, 1894.
Dear Sir,
Personally I dislike the word ' S c i e n t i s t ' a n d never admit it into
m y own vocabulary. No fellow is compelled to use a n y particular word
himself unless he chooses. ' Man of Scie1~ce ' seems to me to do the d u t y
well enough for a n y purpose. But T fully recognise the fi~ct t h a t lan-
guages grow, a n d grow irresponsibly. If the majority of the persons
who speak a particular language choose to adopt a new word, however
ill-formed, it is mere p e d a n t r y for individuals to object to it. We have
swallowed ' Sociology ' ; we have swallowed ' Altruism ' ; and I d o n ' t
see why, after camels like those, we need strain at a comparative g n a t
like ' Scientist. ' I t has come to stay. Many of us d o n ' t like it ; b u t ]
am afraid we have only the usual a l t e r n a t i v e - - o f l u m p i n g it.
Faithfully yore's,
G r a n t Allen.
The Right llon. Lord Rayleigh, F.R.S.

Terling Place, W i t h a m , E s s e x ;
10th December, 1894.
Dear Sir,
I dislike the word ' Scientist ' a n d have never used it myself ; b u t
I foresee a difficulty in avoiding it unless a s u b s t i t u t e can be provided.
Lord K e l v i n ' s suggestion of reverting to the wider m e a n i n g of ' N a t u r a l i s t '
might afford a solution.
Yours faithfully,
Rayleigh.
The Right Hen. Thos. H. Huxley, F.R.S.

Hodeslea, Staveley Road, Eastbourne ;
December 10th, 1894.
Sir,
To any one who respects the English language, I think ' Scientist '
must be about as pleasing a word as ' Electrocution.' I sincerely trust
you will not allow the pages of Science-Gossip to be defiled by it.
am, yours sincerely,
Thos. H. Huxley.
Dr Albert Gi~nther, F.R.S., Head of the Zoological Department of the

British Museum.
British Museum, Cromwell Road,
London, W. ; December 13th 1894
Dear Sir,
The illegitimacy of formation of the word ' S c i e n t i s t ' has been
sufficiently exposed in the daily press of a week or so ago. I believe it
has been shown to be an American importation. However, as within
the last quarter of a century a crowd of writers has sprung up who
dabble in science, and especially in the great scientific questions of our
time, the word ' S c i e n t i s t ' might be retained as an appropriate term
for this class.
Yours truly,
A. Gfinther.
I V . H a l l ' s Defence of Scientist

T h e grounds of t h e opposition h a v i n g been defined in such n a r r o w
terms, it m e r e l y required a learned and articulate scholar to o v e r t h r o w
it completely. T h e A m e r i c a n philologist, F i t z e d w a r d H~ll (1825-1901),
t h e n residing in E n g l a n d , was such a m a n . H e was angered b y the
irrational a n t i p a t h y of some British writers to a n y words t h e y suspected
of originating in America. H a l l himself was u n s p a r i n g in his criticisms
of his c o u n t r y m e n for the deterioration of the English tongue in the
U n i t e d States, as the following passage shows.
By nobody who is capable of judging can it be gainsaid, and it
behooves a wise patriot to acknowledge and to lament, that the phrase-
ology of nearly all our recent popular authors is tarnished with vulgar-
isms, imported and indigenous, at which a cultivated taste cannot but
revolt. Nor is this the sole uncouth trait that sullies the written style
of the great body of our fellow-countrymen. Conspicuous, with them,
almost in like degree, are slovenliness, want of lucidity, breach of
established idiom, faulty grammar, and needless Americanisms, general
or sectional, Of these offences against the aesthetics of literary compo-
Scientist : T h e Story of a Word 79
sition t h e y are seen, moreover, to show themselves, year b y year,

