Naked Science Forum
On the Lighter Side => Famous Scientists, Doctors and Inventors => Topic started by: Anastasia.fr.1 on 12/04/2007 21:43:28
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who was the first ever scientist on the earth?
thank you
from Anastasia
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Hi Anastasia *Sheepy gently bunts the girlies forehead and licks her nose*..LOL !!...*Paul also gets the same...YAYYYYYY*
I am pretty sure the first ever scientist was Mr SCImon Entist...hence the term Scientist !...yes..yes..I am sure this is true !! [;D]
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Hey. Don't listen to Neil. He jokes alot sometimes. [:I]
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Just want to make it clear that it's the sheepy bunting Anastasias forehead..not me !! [;)]
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Oh.. I thought you were the sheep. [:o]
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Oh.. I thought you were the sheep. [:o]
erhmm...well...yes...yes..I am...but ...well...OH !!
*sheepy stamps feet ,falls to floor , waves arms and legs about and generally has a tantrum at the frustration of not being able to answer Seany correctly*
We must be careful not to ruin the premise of this thread which is Anastasia's fantastic question !!..even though..I know my answer is right !! [;)]
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who was the first ever scientist on the earth?
thank you
from Anastasia
It is an impossible question to answer because the development of science was a gradual process, and because the idea of a scientist as a separate branch of philosophy developed long after the ideas involved in science was common currency.
People like Francis Bacon, or even Newton, would not have regarded themselves as scientists, just as philosophers of nature, following in the footsteps of philosophers that went back to the ancient Greeks, and even some of the Babylonions - many of them would be people who have no written evidence of themselves.
The difference between people like Francis Bacon and Newton and someone like Einstein, is that in Francis Bacon's time, the development of natural philosophy and science was not as extensive as it is, so one man could be an expert in many fields of philosophy, and he could even be interested at once in the spiritual and natural philosophy and music and many other disciplines. In that time, so few books were written, that a man could hold in his library a copy of every book ever published. Probably since the very earliest civilisations there have been some philosophers who have studied the world with a scientific perspective, but it was just a small part of the wider philosophical study of the world around them that they would have undertaken.
By the time Einstein was developing his scientific theories, there had been such an expansion of human knowledge that one man could no longer be expert in all things, and so some people became expert in science, while other people became expert in other branches of knowledge.
This does not mean that scientists cannot know anything but science, or that people who are not specialist scientists cannot also know something about science; but it does mean that people will only be expert in one area (maybe, very occasionally, in a few areas), while in many other areas they are merely interested, and have some knowledge, but are not experts in.
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Yes, and here comes George (The Wise One) with a perfectly suitable answer. But Neil, I still think your answer was better [:P]
Mr SCImon Entist
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We're all scientists, so the first person on Earth is the first scientist.
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Science comes from the Latin - Scio which means "I know". A scientist therefore, is someone who thinks and knows things. So therefore, I think the first scientist would be Adam or Eve? [;D]
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The equivalent German word is Wissenschaft, which means the same thing - meaning 'wise craft', or the craft of wisdom or knowledge.
Incidentally, another word that comes from the same root is 'witchcraft'.
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Lol, that's interesting..
In English, Science means Knowledge. We missed the basic one out [;D]
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Anyone who can explain why "science" and "conscience", both in English and in French, show in the very spelling that they are linked, while in English they sound so different (while sounding the same in French) ? I assume both words came into English from the French, but when did the difference in pronounciation ever start ?
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^ Because conscience sounds weird to read it as "con-science" [;D]
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Anyone who can explain why "science" and "conscience", both in English and in French, show in the very spelling that they are linked, while in English they sound so different (while sounding the same in French) ? I assume both words came into English from the French, but when did the difference in pronounciation ever start ?
Both words have clear Latin roots, and I would actually doubt that it came to English thorough French, but probably both words came directly into their respective languages from Latin (probably, in the case of conscience, the Latin of the Catholic church, and 'science' from the Latin taught in universities).
There is always natural language drift, and English as it is pronounced today would have been very different from the pronunciation it would have had (even for the same words) 600 years ago (as I am sure the same is true of French). Much of the reason why two words that appear the same might be pronounced differently is often dependent upon when the word first entered the language, but it also depends upon who uses it.
One thing that was raised by someone I was talking to not long ago was how we now pronounce the word 'zoo' (with a long 'o'), while this is a contraction of what in the past was known as a zoological garden, where 'zoological' was pronounced 'zo-ological'.