Enough! Isn’t that all of us? Who are these people who claim ownership of the subject?
I had thought that use of the word community to mean special interest group was very recent, but the OED has a reference to ‘scientific community’ dating from 1757. This is doubly ironic; we would naturally think that this refers to a group of scientists, but that word did not come into use until the late C19th – when it was fiercely resisted by those such as Huxley (Darwin’s bulldog) who thought it reduced their status from that of learned gentleman to mere technician
The OED also finds early references to literary (1789) & commercial (1856) communities
‘Community’ had long been used to refer to specific religious groups or orders, & it gradually extended into more general way of identifying a religion. The ‘Jewish community’ in 1817 & the ‘Roman Catholic community’ in 1898.
The very earliest meanings of ‘community’ (both now said by the OED to be obsolete) were
· The generality of the people
· The body of the people having common or equal rights or rank, as distinguished from the privileged classes
It is ironic therefore that community is now a word much used by a left/liberal privileged elite to claim special status for themselves, or to identify & mark out less privileged groups with whose (often self-appointed) leaders they can treat in a very colonial fashion
Quotations about scientist
Quarterly Review 1834: Science ... loses all traces of unity. A curious illustration of this result may be observed in the want of any name by which we can designate the students of the knowledge of the material world collectively. We are informed that this difficulty was felt very oppressively by the members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at their meetings ... in the last three summers ... Philosophers was felt to be too wide and too lofty a term, … savans was rather assuming, .. some ingenious gentleman proposed that, by analogy with artist, they might form scientist, and added that there could be no scruple in making free with this termination when we have such words as sciolist, economist, and atheist but this was not generally palatable.
William Whewell 1840: We need very much a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a Scientist
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