increasingly regardless. 24
T h e m a n w h o w r o t e t h a t c a n n o t be a c c u s e d o f e n t e r t a i n i n g a b l i n d
p a r t i a l i t y t o w a r d s t h e v e r b a l m a l p r a c t i c e s o f his c o u n t r y m e n . B u t , H a l l
i n q u i r e d , is i t this, a d m i t t e d l y d e p l o r a b l e , s t a t e o f t h i n g s a l o n e t h a t so
o f t e n p r o m p t s a n E n g l i s h m a n t o d e n o u n c e o f f h a n d as a n A m e r i c a n i s m
a n y expression t h a t offends h i m ? H a l l suspected an a n i m u s against
his c o u n t r y - - a h o s t i l i t y t h a t w a s g l a d t o seize a n y g r o u n d s , r e a l o r
fancied, for d i s p a r a g e m e n t . F o r m o r e t h a n t h i r t y years he had collected,
from English newspapers and periodicals, examples of denigration,
a m o n g s t w h i c h scientist f i g u r e d f r e q u e n t l y . H e r e is s o m e o f h i s t e s t i m o n y :
I n The Guardian for March 6, 1878, a reviewer characterized
scientist as ' v e r y q u e s t i o n a b l e . ' A note to t h e editor, in which I
m a i n t a i n e d t h a t m u c h could be a d v a n c e d in its favour, was denied
publication. W i t h i n six m o n t h s The Guardian again a t t a c k e d t h e word,
a n d I again came forward to defend it, b u t with t h e same issue as before.
On t h e 20th of September, 1890, the L o n d o n Daily News branded
scientist as an ' i g n o b l e A m e r i c a n i s m ' a n d as a ' c h e a p and vulgar
p r o d u c t of t r a n s - A t l a n t i c s l a n g . ' I n correction of this description
of it, I w r o t e to t h a t journal, pointing out t h a t , in 1840, it was a d v o c a t e d ,
t o g e t h e r with physicist, by D r Whewell, as t h o u g h of his own fabricating.
My c o m m u n i c a t i o n n e v e r saw the light. To print it m i g h t have checked
the diffusion of an error which affronted v a n i t y preferred t o the t r u t h . . . .
On the 30th of last N o v e m b e r [1894], the Daily News r e t u r n e d to t h e
word u n d e r correction, a p p a r e n t l y a p p r o v i n g a censure whicil had been
passed on it in Science-Gossip. A l e t t e r in reply, an expansion of m y
former one, which I at once drew up and addressed to t h e Daily News,
shared the fate of its fellow, in feeding the editorial waste-paper basket. ~
24Fitzedward I-Iall, Two trifles : I. A rejoinder. II. Scientist, with a preamble. Privately
printed, London, 1895, pp. 2-3.
Fitzedward Hall was born in Troy, New York, and obtained the degree of C. E. (Civil
Engineer) at l~ensselaer Institute (now Rensselaer :Polytechnic Institute) in 1842, at the
age of eighteen. From timre he went to Harvard College where he graduated with the
class of 1846. The remainder of his long life was passed in India and in England. He was
the first American to edit (in 1852) a Sanskrit text. He also discovered several interesting
Sanskrit works supposed to have been lost. The various Sanskrit inscriptions that he
deciphered and translated threw much new light on the history of ancient India. The
importance of these contributions to scholarship was acknowledged by the University
of Oxford, which conferred on him an honorary doctor's degree (D.C.L.) in 1860, when
Hall was thirty-five years old--unusually young for such a distinction. Two years later
he was appointed to the chair of Sanskrit and Indian jurisprudence at King's College,
London. Hall now became known as a scholar of English philology. The undertaking of
tile New English Dictionary by the Philological Society brought him the opportunity to
put to use his enormous collection of English words, phrases, and idioms, containing
quotations from thousands of books of the previous four centuries--the fl'uits of a lifetime's
study and reading. His devoted and unselfish services were given gratuitously, as a
labour of love, for many years. Murray's special acknowledgements of his services to the
Dictionary are to be found in the various prefaces to the separate volumes.
,.,5Ref. 24, pp. 25 6.
80 S y d n e y g o s s on
Of the letters previously quoted f r o m Science-Gossip, H u x l e y ' s was

the one whose peevish t o n e was m o s t likely to d r a w H a l l ' s w r a t h f u l
a t t e n t i o n ; b y m e n t i o n i n g electrocution, an A m e r i c a n ' blend ' of electricity
~-execution, H u x l e y showed t h a t he considered scientist to be an equally
unscholarly Americanism. H a l l ' s irritation at H u x l e y , a g g r a v a t e d b y
t h e c u m u l a t i v e effect of the o t h e r e x a m p l e s he h a d come across, induced
h i m to u n d e r t a k e a full-length defence of scientist, which he presented,
in t h e m a n n e r of L a n d o r ' s Imaginary Conversations, as a dialogue b e t w e e n
Professor H u x l e y , t h e n a f o r m i d a b l e o p p o n e n t with w h o m to engage in
c o n t r o v e r s y , a n d the shade of Dr Whewell.eG T h e style of H a l l ' s i m a g i n a r y
t~te-£-t~te was lively and t h e h u m o u r a p p r o p r i a t e l y philological. As

