Natural Philosophy - Origin and Evolution of The Term

Origin and Evolution of The Term

The term natural philosophy preceded our current natural science (from the Latin, scientia, meaning "knowledge") when the subject of that knowledge or study is "the workings of nature". Natural philosophy pertains to the work of analysis and synthesis of common experience and argumentation to explain or describe nature—while, in the 16th century and earlier, science is used exclusively as a synonym for knowledge or study. The term science, as in natural science, gained its modern meaning when acquiring knowledge through experiments (special experiences) under the scientific method became its own specialized branch of study apart from natural philosophy. In the 16th century, Jacopo Zabarella was the first person appointed as a professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Padua.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, natural philosophy referred to what is now physical science. From the mid-19th century, when it became increasingly unusual for scientists to contribute to both physics and chemistry, it just meant physics, and is still used in that sense in degree titles at the University of Oxford. Natural philosophy was distinguished from the other precursor of modern science, natural history, in that the former involved reasoning and explanations about nature (and after Galileo, quantitative reasoning), whereas the latter was essentially qualitative and descriptive.