Abstract
THE Vicissitudes of Families of Words, and especially of scientific nomenclature, would require another Burke to write their changeful history. Take, for instance, the word Philosophy, — how odd its present distorted meaning as compared with its literal sense, and how curious its alliance with such terms as Natural, Expenmental, Mechanical, Chemical, and the like. Then, again, take Science,—how strange its present opposition to Learning, and how remarkable the adoption of the word History in conjunction with Natural ! Most surprising of all, however, is perhaps the opposition set up between the words natural and physical; which has gone to such length that Prof. Huxley, in his recent Address to the British Association, could properly and intelligibly employ such a phrase as “those phenomena of nature which we call physical.”
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AKIN, C. Practical Physics . Nature 3, 121–122 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/003121a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/003121a0