Mary Somerville is so difficult to put into words that it’s funny. To be honest, who was she? Although you would be correct in calling her a mathematician, you would then be required to clarify the astronomy. The word “astronomer” sounds a bit tame when you consider all the physics, geography, and geology involved in her work. This is no longer an issue because the term “scientist” adequately describes those who spend their lives seeking to comprehend the natural world. The only catch is that there were no scientists when Mary Somerville was born. Of course, people were conducting scientific experiments; it’s just that the term “science” didn’t exist, which is a little strange.
Although she was born in Scotland in 1780, Somerville’s upbringing was far from ideal for a mathematician. Her family initially saw her growing interest in mathematics as a mix of a bothersome curiosity and a reason for concern, likely stemming from their belief that girls weren’t supposed to excel in math. Nonetheless, she gained knowledge. Much of her mathematical education was something she had to seek out on her own; there’s a slightly embellished tale about how she studied geometry and algebra in the middle of the night, but the essential idea remains the same. This is my favorite part of her story because it describes the math learning process so realistically. Some symbols appear, and you find yourself confused. This annoys you. You come across an explanation for them. There are five new things in that explanation that you don’t get. Somehow, you’ve picked up a completely new subject a few months down the road. It appears pointless that Somerville accomplished this without Google.
Over time, she excelled at it. Competent enough to tackle Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste, conversant enough to correspond with prominent European scientists, and capable of delving deeply into astronomical mathematics. The mathematical machinery of the heavens, including the gravitational motion of the planets, was something Laplace was attempting to describe. Famously, his writing was not something you could read on a leisurely basis before turning in for the night. The Mechanism of the Heavens was written by Somerville. This, which is sometimes called a translation, is disrespectful to her writing. While it’s true that she was translating the French, she was also filling in the math and reasoning so that others could learn from it. Cambridge decided to use the book because of how popular it was. As someone who was advised against studying algebra in the past, that path seems rather peculiar.
However, the truly peculiar historical accident was brought about by a book. She released On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences in 1834. Her priorities are clear from the title. Not physics or math, but rather the fields that form their connections. Physics, chemistry, physics, heat, light, electricity, and magnetism. These were getting into increasingly complex topics, but Somerville hoped to demonstrate that they were not independent worlds. They were just two perspectives on the same cosmos. Remember that the best ideas don’t always sound obvious until someone has spent years pointing them out; this may sound obvious when you say it now, but it’s worth remembering.
Because it is necessary, we continue to divide information into different categories. Someone has to make a call at some point: schools have schedules, universities have departments, to designate which classroom will be used for physics and which for mathematics. Nature was never sluggish with this setup. All these things, chemistry, electromagnetism, gravity, and nuclear physics, are happening simultaneously inside a star. It is not a chemistry problem when the chemist walks in. Geometry, thermodynamics, quantum physics, and information theory can all be occupied for an afternoon by contemplation of a black hole. When you delve deeply enough into either mathematics or physics, the lines between them start to blur in an odd way. At the same time that Somerville was becoming fascinated by these connections, the scientific community was heading in the opposite social direction, with men developing into specialists.
As a result, an unexpectedly mundane issue arose. Please tell me what you intended to refer to each of these individuals as. Physicists, geologists, astronomers, mathematicians, and chemists were all present. “Man of science” and “natural philosopher” were both in use in the past, but neither of these terms adequately described what was happening in English at the time. When discussing this naming issue in 1834 while reviewing Somerville’s On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, William Whewell proposed a rather strange new term that was derived from the word “artist”: scientist. At first, I thought the word was hilarious. Obviously so. So long as everyone agrees to stop making fun of it, every word is slightly absurd.
Whewell basically looks at Mary Somerville, realizes that she knows far too many subjects to fit into any existing category, and has to invent the word “scientist” for her on the spot, according to a very alluring online version of this story. While I would love it if that were the whole story, it’s that good, history is usually less accommodating. Whewell was addressing a broader issue with scientific terminology; the term was not coined solely due to Somerville’s gender or the fact that her field of study was a matter of debate. The genuine serendipitous event is nearly more delightful. In a dispute sparked by a book written specifically to unite increasingly fragmented scientific disciplines, the word “scientist” was first used in print. A new term for scientists was introduced, and a book was also released, urging us to view science as an integrated whole.
Somerville also has a surprisingly contemporary vibe to it. This is the age of ridiculous specialization. Most of the time, this will happen. But there is now an overwhelming amount of information that no one individual can adequately process. No matter how much time you devote to studying a specific area of theoretical physics, there will always be some literature that your neighbors assume you are familiar with. If you haven’t figured out how to make the day last much longer than twenty-four hours, the ideal of being mathematically and physically literate is meaningless. It seems, though, that the intriguing concepts did not get the message. But they persist in traversing borders. Geometry deviated into weightlessness. When it entered particle physics, group theory made a mistake. A collision with condensed matter occurred in topology. Black holes were discovered by information theory. Occasionally, two fields develop independently for many decades until someone realizes that they have been discussing remarkably similar topics in different languages.
I suppose that explains my fondness for Mary Somerville. She “refused to pick one thing,” but that’s just for the Instagram slide. This is because, thankfully, she had developed the habit of asking for connections between concepts, which proved to be quite useful. Something is different. Possessing a broad range of interests can make you seem diverse, but it takes actively seeking out connections to make that diversity matter. If you want to be a good physicist, you need to know how to ask certain kinds of questions, and math is a necessary part of that. When you read about astronomy, a mechanical problem takes on a new perspective. You learn the language of a thought that was hazy in one field to another. As time goes on, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between one interest and the next.
Even in her latter years, ninety-one-year-old Mary Somerville continued to pursue mathematics. She passed away in 1872. A lot bigger scientific world was emerging than the one she had just entered, and the little word that Whewell had proposed was gradually becoming the norm. The term “scientist” is so commonplace now that a six-year-old can confidently declare their goal of becoming one without realizing that the same statement would have had no meaning two centuries ago. It has an eerie beauty to it. Mary Somerville’s life happened at the exact moment when our conception of science was shifting, not because she was the sole inventor of the word (though she certainly wasn’t). Amidst all this discord, someone was penning a book about the interconnectedness of all things, and new terms were being coined.
I don’t want to put life through that, but maybe there’s a lesson there. However, if you want to become an expert in a certain field, specialization is inevitable. That is an undeniable fact. However, you shouldn’t allow the label of your field to dictate the limits of your interest. Sitting next to you in the other class can be just what you need sometimes. Each time, it’s five topics up there. Starting with a question can lead you astray from your original intent; it is only after you’ve gone on that you come to appreciate the journey as its most captivating aspect.
