this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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This is essentially my point. You don't have to go more than a couple hundred years back before "natural science" or "natural philosophy" was considered a single field, without a distinction between e.g. physics and chemistry. Engineering (as we call it today) or "crafting", has been considered separate from the study of nature itself (or "natural philosophy") all the way back to before Ancient Greece.
I'm not saying they knew nothing about physics. I'm saying that they didn't regard it as a distinct discipline the way we do today. No Greek philosopher would have called themselves a "chemist" or "physicist" or "biologist", but they would separate between "natural philosopher" and "craftsman", just as we today separate between "scientist" and "engineer".
You're still viewing it from today's perspective. We distinguish natural philosophy from chemistry, physics, etc. - they did not.
They did however call natural philosophy "Physics". From their perspective all our fields fit under physics, except for applied science which fits under crafting (as natural philosophy devalued empiricism).
You summed it up perfectly. What you're saying is exactly the point I'm trying to get across. We're just using different words.
You're using "physics" in the sense it was used 2000 years ago when you say "from their perspective all our fields fit under physics". I'm saying the exact same thing, only replacing "physics" with "natural science/natural philosophy", which are the umbrella terms used today.
You even point out that "all our fields fit under physics (natural science/philosophy), except for applied science (engineering)", which is exactly the point I'm making when saying they saw no distinction between the different natural sciences, but did distinguish between "pure science" and "engineering".