Scientists working in a laboratory

A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method.^[1] The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science.^[2] This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word. Scientists perform research toward a more comprehensive understanding of nature, including physical, mathematical and social realms. This is distinct from philosophers, those who use logic toward a more comprehensive understanding of intangible aspects of reality that lack a direct connection to nature, focusing on the realm of thought itself. Scientists are also distinct from engineers, those who develop devices that serve practical purposes. When science is done with a goal toward practical utility, it is called 'applied science' (short of the creation of new devices that fall into the realm of engineering). When science is done with an inclusion of intangible aspects of reality it is called 'natural philosophy'.

Social roles that partly correspond with the modern scientist can be identified going back at least until 17th century natural philosophy, but the term scientist is much more recent. Until the late 19th or early 20th century, those who pursued science were called "natural philosophers" or "men of science".^[3][4][5][6]

English philosopher and historian of science William Whewell coined the term scientist in 1833, and it was first published in Whewell's anonymous 1834 review of Mary Somerville's On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences published in the Quarterly Review. Whewell's suggestion of the term was partly satirical, a response to changing conceptions of science itself in which natural knowledge was increasingly seen as distinct from other forms of knowledge. Whewell wrote of "an increasing proclivity of separation and dismemberment" in the sciences; while highly specific terms proliferated'chemist, mathematician, naturalist'the broad term "philosopher" was no longer satisfactory to group together those who pursued science, without the caveats of "natural" or "experimental" philosopher. Members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science had been complaining about the lack of a good term at recent meetings, Whewell reported in his review; alluding to himself, he noted that "some ingenious gentleman proposed that, by analogy with artist, they might form [the word] scientist, and added that there could be no scruple in making free with this term since we already have such words as economist, and atheist'but this was not generally palatable".^[7]

Whewell proposed the word again more seriously (and not anonymously) in his 1840 The 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.

He also proposed the term physicist at the same time, as a counterpart to the French word physicien. Neither term gained wide acceptance until decades later; scientist became a common term in the late 19th century in the United States and around the turn of the 20th century in Great Britain.^[8][9][10] By the twentieth century, the modern notion of science as a special brand of information about the world, practiced by a distinct group and pursued through a unique method, was essentially in place.

[edit] Description

Science and technology have continually modified human existence. As a profession the scientist of today is widely recognized. Scientists include theoreticians who mainly develop new models to explain existing data and predict new results, and experimentalists who mainly test models by making measurements ' though in practice the division between these activities is not clear-cut, and many scientists perform both tasks.

Mathematics is often grouped with the sciences. Some of the greatest physicists have also been creative mathematicians. There is a continuum from the most theoretical to the most empirical scientists with no distinct boundaries. In terms of personality, interests, training and professional activity, there is little difference between applied mathematicians and theoretical physicists.

Scientists can be motivated in several ways. Many have a desire to understand why the world is as we see it and how it came to be. They exhibit a strong curiosity about reality. Other motivations are recognition by their peers and prestige, or the desire to apply scientific knowledge for the benefit of people's health, the nations, the world, nature or industries (academic scientist and industrial scientist).

[edit] Scientists versus engineers

Engineers and scientists are often confused in the minds of the general public, with the former being closer to applied science. While scientists explore nature in order to discover general principles, engineers apply established principles drawn from science in order to create new inventions and improve upon the old ones.^[11][12] In short, scientists study things whereas engineers design things. However, there are plenty of instances where significant accomplishments are made in both fields by the same individual. When a scientist has also an engineering education, the same individual would explore principles in nature to solve problems and to design new technology. Scientists often perform some engineering tasks in designing experimental equipment and building prototypes, and some engineers do first-rate scientific research. Biomedical, mechanical, electrical, chemical, and aerospace engineers are often at the forefront of scientific investigation of new phenomena and materials. Peter Debye received a degree in electrical engineering and a doctorate in physics before eventually winning a Nobel Prize in chemistry. Similarly, Paul Dirac, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, began his academic career as an electrical engineer before proceeding to mathematics and later theoretical physics. Claude Shannon, a theoretical engineer, founded modern information theory.

