On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences

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On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences
Title page, 1834
AuthorMary Somerville
LanguageEnglish
SubjectScience
GenrePopular science
PublisherJohn Murray
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint
Mary Fairfax (Mrs William Somerville)
Mary Fairfax (Mrs William Somerville)

On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, by Mary Somerville, is one of the best-selling science books of the 19th century.[1] The book went through many editions and was translated into several European languages. It is considered one of the first popular science books, containing few diagrams and very little mathematics. It describes astronomy, physics, chemistry, geography, meteorology and electromagnetism as they were scientifically understood at the time.[2][3][4][5] In an anonymous review of the book in the March 1834 issue of The Quarterly Review, later attributed to William Whewell, the term "scientist" appeared in print as a proposed collective name for investigators of the material world.[6][7][8]


Review and the term "scientist"

In the review, the reviewer wrote:[6]

A curious illustration of this result may be observed in the want of any name by which we can designate the students of the knowledge of the material world collectively. 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 could describe themselves with reference to their pursuits. Philosophers was felt to be too wide and too lofty a term, and was very properly forbidden them by Mr. Coleridge, both in his capacity of philologer and metaphysician; savans was rather assuming, besides being French instead of English; some ingenious gentleman proposed that, by analogy 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 undignified compounds as nature-poker, or nature-peeper, for these naturae curiosi; but these were indignantly rejected.

Ross identified the "ingenious gentleman" as Whewell himself.[7]

See also

References

  1. "Review of On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences by Mrs. Sommerville". The Quarterly Review. 51: 54–68. March 1834.
  2. "Nature Podcast". 30 October 2014. Retrieved 5 November 2014.
  3. Holmes, Richard (2014). "In retrospect: On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences". Nature. 514 (7523): 432–433. Bibcode:2014Natur.514..432H. doi:10.1038/514432a. ISSN 0028-0836.
  4. Secord, James (18 March 2014). Visions of Science: Books and readers at the dawn of the Victorian age. OUP Oxford. pp. 107–134. ISBN 9780191662751. Retrieved 5 November 2014.
  5. Patterson, E. C.; Eisberg, J (June 1985). "Book Review: "The Queen of Nineteenth-Century Science": Mary Somerville and the Cultivation of Science, 1815–1840". Journal for the History of Astronomy. 16 (2): 144–146. Bibcode:1985JHA....16..144P. doi:10.1177/002182868501600209. S2CID 126405732.
  6. Anonymous (March 1834). "Art. III.—On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences. By Mrs. Somerville". The Quarterly Review. 51: 54–68 – via HathiTrust.
  7. Ross, Sydney (1 June 1962). "Scientist: The story of a word". Annals of Science. 18 (2): 65–85. doi:10.1080/00033796200202722. ISSN 0003-3790.
  8. Warner, Deborah Jean (1 March 1990). "What is a scientific instrument, when did it become one, and why?". The British Journal for the History of Science. 23 (1): 86. doi:10.1017/S0007087400044460. ISSN 1474-001X. S2CID 145517920.