The term "scientist" was coined by a British scientist and philosopher of science, William Whewell who lived between 1794 and 1866. So, the late date of the birth of this terms is really striking. After all, the word "science" derives from the ancient Latin word "scientia" which means cognition about the world as opposed to the Latin word "sapientia" meaning the self-reflexive domain of wisdom. The Latin word "sciens"- knowing- originally means to seperate one thing from another. So, although the word science has an ancient root the word scientist is quite modern.

Until the mid-19th century, science was a category of philosophy. The examination of the natural world was part of what philosophers did. Only as the methods of scientific inquiry became technical a new professionalism took hold in various disciplines. If one examines the Western intellectual world as late as the 1850s, the educated classes were comfortably conversant with the latest scientific findings and natural history remained the province of a wide audience. Until about 150 years ago, most scientists and philosophers shared the same intellectual bed.

"Natural philosophy" became science in the mid-19th century when practitioners distinguished their technical and professional route from the more general concerns of humanists. In the same period, Kant concpetualized the split by dividing human cognition into what he called as pure and practical reason. Pure reason referred to the cognitive functions that humans apply to the natural world and practical reason dealt with the moral realm (social or humanistic concerns). Kant's formulation provided a model by which science and religion might co-exist in their respective domains.

Advances in scientific techniques and methods of study required specialization. By the 1870s, science was divided into various natural and social sciences each of which assumed a high degree of technical competence and cognitive training (Smith, 1997).

Later on, the fruits of scientific labor resulted in new industries derived from scientific findings and their successful application to material culture. Since the Renessaince, science has been sold as a package deal whereas the scientific discoveries have been converetd into economic and social power. One crucial point to bear in mind is that although the triumphs of technology are inseparably linked to the underlying science, technology is not science. It builds on scientific insight while science seeks to discover the character of nature and thus part of natural philosophy. Technology is the application of knowledge for material innovation.

There is also a philosophical divide between those who study the natural world and those who comment on the social, spiritual and psychological domains. While Hume doubted the ability to know the world objectively, Kant asserted that to know the natural world and the moral domain required two different kinds of human cognition: pure reason as cognitive product of our perceptions and practical reason dealing with social concerns. So, metaphsyical claims can't be known by the same means humans knew the natural world. Faith refers to metaphsyics and by saving belief, Kant emphasized the possibility of going beyond science of appearances to address moral pursuits. Yet, this way of conceptualizing the knowing of real and the less real was a bit naive.

Later on, science developed its own metaphsyics that has its own principles such as: 1) the world is ordered; 2) we might discern this order by detached empirical observation, neutral rational description and objective analysis; 3) laws will emerge from this inquiry and they remain inviolable; 4) why nature corresponds to our human mathematical and objective descriptions is mysterious, but the empirical product of that method has been highly successful and thus approximates a depiction of the real as truth, and so on. It also embraced basic questions of ancient philosophers such as: "What is the world? How is it organized? Where does Man fit into that universe? What is distinctly human?". Although science is seen as being different from humanities it is human-centered in two senses:

- The standards of discourse are human-derived.

- Knowledge is directed at developing human industry- industry in the sense of systematic labor to create value.

So, science is a part of a larger historical development of humanism:

- Science and its study as a human activity canot be seperated as the boundaries of science cannot be limited to laboratory or technical discourse.

- A critique of science is essential to its flourishing so that scientific theories can be penetrated into our social and psychological existence.

- The theories and methods demonstrate different worldviews for defining meaning and significance to human existence.

In short:

1) the technology based on scientific discoveries revolutionized the material culture, revealing mysterious forces and events as natural and thereby open to human understanding;

2) this naturalized world view placed divine intervention increasingly peripheral to human understanding; and

3) the logic and standards of knowledge as applied to the natural world were extended to the social and psychological domains of human experience.

The challenge is to find a way of cohering a world that has no obvious coherence. Indeed, many worlds comprise reality. May we engage each as best we can.