Disputatio:Physica

Est hic difficultas quaedam non parva: "physica" Latine (et Graece) NON significat "physics," sed potius "natural science" (et "scientia" numquam "science" sonat, sed potius "knowledge"). Igitur ut "physics," "la physique" significemus, oportunum fuerit vocabulo "physica" epithetum vel adiectivum aptum addere. Familiaris quidam meus, qui "physics" profitetur, vocem "physica fundamentalis" mihi roganti proposuit, quasi "physics" rerum omnium naturalium fundamenta primaria investiget. Omnino oportet, mea sententia, vocabula Latina adhibeamus quae cum ratione perennis Latinitatis utcumque quadrent -- ne sermo quem hic usurpemus in quendam quasi lusum evadat, quo vocabulis vernaculis desinentias Latinas appingamus. [There's a serious naming problem here: "physica" in Latin (and Greek) does NOT means "physics," but "natural science" (and "scientia" is knowledge, not "science"). So to express the concept "physics," we probably should add an epithet or adjective to "physica." A friend who teaches physics suggested "physica fundamentalis," on grounds that physics deals with the underlying or basic phenomena underlying the natural universe. I thinks it's really essential in Vicipaedia to use words that are at least more or less consistent with the way people have been writing Latin for the previous 2200 years -- otherwise the danger is that what we do here will end up being not much more than a game where we stick Latin endings onto what are really English, French, etc. words.] Severus Censor, 26 Mar. 2006.

The article definitely has a lot of poor/bad/wrong latin. However, using the words dictionary at << http://lysy2.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/words.exe >> I found the following which suggests that the noun 'physicum -i' refers to natural science but the noun 'physica -ae' is an acceptable way to refer to physics.

physicum, physici N (2nd) N 2 2 N [XXXCO]

physics (pl.), natural science;

physice, physices N F 1 6 F [XSXDS]

physics;

physica, physicae N (1st) F 1 1 F [XSXDS]

physics;

physicus, physica, physicum ADJ [XXXCO]

pertaining/relating to physics/natural science/physical nature; natural,inborn;

Rafaelgarcia 15:23, 8 Februarii 2007 (UTC)

Placement of est

Andrew, re your edit "Physica omnibus ramis scientiae naturalis elementarissima est."—You must have been reading too much Cato the Elder! He's the only major classical writer whom Devine & Stephens (Latin Word Order, Oxford, 2006) find to prefer "A B est" to "A est B": "In Cato's De Agricultura copular esse tends to behave like a regular lexical verb and mostly appears in final position" (p. 218). Really ! Such archaism ! IacobusAmor 18:13, 9 Februarii 2007 (UTC)