
On the connexion of the physical sciences
by Mary Somerville · first published 1834
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4HN commenters
2020–2026first – last mentioned
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Her most famous book On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, which is mentioned in the article, is available in full on Archive.org and looks to be a rather interesting read [1]. [1] https://archive.org/details/onconnexionphys01somegoog
on “Mary Somerville, the woman for whom the word “scientist” was coined (2016)” ↗…propounded in the Quarterly Review for March, 1834. The anonymous reviewer made the suggestion, too jocularly, however, to be taken entirely in earnest, in the course of a review of Mrs Somerville's book On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences. From Todhunter's biography 9 we learn that the reviewer was William Whewell, F.R.S." I cannot yet find a copy of the original review and am curious to find it. In any case I think you're a little weird…
on “Mary Somerville, the woman for whom the word “scientist” was coined (2016)” ↗…allude to regarding "philosophy" being too broad of a term, appears on page 59. However, you seem to have neglected to mention that this 1934 article by Whewell was a review of Mary Somerville's book (On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences). The full text of Whewell's 1834 article appears to be available [1] from a University of Kent blog post on the topic [2] [1] https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/sciencecomma/files/2015/04/whewell_... [2] https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/sciencecomma/2015/04/09/whewell-and...
on “Mary Somerville, the woman for whom the word “scientist” was coined (2016)” ↗…palatable") EDIT: It seems Whewell probably did coin the word "scientist" and this was indeed a sly self-reference. 2. "Scientist" was not coined for Somerville, but instead likely predates Somerville's On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences. Whewell seems to suggest the term arose during one of the meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Sciences "in the last three summers" (i.e. 1-3 years before the publication of Somerville's…
on “Mary Somerville, the woman for whom the word “scientist” was coined (2016)” ↗Looking at the training data I don't think it will know anything.[0] Doubt On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834) is going to have much about QM. While the cut-off is 1900, it seems much of the texts a much closer to 1800 than 1900. [0] https://github.com/haykgrigo3/TimeCapsuleLLM/blob/main/Copy%...
on “TimeCapsuleLLM: LLM trained only on data from 1800-1875” ↗