In the previous two posts in this series, I detailed what I considered to a valuable methodology for investigating the world, and (for want of a better term) dubbed those who hold these views to be ‘scientists‘.
Given all the monotheist mathematicians, all the psychic psychologists, all the Scientologist seismologists, we have needed such a distinction for quite some time.
Too often do debates stall when a defender of an opposing methodology starts to list prominent ‘scientists’ who share their beliefs. It seems to me that when the happens, my side is using the word ‘scientist’ to speak about what someone believes, while the other side uses it to merely describe what someone does as a job.
And while I am not all too concerned with words, trying to focus my efforts on the distinctions behind them, it seems to me that this distinction is being fogged out by sloppy terminology.
Let’s consider a related question: can someone who believes ‘the Bible is the perfect and literal word of God’ still be called a ‘biologist’, without making a nonsense of the word? Well, being a successful ‘biologist’ is about technical aptitude, expert knowledge in their specialism, and imaginative new ideas. It’s doesn’t seem to say anything about one’s philosophical views, or one’s general approach to knowledge. Thus, I think we can concede that such a person can be called a ‘biologist’ – given, of course, that they have some of the qualifications previously mentioned.
Yet, I think we need to take a stand and say that a person who believes ‘the Bible is the perfect and literal word of God’ is either desperately ignorant, or they operate under beliefs that stultify the progress of our knowledge. We need a succinct way to make clear that such a person does not follow our methodology – that they are not a ‘scientist‘.
Of course, one clear objection to my proposal is that this simply is not how the word ‘scientist’ is presently used. I agree, but would sugestion that the word has no relevant utility for today.
It seems to me that ‘scientist’ and ‘science‘ are today nothing more than vague collective nouns, ready to be seized every-time someone wishes to make a passing gesture in the general direction of empirical investigation.
Originally, the word ‘science’ meant simply ‘to know’, as is evident in the word ‘omniscient’ which means ‘all knowing’. The word seems to have been given its modern use in the 1500s when it was employed to describe a relatively new venture of acquiring knowledge through experimental inquiry, rather than idealist introspection. For example, Edmund Spenser‘s 1590 poem, ’The Faerie Queene‘, has one of the first printed uses of the word ‘science’:
- For by his mightie Science he had seene / The secret vertue of that weapon keene [...] (III.i) [1]
In only a few centuries, this new approach to knowledge produced results of unanticipated success. Consequently, investigators of ‘science’ split into rarefied and specialized groups. Gradually terms were coined for: ‘biologists’, ‘chemists’, ‘physicists’, and so on. ‘Science’ then became a summary term to describe an ever diversifying and expanding collection of experimental methods and factual knowledge.
Even by the time of Thomas Jefferson, the word ‘science’ had come to describe almost any field of study. In an letter to friend and chemist Joseph Priestly on Janurary 18th 1800, Jefferson wrote:
“I will venture even to sketch the sciences which seem useful & practicable for us, as they occur to me while holding my pen. Botany, Chemistry, Zoology, Anatomy, Surgery, Medicine, Natl Philosophy [physics], Agriculture, Mathematics, Astronomy, Geology, Geography, Politics, Commerce, History, Ethics, Law, Arts, Fine arts.” [2]
The last four subjects of ‘History, Ethics, Law, Arts, Fine arts’ seems to have as little to do with each other as they have to do with ‘Zoology’.
Consequently, by 1830 a fierce debate begun in England among members of the newly formed British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) concerning what constituted ‘real science’. The group had formed in response to noticing that the Royal Society was becoming populated by an ever increasing number of people who didn’t actually do any empirical investigations – bishops, and politicians being two such examples.
In 1833, William Whewell (pronounced ‘who-ell’), chaired a discussion between members of the BAAS, including the romantic poet Samuel Coleridge. As well as an attempt to come to some agreement concerning what the group considered to be ‘real science’, they wished to find a word that would describe those who engage in such pursuits. Whewell’s suggestion of ‘scientist’ initially received little support.
He tried again a few years later, using the word in his 1840 book ‘Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences’:
“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.” [3]
Perhaps this was the impetus for ‘scientist’ appearing in that year’s edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. However, as the historian of science Richard Yeo has commented in his 2003 book ‘Defending Science‘, the word:
“…was not generally adopted in Britain until the close of the century, partly because some of the important men of science, such as Michael Faraday and T. H. Huxley, preferred to think of their work as part of broader philosophical, theological, and moral concerns.” [4]
I am in much agreement with Faraday’s and Huxley’s assessment. I too think that we need to start thinking of scientific inquiry as part of ‘broader philosophical, theological and moral concerns’, although I would disagree with both men on the specifics – Faraday was a compassionate Christian, while Huxley was the coiner of that cowardly word ‘agnostic’.
Whewell was solving a problem of his age: the question of how best to investigate the physical world. That dispute has almost entirely been resolved, if not only by the success of our inquiry. And given ‘scientist’ can now readily be replaced by a more specific field of study (‘geologist’, ‘embryologist’, ‘cosmologist’…), one has to wonder what use the word has today.
Rather than retire Whewell’s word, I think we can put it to new use. Let us start our own association for those who accept that moral questions and scientific questions are linked. That these questions are two aspects of the same program for our mutual betterment. And let us call those in this association ‘scientists’.
References
[1] Spencer, Edmund (2003 [1590]) ‘Faerie Queene‘ Longman
[2] Appears in: Conant, James Bryant (1962) ’Thomas Jefferson and the Development of American Public Education‘ University of California Press pp 103-104
[3] Whewell, William (1847 [1840]) ‘The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon Their History’ Volume 2, p 560
[4] Yeo, Richard (2003) ‘Defining Science: William Whewell, Natural Knowledge and Public Debate in Early Victorian Britain‘ CUP p 5
For further reading, see: http://www.eoht.info/page/Whewell-Coleridge+debate
