Concept
Scientist
Overview
A scientist is an expert in one or more specific fields of science and who habitually uses scientific methods in carrying out scientific research to advance knowledge in science.
In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosophical study of nature called natural philosophy. Though Thales (c. 624–545 BC) was arguably the first scientist for describing how cosmic events may be seen as natural, not necessarily caused by gods, it was not until the 19th century that the term scientist came into regular use: it was coined by the theologian, philosopher, and historian of science William Whewell to describe Mary Somerville.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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There could be no history of science on any other basis. No history of science goes back to ultimate elements or sense-data, or to any combination of bare data on one hand and logical elements on the other. The world of the scientist is always there as one in which reconstruction is taking place with continual shifting of problems, but as a real world within which the problems arise. The errors of the past and…
John Dewey, Creative Intelligence
States what Scientist is; names Scientist twice.
These two aspects are in no sense opposed or conflicting. But neither are they immediately identical. For the scientist, the subject-matter represents simply a given body of truth to be employed in locating new problems, instituting new researches, and carrying them through to a verified outcome. To him the subject-matter of the science is self-contained. He refers various portions of it to each other; he connects…
John Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum
Names Scientist several times; opens on Scientist.
Always the scientist is less often mistaken than a prophet who should predict at random. Besides the progress though slow is continuous, so that scientists, though more and more bold, are less and less misled. This is little, but it is enough. I well know that M.
Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science
States what Scientist is; names Scientist several times.
Philosophers who discussed Scientist
- Giordano Bruno
- Pierre Gassendi
- William Whewell
- Alcmaeon of Croton
- Intellectual
- Roger Bacon
- Aristotle
- Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
- William Derham
- Franciscus Patricius
- Johannes Nikolaus Tetens
- Jan of Stobnica
Related ideas
- Elementary particle
- Avicenna
- Germany
- Alan Turing
- Geology
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Galen
- Gerolamo Cardano
- Great Britain
- Philosophy
- Italy
- India
- Indonesia
- Isaac Newton
- Academy
- Atheism
- Japan
- National Science Foundation
- John von Neumann
- Ibn al-Haytham
- South Africa
- Light
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Cosmology
Place in the tradition
Part of British philosophy.