the p u b l i c a t i o n is h a r d to come by, lavish q u o t a t i o n is justified.
Since, in the flesh, Dr Whewell was never backward in asserting
himself, let it be imagined that, in his excarnate ~ttenuation, he is so
still. And let it be farther imagined that, released awhile from the
shades, in the course of a round of calls he visits Professor Huxley in
his study. These conditions fulfilled, what follows may, conceivably,
be supposable.
Dr W. (considerably materialized). Good morning! Don't mind
m y abruptness. I have come to pick a bone with you. As an anatomist,
and a trifle osseously hard in manner, you will allow that m y metaphor
is not inappropriate.
Prof. H. (impatiently). Who are you ?
Dr W. A wit once said, of somebody, that science was his forte, and
omniscience his foible. To the successor of that myth, realized, I make
m y obeisance. (Genuflects.)
Prof. H. (more impatiently). I ask you who yon are, and what are
you driving at.
Dr W. I am advancing pedetcntously. 2:
Prof. H. (visibly.fidgeting). Your bearing is rllde, while your English
is peculiar.
Dr W. I never particularly studied the graces ; but m y jocular
pedetentously will compare advantageously with your serious xenogenesis.
Prof. H. (subirascently). You are intrusive and impertinent. You
will be so good as to leave the room.
Dr W. Pardon me, worthy Professor. Out on ticket of leave from
Hades, and ' going to and fro in the earth, ' I have taken the liberty of
dropping in on you. I am Dr Whewell.
Prof. H. (smiling). Solidiform spirits, whether hylomorphous or
otherwise, are an object of rational curiosity ; and for 37raye E~.~'~.v2
I gladly substitute X~pe 8 ~ a K ~ e .
~.6 g e l . 24.
: proceeding step by step, cautiously. This word was not coined by
27 p e d e t e n t o u s l y
Whcwell, as Hall seems to claim, b u t by Sydney Smith in 1837. S m i t h was also the a u t h o r
of the epigram on Whewell quoted in the t e x t : ' science is his forte and omniseenee his
foible '.
After this preliminary banter, HM1, speaking in the rSle of D r Whewell,

outlines three possible justifications for scientist, based on analogies with
the f o r m a t i o n of other well-accepted words :
1. What if I took the stem seen in scientific, as also in scientia,
duly modified it, and added -ist to the result ? My proceeding would be
much about the same as that of whoever fashioned deists, ddiste, or
deist. Here the full stem, dee-, is weakened into dei-, and this, before
-ista, -iste, -ist, is truncated to de-, i being elided to preclude a hiatus.
Of the final i of scienti- there is, towards the making of my word, also
elision. If scientia had not scire behind it, scientist would, accordingly,
be every whit as good as aurist, dentist, florist, jurist, oculist, and the
old copist, now copyist. Where I indulged in a lieenee was in operating,

not on the stem of a substantive, but on that of a part of a verb, a
present participle. Surely, you would not quarrel with colloquist,
determinist, funambnlist, noctambulist, somnambulist, and ventriloquist,
which differ only slightly from scientist ?
2. But I have not yet done. Dissatisfied with the German obslcurant
and the French obscurant, we give the preference to the elongated
obscurantist. Be it, then, alternatively, that we have, in scientist, -ist
suffixed to the old adjective scient, occurring in Lydgate and Bp. John
King ; in which case it is, as regards its elements, analogous to absolntist,
extremist, indifferentist, positivist.
3. Once again, what if I guided myself, in my straits, solely by the
demands of expedience and euphony, and simply fastened -ist to the
scient- of scientific, satisfied with combining constituents unmistakable
of import into a whole nowise less perspicuous ? Beside the numerous
existing compounds which gravel ordinary folk so vexatiously, mine,
with its convenience and instant intelligi~bility, is, I contend, in the
highest degree creditable. Well is it ~ble to stand on its own worth.
Faulty as it is acknowledged to be, I have been assured that not one
philologist of the slightest repute has as yet declared against it,, under a
praet, ieal aspect. And I predict that it will live.
Hall concludes :
Anomalous in structure as scientist admittedly is, still, now that,
after Dr Johnson's rimist, we have got, composedly, to landseapist,
red-tapist, routinist, and faddist, there seems to be every likelihood that
utility will soon legitimate it, as it has legitimated botany, facsimile,
idolatry, monomial, orthopedic, posthumous, racial, suicide, tdegram,
tractarian, and vegetarian, to name a few established irregularities.
The passage of the years since 1895 completely confirmed Hall's
p r o p h e c y t h a t the word would live. E v e n while the debate about its
propriety was going on, the word was becoming more and more firmly
e m b e d d e d in the language ; it was not to be eradicated b y a few expres-
sions of distaste, however eminent their source and oracular their style
of delivery. Hall's defenee of scientist c a n n o t be given credit for its
m o d e r n acceptance, nor can he even be credited with having convinced
his contemporaries to overcome their dislike of the word. However,
Ann. of Sci.---Vol. 18, No. 2.
82 Sydney Ross on
the next generation of writers did not share the scruples of their prede-
cessors ; the arguments t h a t could be brought against the word had been
deprived of their force by Hall's essay on the subject. What may be
regarded as the last comment on the controversy was made unconsciously
by a modern biographer of Huxley : on the title-page of his book, in
all innocence, he applied the hated word to the great man himself. 2s
This was indeed a cruel stroke by Fate, yet so delightfully apt that no
Mikado in search of poetic justice could have improved upon it.
V. Scientist in Modern Use

