âI think we must be content to be anatomists, zoologists,
geologists, electricians, engineers, mathematicians, naturalists,â he
argued. ââScientistâ has acquiredâperhaps unjustlyâthe significance of a
charlatanâs device.â
This reminds me a bit of the angst amongst engineers (in the UK, at least) about the âappropriationâ of that term by people who arenât. Seems to bother some people more than othersâŚ
FWIW, on that subject, I prefer the European âIngenieurâ, making the root from Latin ingenium, meaning âclevernessâ and ingeniare, meaning âto contrive, deviseâ more clear.
I prefer Enginerd â people who arenât will stay away form that one.
âingeniumâ sounds like a synonym for âbemusedâ
The Online Etymology Dictionary has an excellent entry on the derivation of the word âscienceâ. It may be that 19th-century scientists simply wanted a title with âoomphâ (like âmaster of high new knowledgeâ), but IMO the word âscientistâ is perfectly descriptive of who they are and what they do:
⢠They cut apart a problem with intelligence to find knowledge.
This exact sort of discussion is the root of the difference between Aluminum and Alumin-I-um.
Humphry Davy, the man who discovered the element, named it âaluminumâ, and that should have been the end of things.
But then some busybody wrote in to a British political-literary journal called the Quarterly Review complaining that aluminum âhas a less classical soundâ, and proposed instead to call the metal âaluminiumâ.
Oh, of course! Letâs disrespect the discoverer of the elementâs wishes and change the name of his discovery to suit our own petty differences of aesthetic taste!
Didnât he go with Alumium first of all?
But yes, we should probably all call it Aluminium, and we should use -ize instead of -ise (but -yse instead of -yze) 
He had several names for it, yes, but the final one he settled on was âaluminumâ.
To employ one of the earlier choices he discarded would be odd. It would be like reading The Hobbit and insisting on using the name âGandalfâ instead of âThorin Oakenshieldâ, and using âBladorthinâ instead of âGandalfâ, because those were the original names for those characters before Tolkien changed his mind.
Heh. I meant to write Aluminum there. Stupid autocorrect I was agreeing with you.
I always thought that natural philosophy sounded cool when I was a kid, but you donât see that used much anymore. Being a naturalist sounded pretty noble to me, too.
Being a naturalist always sounded a bit dirty to meâŚ
Perhaps we should return to âboffinsâ?
Boffins is good. And theyâve that whole multi-coloured beak thing going on for them.
There are scientists who call themselves ânaturalistsâ to this day. They are the more old-fashioned sort of biologist who observe animals in the wild rather than work in a laboratory or use molecular methods.
I prefer our German word âWissenschaftlerâ - âKnowledge-Makerâ.
Ja. But that is more than just scientists. For example, a historian would be considered a âWissenschaftlerâ, but in English not. They would be considered a âhumanities scholarâ along with the sort of person who is obsessed with the variations in the various 17th century printings of Shakespeareâs plays.
While the English world has a stronger distinction between science and humanties, it had long embraced the concept and terminology of âsocial scienceâ, though.
Also, he named it because of its association with alumina, not aluminia whatever that would be.
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