• CatsGoMOW@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    As cool as that story is, it’s not correct. Taken from https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/71/1/46/819012/Mary-Somerville-s-vision-of-scienceThe-Scottish

    “Mary Somerville’s iconic status is often summed up by stating that William Whewell, in his review of her book On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, hailed her as the first “scientist.” But almost exactly the opposite was the case. Nowhere did Whewell or anyone else in her lifetime ever call Somerville a scientist, nor is it a word, so far as we know, that she ever used herself. By our current understanding of the term, Somerville can certainly be called a scientist, but for her contemporaries she belonged to a higher and more profound category entirely.”

  • MeaanBeaan@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Nice, a Lemmy post of a picture of a Tumblr post citing reddit for a completely bogus fact. We truly are using all of our brains these days.

    • MeDuViNoX@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      Running wasn’t invented until the late 15th century, when Thomas Running tried to walk twice at the same time!

    • PenisWenisGenius@lemmynsfw.com
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      7 months ago

      What do you mean. Random internet screenshots are among the most reputable source. I’m even citing this post in a scientific work right now.

    • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      It seems to be kinda true but not really? The term was coined by someone else to describe her apparently?

  • RealFknNito@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    “I will now be regressing the equality she attempted to create in an attempt to be petty.”

    I need to take a psychology class because I just can’t fucking understand people.

    • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Just as Lemmy’s full of right-wing authoritarians preaching communism, it’s also full of sexist assholes preaching feminism. I hope that one day the Fediverse will be mainstream enough that we’ll get enough reasonable people to downvote this trash into oblivion, but we don’t seem to be getting any closer to that.

  • dogsoahC@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    As a male scientist, I approve of this constant reaffirmation of my masculinity.

  • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    Behind many famous scientists there was a great woman whose work earned them the Nobel Prize.

  • Katrisia@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    I thought it was him, William Whewell, in response to an almost rant from Samuel Taylor Coleridge about “natural philosophers” (today’s scientists) not deserving to be called “philosophers”.

    I just googled it and found:

    Coleridge stood and insisted that men of science in the modern day should not be referred to as philosophers since they were typically digging, observing, mixing or electrifying—that is, they were empirical men of experimentation and not philosophers of ideas.

    […]

    There was much grumbling among those in attendance, when Whewell masterfully suggested that in “analogy with artist we form scientist.” Curiously this almost perfect linguistic accommodation of workmanship and inspiration, of the artisanal and the contemplative, of the everyday and the universal –was not readily accepted.

    Yeah, that was the story I’d heard.

    Another source says:

    Coleridge declared that although he was a true philosopher, the term philosopher should not be applied to the association’s members. William Whewell responded by coining the word scientist on the spot. He suggested

    by analogy with artist, we may form scientist.

    It’s funny because nobody remembers S. T. Coleridge as a philosopher but only as a poet. I’ve read that his philosophical writings were like an eccentric and almost immature version of German idealism. The thing that haunts me is that famous F. Schelling is well read but often misunderstood, so if they both were part of the romantic movement and they were both close to idealism, it could be that they both suffer the same fate.

    Anyway, I digressed. That was the story I knew. Basically, a gatekeeping poet separated philosophers and natural philosophers.

    It’s even curious because there are rumours about men like Coleridge being “half-mad”, and recently there have been studies on it. It would be ridiculous (just as history tends to be) if an old mad poet had divided these branches of knowledge on a fit of bad moods.

  • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    “Man of science” sounds so much cooler than “scientist”. Such a shame it’s not used anymore

  • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    Not even in the movie Oppenheimer they rise much the influence of Lisa Meitner