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andrewflnr11/07/20241 replyview on HN

True in the abstract, but calling Aristotle a "great scientist" is a stretch at best. He wasn't much of an empiricist.


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bbor11/07/2024

Very true and well put, but IMHO that's not a productive definition of "scientist". You're definitely on the side of common usage, but this is one of the many hills I'd die on; all scientists necessarily employ intuitive intellectual tools at some point in their process, so it feels silly to cut out those who primarily use them if they're still productively employing systematic thought.

The upside of this is that Mathematicians get to be scientists, too! The downside is that you also have to let the darn philosophers in ;)

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