Common speech having sanctioned the narrower meanings of science

and scientist, the words continued to take a part in further socio-cultural
evolution. Here are some examples of modern 'usage and abusage. '
1. Today, science denotes more than physical science: any disci-

pline is said to be scientific when it consciously employs mental attitudes
and techniques developed by practitioners of physical science : scepticism
of authority ; dispassionate description of phenomena ; the framing of
hypotheses capable of being tested ; and the measurement of the limits
of reliability of data. Examples of this usage occur in the expressions
' the biological sciences ' and ' the social sciences,' both of which were
in use before the end of the 19th century.
One observes, however, t h a t a higher status is claimed by and
generally accorded to the physical and biological sciences, and to physics
in particular. Perhaps as a result, physicists display an intellectual
arrogance and snobbishness t h a t is sufficiently pronounced to be
recognizable as a professional characteristic. The following witty
sneer--the sneer at least is typical--was reported in the course of a
tea-table conversation with a Russian physicist at a recent International
Conference on Science and Human Welfare : 29
] mentioned that an increasing number of social scientists had been
coming to Pugwash Conferences, and [Academician L. A.] Artsimovich
made a face. Generally speaking, he said, he found social scientists a
pretty ineffective bunch. 'Gatherers of material,' he said. ' F i f t y
years ago, Professor Rutherford, the great British physicist, said that
scientists were divided into two categories--physicists and stamp
collectors.'
2. Another extension, of more recent vintage, is derived from

physical science viewed as providing the rationale for certain traditional
processes, such as cooking, dyeing, the making of soap, glass, or ceramics ;
from this by analogy are obtained terms for new disciplines (or old ones
as Cyril Bibby, T. H. Huxley : Scientist, Humanist, and Educator London, 1959.
~9 Daniel Lang, The New Yorker, 21 December 1963, p. 54.
glamourized) such as domestic science, military science, sanitary science,

building science, and library science, to denote the s t u d y of the theory
underlying their respective practices. These examples, however, are
the local usages of some American universities and are not fully accepted
elsewhere.
3. B u t if science can be extended t h u s far, others will extend it