[edit] Historical development

The social roles of "scientists", and their predecessors before the emergence of modern scientific disciplines, have evolved considerably over time. Scientists of different eras (and before them, natural philosophers, mathematicians, natural historians, natural theologians, engineers, and other who contributed to the development of science) have had widely different places in society, and the social norms, ethical values, and epistemic virtues associated with scientists'and expected of them'have changed over time as well. Accordingly, many different historical figures can be identified as early scientists, depending on which elements of modern science are taken to be essential. Some historians point to the seventeenth century as the period when science in a recognizably modern form developed (what is popularly called the Scientific Revolution), and hence is when the first people who can be considered scientists are to be found. If the category of "scientist" is limited to those who do scientific research as a profession, then the social role of scientist essentially emerged in the 19th century as part of the professionalization of science.^[13]

"No one in the history of civilization has shaped our understanding of science and natural philosophy more than the great Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle (384-322 BC), who exerted a profound and pervasive influence for more than two thousand years" 'Gary B. Ferngren^[14]

[edit] Ancient and medieval science

This section's factual accuracy is disputed. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page. (June 2010)

Knowledge about nature in Classical Antiquity was pursued by many kinds of scholars. Greek contributions to science'including works of geometry and mathematical astronomy, early accounts of biological processes and catalogs of plants and animals, and theories of knowledge and learning'were produced by philosophers and physicians, as well as practitioners of various trades. These roles, and their associations with scientific knowledge, spread with the Roman Empire and, with the spread of Christianity became closely link to religious institutions in most of Europe. Astrology and astronomy became an important area of knowledge, and the role of astronomer/astrologer developed with the support political and religions patronage. By the time of the medieval university system, knowledge was divide into the trivium'philosophy, including natural philosophy'and the quadrivium'mathematics, including astronomy. Hence, the medieval analogs of scientists were often either philosophers or mathematicians. Knowledge of plants and animals was broadly the province of physicians.

Science in medieval Islam generated some new modes of developing natural knowledge, although still within the bounds of existing social roles such as philosopher and mathematician. Many proto-scientists from the Islamic Golden Age and medieval and Renaissance Europe are considered polymaths, in part because of the lack of anything corresponding to modern scientific disciplines. Many of these early polymaths were also religious priests and theologians: for example, Alhazen and al-Biruni were mutakallimiin; the physician Avicenna was a hafiz; the physician Ibn al-Nafis was a hafiz, muhaddith and ulema; the botanist Otto Brunfels was a theologian and historian of Protestantism; the astronomer and physician Nicolaus Copernicus was a priest.

[edit] Historical scientists

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2010)

Louis Pasteur's portrait in his later years.

The physicist Albert Einstein is one of the most well known scientists of the 20th century.

Ludwik Hirszfeld, one of the co-discoverers of the inheritance of ABO blood type

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity

Descartes was not only a pioneer of analytic geometry but formulated a theory of mechanics and advanced ideas about the origins of animal movement and perception. Vision interested the physicists Young and Helmholtz, who also studied optics, hearing and music. Newton extended Descartes' mathematics by inventing calculus (contemporaneously with Leibniz). He provided a comprehensive formulation of classical mechanics and investigated light and optics. Fourier founded a new branch of mathematics ' infinite, periodic series ' studied heat flow and infrared radiation, and discovered the greenhouse effect. Von Neumann, Turing, Khinchin, Markov and Wiener, all mathematicians, made major contributions to science and probability theory, including the ideas behind computers, and some of the foundations of statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics. Many mathematically inclined scientists, including Galileo, were also musicians.

