scientificadj.n.

Etymology: < post-classical Latin scientificus producing knowledge, demonstrative (a1160: see note), of or relating to knowledge, learning, or science (from a1253 in British sources; a1273 in Aquinas: see note), expert, learned (frequently from 1402 in British sources: see note) < scient- , sciēns , present participle of scīre to know (or perhaps, less regularly, < scientia knowledge: see science n.) + -ficus -fic suffix. Compare Middle French, French scientifique of or relating to knowledge, learning, or science (c1370 in Oresme; now usually ‘of or relating to the sciences’), expert, learned (mid 15th cent.), Catalan científic (14th cent.), Spanish científico (15th cent.), Portuguese científico (15th cent.), Italian scientifico (14th cent.). Compare earlier sciential adj., scientic adj., scientical adj., scientifical adj.The semantic development of the post-classical Latin scientificus from ‘producing knowledge’ to ‘of or relating to knowledge’ is unusual, but the likely steps can be traced in detail. It is first attested in the translation of a1160, ascribed to an otherwise unknown Joannes, of the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle, where it renders ancient Greek ἐπιστημονικός ‘relating to knowledge’ (see epistemonical adj.). At 1. 2 (71b18), Joannes followed the earlier translation by James of Venice, rendering συλλογισμὸν ἐπιστημονικόν ‘a syllogism having to do with knowledge’ as sillogismum facientem scire ‘a syllogism producing knowledge’; James had been guided by a nearby passage (71b24-25) where it is said that unless certain essential conditions are fulfilled, a syllogism will not be demonstrative, ‘for it will not produce knowledge’ (Greek ού γὰρ ποιήσει ἐπιστήμην ), which he translated non enim faciet scientiam . James had then perceived that the phrase αἱ ἐπιστημονικαὶ ἀποδείξεις ‘demonstrations having to do with knowledge’ at 1.6 (75a30) likewise had to do with the production of knowledge, and translated it with a periphrasis ending demonstrativae scientiae , ‘demonstrative of knowledge’. Joannes reworded this to scientificae demonstrationes , ‘demonstrations producing knowledge’, and this form of words was taken over by William of Moerbeke in his revision of James’s translation. (These 12th- and 13th-century translations have sometimes been confused with the lost 6th-century translation by Boethius.) Latin textbooks of logic used scientificus in this sense (compare sense A. 2) at least until the end of the 17th cent.; a late example from England is H. Aldrich Artis logicae compendium (1691) 35. Having been used to translate Greek ἐπιστημονικός in a context where it means ‘producing knowledge’, scientificus was used by Robert Grosseteste (a1253) to translate the same word in a context where it does not refer to the production of knowledge and might simply have been translated by post-classical Latin scientialis sciential adj. This was Aristotle’s Nicomachaean Ethics 6. 1. 6 (1139a12), where the soul is seen as having a part directed towards demonstrable truths, τὸ ἐπιστημονικὸν , which Grosseteste translated scientificum , and a part directed towards contingent truths of the sort which have to be worked out by calculation, τὸ λογιστικὸν , which he translated ratiocinativum (see ratiocinative adj.). This use of scientificus was followed by Aquinas. Hence, although Latin –ificus and its derivatives such as English –ific usually refer to the production of something, the prevailing sense of scientificus and its derivatives in the Romance languages and English has been ‘of or relating to science’; it is merely by a contextual accident that in phrases like scientific investigation the word can be interpreted in its etymological meaning (i.e. as denoting an investigation that produces knowledge).