Category talk:Natural philosophers

The Speedy Deletion

• I disagree with this speedy deletion because it is not empty.  (Wikipedia sees fit to have categories for both scientists and natural philosophers, so there's probably some good reason for the categorical distinction.)  allixpeeke (talk) 21:47, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

• Ditto: ...historical distinction between science and natural philosophy exists. ELApro (talk) 22:48, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Neutral point of view

At the time this category was tagged it was empty, hence the speedy deletion request. It has subsequently been populated according to some non-neutral point of view about who is a "real scientist" and who is not.

In fact Wiktionary is correct in indicating natural philosophy is an historical term for science. There are some recent writers who use the term to indicate someone does not conform to modern (19th century) notions of scientific method, but this polemical usage should not be taken as redefining natural philosophy a separate and distinct endeavor from the practice of science to which it originally referred.

Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) is no less science just because the nomenclature of his day is now antequated. Galileo Galilei was no less a scientist just because the church had philosophical objections to his work. Categorizing these giants in the history of science, and the philosophy of science(!), as natural philosophers, in this day when what they did is properly called science, is about like calling Albert Einstein a numerologist just because the term historically referred to anyone who works with numbers.

Wikipedia may have become overrun with this sort of non-neutral point of view, but we should not follow their example. ~ Ningauble (talk) 15:03, 19 September 2015 (UTC)