In the late 19th century, Louis Pasteur, an organic chemist, discovered that microorganisms can cause disease. A few years earlier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., the American physician, poet and essayist, noted that sepsis in women following childbirth was spread by the hands of doctors and nurses, four years before Semmelweis in Europe. There are many compelling stories in medicine and biology, such as the development of ideas about the circulation of blood from Galen to Harvey. The flowering of genetics and molecular biology in the 20th century is replete with famous names. Ramón y Cajal won the Nobel Prize in 1906 for his remarkable observations in neuroanatomy.

Some see a dichotomy between experimental sciences and purely "observational" sciences such as astronomy, meteorology, oceanography and seismology. But astronomers have done basic research in optics, developed charge-coupled devices, and in recent decades have sent space probes to study other planets in addition to using the Hubble Telescope to probe the origins of the Universe some 14 billion years ago. Microwave spectroscopy has now identified dozens of organic molecules in interstellar space, requiring laboratory experimentation and computer simulation to confirm the observational data and starting a new branch of chemistry. Computer modeling and numerical methods are techniques required of students in every field of quantitative science.

Those considering science as a career often look to the frontiers. These include cosmology and biology, especially molecular biology and the human genome project. Other areas of active research include the exploration of matter at the scale of elementary particles as described by high-energy physics, and nanotechnology, which hopes to develop electronics including microscopic computers, and perhaps artificial intelligence. Although there have been remarkable discoveries with regard to brain function and neurotransmitters, the nature of the mind and human thought still remain unknown.

[edit] Types of scientists

• Agricultural scientists
• Archaeologists
• Astronomers
• Astrophysicists
• Biologists
  • Astrobiologists
  • Biotechnologist
  • Biophysicists
  • Botanists
  • Entomologists
  • Evolutionary biologists
  • Ecologists
  • Geneticists
  • Herpetologists
  • Ichthyologists
  • Immunologists
  • Lepidopterists
  • Marine biologists
  • Microbiologists
  • Mycologists
  • Neuroscientists
  • Ornithologists
  • Paleontologists
  • Pathologists
  • Pharmacologists
  • Physiologists
  • Zoologists
• Chemists
  • Analytical chemists
  • Biochemists
  • Inorganic chemists
  • Organic chemists
  • Physical chemist
• Computer scientists
• Earth scientists
  • Geologists
  • Glaciologists
  • Hydrologists
  • Limnologists
  • Meteorologists
  • Mineralogists
  • Oceanographers
  • Paleontologists
  • Seismologists
  • Volcanologists
• Educational psychologists
• Library scientists
• Management scientists
• Mathematicians
  • Statisticians
• Medical scientists
• Military scientists
• Philosophers
• Physicists
• Psychologists
• Social scientists
  • Anthropologists
  • Communication scientists
  • Criminologists
  • Demographers
  • Economists
  • Geographers
  • Political economists
  • Political scientists
  • Sociologists
• Technological scientists

[edit] See also

• Academia.edu
• Engineers- though this field handles in technology, the uses of math and science (physics) is involved.
• Fields Medal
• Government Scientist
• Hippocratic Oath for Scientists
• History of science (and the History of science category)
• Lay people
• Mad scientist
• Natural science
• Naturally Obsessed (documentary film)
• Nobel Prize
• Protoscience
• Pseudoscience
• Social science
• Women in science

Related lists

• List of engineers
• List of mathematicians

[edit] References

[edit] External articles

Further reading

• Alison Gopnik, "Finding Our Inner Scientist", Daedalus, Winter 2004.
• Charles George Herbermann, The Catholic Encyclopedia. Science and the Church. The Encyclopedia press, 1913. v.13. Page 598.
• Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962.
• Arthur Jack Meadows. The Victorian Scientist: The Growth of a Profession, 2004. ISBN 0712308946.
• Science, The Relation of Pure Science to Industrial Research. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Page 511 onwards.

Websites

• For best results, add a little inspiration - The Telegraph about What Inspired You?, a survey of key thinkers in science, technology and medicine
• Peer Review Journal Science on amateur scientists
• The philosophy of the inductive sciences, founded upon their history (1847)- Complete Text
• World Social Forum Sciences et dDémocratie