this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

It's not revisionist to say that and engineering texts are engineering texts rather than physics texts, it's just properly classifying them.

I'm not sure whether the ancient Greeks really had a concept of "physics" as a dedicated discipline like we do today- they would probably put a lot of what we do under the umbrella of "natural philosophy". The separation of pure natural science into distinct branches is a relatively recent phenomenon. The separation between pure science and engineering on the other hand is quite old.

[–] Brainsploosh@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

The Greek very much had a concept of Physics.

The word physics comes from the Latin physica ('study of nature'), which itself is a borrowing of the Greek φυσική (phusikḗ 'natural science'), a term derived from φύσις (phúsis 'origin, nature, property') (Wikipedia)

Also note that Aristotelian physics was the dominant paradigm in Europe almost until Newton.

There's an argument to be had that engineering didn't exist as a science until recently. Several of the more famous engineering treatises name it as crafting.

[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

The word physics comes from Latin physica ("study of nature")

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".

[–] Brainsploosh@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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).

[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

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".

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