Physiology: A lexicon history (360G-Wellcome-095207_Z_10_Z)

This project entails a historical synthesis of the expression, physiology. Though this term today denotes a specific biomedical field dealing with the study of how living beings work, it has a much broader scientific heritage. The idiom physiologia originally signified 'discourse on nature' (or 'natural philosophy'- the forerunner of today's expression 'science'). The Greek etymon physis ('nature') has generated one of the most diverse arrays of word-forms in the history of science. It is the origin of such latter-day words as 'physics' and 'physician', as well as 'physiology'. How, why, and when these terms split from their mutual etymological ancestor- and, more specifically, how the erstwhile universal name 'physiology' acquired its home in biomedicine- are questions explored in this project. While the birth right of physiologia is well known to scholars of the ancient world, it is not familiar to today's practitioners of the biomedical sciences. The proposed study will interweave a number of timely etymologic and semantic historical threads, coming to the fore recently, that bear upon the modern-day field of physiology. The work will culminate in a monograph, representing a popular account aimed at the interface between the history of science and contemporary biomedicine, particularly today's Physiome Project.