Abstract
There’s a faction of current historiography that condemns the usage of the word “científco/ca” for referring to the practical and erudite men and women of the XVI to XVIII centuries, in favor of the term “natural philosophers”. This historiographical program, of heavy Anglo-Saxon influence, states that William Whewell (1794-1866) invented the world “scientist” in 1834, as a substitute to the German natur-forscher. However, in Spanish we don’t use the literal translation of this word “cientista”, but rather “científico/ca”. The study of the historical origin of this noun is the object of study of this paper. To achieve this goal, important tools for historiographical research have been consulted like el Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, CORDE, NTLLE, DICTER 2.0, CDH and Google Ngram. A conjecture has also guided this investigation: the idea that the process of nominalization of the adjective “científico/ca” in Spanish is not independent from the semantic evolution during de Scientific Revolution of the concept of science.
Key words: Scientific Revolution; Conceptual history; Natural philosophy; History of science; Origin of the word scientist; Nominalization; lexicalization