180 Heilbron
bad for.” Almost 60 percent could not manage to name a subject. Half of
those who did, some forty Fellows, specifi ed “mathematics and natural
philosophy,” not because they “practiced” them but because Newton had.
Except for a very few, they were at most dilettantish cultivators of their
favorite sciences.^19 Even those who devoted much of their time to natural
philosophy avoided the stain of practice. For the same reason, “men of sci-
ence,” as they liked to call themselves in the nineteenth century, rejected
William Whewell’s neologisms “scientist” and “physicist” as smacking of
“dentist,” a paid practitioner of an unpleasant profession.^20
On the continent, physicien and its counterparts Physiker, Naturkundi-
ger, and fi sico may have had a shade more of the professional about them
than natural philosopher. The salaried members of the leading academies,
specifi cally those of Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, were required to con-
tribute original papers to their academies’ publications. Most of the mem-
bers of the provincial academies in France were professional men in the
eighteenth- century sense—lawyers, doctors, clergy, military men—and
improving agriculturalists. It was much the same in the economic and
patriotic societies in the Germanies, with, perhaps, a greater proportion
of small landholders.^21 No more in Europe than in England was a term
with the professional overtones of “scientist” required. Scientifi que used
as a noun and Naturwissenschaftler, the equivalents of “scientist,” were
introduced in the later nineteenth century.
Few among those who called themselves natural philosophers or physi-
ciens followed the Encyclopédie’s dictate about philosophizing: “A true phi-
losopher does not see through others’ eyes.” The Royal Society’s arms bear
a similar slogan, Nullius in verba, which the learned recognized as Horace’s
injunction not to swear allegiance to any school or master. “The philoso-
pher,” continues the Encyclopédie, “is to give the reasons for things, or, at
least, to seek them. Those who stop at reporting what they see are only
historians. Those who calculate and measure the proportions of things,
their sizes and values, are only mathematicians. But he who arrives at
discovering the reasons why things are as they are and not otherwise, is a
true philosopher.” What applied to the genus philosopher applied also to
the species natural philosopher, since physics, according to the Encyclo-
pédie, made up a third of philosophy.^22
The natural habitat of the true natural philosopher was the academy
of science. There are indications that the proportion of true natural phi-
losophers in them increased after 1770. In 1776, the Royal Society called
a moratorium on the election of foreign members who, on average, were
less truly philosophical than even the English; and when it lifted the ban,