further. I n the excessive popularity of science, scientist, and scientific
in the newspaper vocabulary, the process of extension is carried nearly
all the way to nonsense. These words, according to a modern scholar, 3°
are ' used too much, and by the wrong people ' ; t h e y are ' vogue-words '
of high prestige, bandied about for effect, b u t based on vague and impre-
cise notions of w h a t t h e y stand for. The patient, dedicated men and
women, the living realities of the word scientist, working in laboratories
and communicating in an esoteric language only with their peers, do
not satisfy the general craving for definitive answers to social, economic,
and political problems, which, so the great half-educated has been led
to expect, ' science ' has it in its power to deliver. An abstraction named
' the scientist ' has been given form in people's minds as a new figure of
authority, corresponding to the priest or witch-doctor of a more primitive
culture, whose ' s c i e n t i f i c ' statements can be accepted with child-like
reliance. The notion is dangerous not merely because it is untrue but
because it is irrational. The quest for absolute scientific validity is as
hopeless as the quest for the philosopher's stone. There m a y be incidental
good in a political or religious philosophy t h a t claims ' Scientific ' author-
ity and t h a t stands ready to identify itself with the ready-made image
in the popular mind of the infallibility of science ; but the willingness
to assume and exploit t h a t r61e betrays the unprincipled shrewdness of
the publicist. Dialectical materialism originated about a hundred years
ago, precisely when science acquired its modern significance and status.
Marx himself studied his subject-matter in the spirit of scientific
understanding, b u t Marxist writers exalted the letter rather t h a n the
spirit of his approach ; according to t h e m ' dialectical materialism is
scientific m e t h o d ' ; the leaders of world communism are thereby
sanctioned to style themselves scientists. 31 B u t t h e y demand an uncritical
submission to a u t h o r i t y t h a t is entirely contrary to the spirit of the
s0 E. Partridge and J. W. Clark, British and American English ,since 1900, New York,
1951, pp. 236-8.
~1 The following r e m a r k s s u p p o r t the assertion in the t e x t :
T h e y were ' dialectical materialists ' ; t h a t is, t r u e scientists. The t r u t h they
spoke was scientific t r u t h . They knew the laws of social action, and their speech
embodied t h a t law. They knew history and they spoke in its n a m e . . . . Theirs
was the conceit of history. J. T. Fan'ell, Literature and Morality, New York, 1947,
p. 159.
F2
84 Sydney l~oss on
physical sciences, the spirit succinctly expressed by the Horatian phrase

nullius in verba. In Christian Science, likewise, whatever its spiritual
value, we have another example of the introduction of the terms science
and scientist to a context where they are inapplicable. The practice
could be exemplified further in a host of minor charlatanisms, particularly
in the advertising of goods or services to the public. The remedy lies in
a broadening of general culture to include both a sounder knowledge of
what science really is, and an educated dislike of laxness in the choice of
words. The latter desideratum, unfortunately, is becoming every year
increasingly harder to achieve. The development of the language, the
Zeitgeist as it were in matters linguistic, is not in a direction to preserve

the nuances, or even grosser distinctions of meaning. The scholars who
might be expected to protect the heritage, enriched and refined through
the centuries, of an incomparable language, are to be found aiding the
forces of attrition--and, as a final paradox, in the name of science.
The study of language, now re-named linguistic science, is one of a
number of disciplines t h a t were formerly fields of scholarship but are
now eager to be classified with the sciences. The assumption of the
currently more honorific name demands a change of attitude on the part
of its disciples ; a new orientation of studies is required t h a t can give
credibility to their claim to be scientists. Is not science a dispassionate
recording of facts, uncontaminated by value judgments ? The new
school of linguistic scientists, in accord with this concept of science, refuses
to condemn as incorrect any departure, no matter how illiterate, if only
it is sufficiently widespread, from what is traditionally accepted as good
speech. The editors of the most recent (1961) unabridged dictionary of
the English language, Webster's N e w International Dictionary, third
edition, belonged to this school of thought. The power of the word
science was their patent of authority to include in their dictionary a mass
of ephemeral terms, and also to accept as standard English a great m a n y
t h a t prior to their time had been labelled vulgar and colloquial, or, even
more bluntly, erroneous, as The attitude behind these decisions is called
' permissiveness ' ; it styles itself scientific ; but it is likewise clearly in
harmony with a sour puritanical dislike of authority and tradition. In
the history of the interactions between science and society we have
as Most of t h e reviews of t h e :Dictionary in t h e A m e r i c a n p o p u l a r p r e s s were adverse,
t h o u g h s o m e were u n f a i r l y so. T h a t of t h e :New Y o r k T i m e s h a d t h e salt of wit :
A passel of d o u b l e - d o m e s at t h e G. & C. M e r r i a m C o m p a n y joint in Springfield,
Mass. [its editorial began], h a v e been c o n f a b b i n g a n d y a k k i n g for t w e n t y - s e v e n
y e a r s - - w h i c h is n o t i n t e n d e d to infer t h a t t h e y h a v e n o t been doing p l e n t y w o r k - -
a n d n o w t h e y h a v e finalized W e b s t e r ' s T h i r d :New I n t e r n a t i o n a l D i c t i o n a r y ,
U n a b r i d g e d , a n e w edition of t h a t swell a n d e s t e e m e d word book.
T h o s e w h o r e g a r d t h e foregoing p a r a g r a p h as acceptable E n g l i s h prose will find
t h e n e w W e b s t e r ' s is j u s t t h e d i c t i o n a r y for t h e m .
already experienced the effects of the missionary zeal that stems from
such a combination of moral and scientific fervour ; it has been the
corrosive solvent of much that we may now regret having lost. Operating
on the language, through the medium of an influential dictionary, the
same spirit promotes the systematic relaxation of standards. Necessary
distinctions and useful shades of meaning will be swept away if the
irresponsible flow of slovenly English from the daily press is not to be
checked. Scientists especially have to insist on retaining sharp dis-
tinctions of meaning between words ; more so than humanists they are
required to attend to nice differences. The following pairs, for example,
are synonymous in popular speech but are not so to physical scientists :

speed and velocity, stress and strain, mass and weight, force and pressure,
accuracy and precision, dense and heavy. Thus common speech and the
language of science are growing even further apart, to the detriment
of both. Indeed every intellectual activity, not science alone, is hurt by
the democratization of the language. The very process of thinking
becomes less penetrating when the words that, it uses have lost their
precision.
Annals of Science.
WILLIAM WHEWELL
PLATE
III
Annals of Science. PLATE IV
FITZEDWARD HALL
By courtesy of Mr. J~. Homer ttall of Tryon, North Carolina.

Annals of Science. PLATE V
T h e r e v e n g e of t i m e : H u x l e y d e s c r i b e d as a scientist.

Ross 1964 Scientist The Story of A Word

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VOL. 18 June, 1962 No. 2

SCIENTIST: T H E STORY OF A WORD

By SYDNEY ROSS, B.Sc., Ph.D. *

This is a question of words and names.

TH~ appellation scientist is considered a title of honour, hotly contended

of their inventions. The genuine amateurs and the actual professionals,

when it refers to demonstrable knowledge should be translated by scienti-

knowledge, which is reflected b y a corresponding change in the significance

sciences and therefore seeking to d e n y t h e m the title of sciences : ' n a t u r a l

1 Grosseteste's c o m m e n t a r y on the Posterior Analytics, I, xi ; quoted f r o m A. C. Crombie,

morM philosophy. A book published in 1821 illustrates t h a t one word

principles--the inward finally abandoned, because, cultivated on such

t o h a v e t h e d o m i n a n t m e a n i n g o f ' n a t u r a l a n d p h y s i c a l science,' while

Again, in 1878, writing of modes of investigation ' v u l g a r l y called

as I have said, philosophy h a d n a r r o w e d in meaning to exclude n a t u r a l

could describe themselves with reference to their pursuits. Philosophers

nified compounds as nature-poker, * or nature-peeper, for these naturae

C o m m e n t s were not slow in coming. F a r a d a y wrote :12

* W h e n the G e r m a n association m e t at JJcrlin, a caricature was circulated there, repre-

also disapproved. H e preferred naturalist, which he found defined in

At first b o t h of Whewell's new words were slow to be adopted. F o r

should be avoided as much as possible, they are to be admitted whenever

existence of a Greek verb ending in--l~e~v or --l~aO~, such as fi~Tr'rt~v,

possibility in ist, sciencist, is ugly because of sibilance. Whewhell's flair

III. Objections to Scientist

The American advocacy of scientist also militated against its accep-

t u n i t y of proposing the adoption of uty, utians, phiUogy, and phillogs,

The Right Hon. ~ir ,John Lubbock, Bart., M,P,. F.R.S.

Professor Alfred Russel Wallace, F.R.~.

Mr Grant Allen, a popular writer.

The Right llon. Lord Rayleigh, F.R.S.

The Right Hen. Thos. H. Huxley, F.R.S.

Dr Albert Gi~nther, F.R.S., Head of the Zoological Department of the

I V . H a l l ' s Defence of Scientist

sition t h e y are seen, moreover, to show themselves, year b y year,

Of the letters previously quoted f r o m Science-Gossip, H u x l e y ' s was

t~te-£-t~te was lively and t h e h u m o u r a p p r o p r i a t e l y philological. As

After this preliminary banter, HM1, speaking in the rSle of D r Whewell,

old copist, now copyist. Where I indulged in a lieenee was in operating,

V. Scientist in Modern Use

Common speech having sanctioned the narrower meanings of science

1. Today, science denotes more than physical science: any disci-

2. Another extension, of more recent vintage, is derived from

glamourized) such as domestic science, military science, sanitary science,

3. B u t if science can be extended t h u s far, others will extend it

physical sciences, the spirit succinctly expressed by the Horatian phrase

Zeitgeist as it were in matters linguistic, is not in a direction to preserve

are synonymous in popular speech but are not so to physical scientists :

By courtesy of Mr. J~. Homer ttall of Tryon, North Carolina.

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