Do we know why it is natural history and not natural science?

A few quotes from the Oxford English Dictionary:

History....[ad. L. historia a narrative of pst events, account, tale, story,
a. Gr. istoria, a learning or knowing by inquiry, an account of one;s
inquiries, narrative, history, f. istwr, istor- knowing, learned, wise man,
judge,:-*Fistor, f. Fis, is -to know. (The form histoire was from F.) Cf.
STORY, an aphetic form of history.

5. A systematic account (without reference to time) of a set of natural
phenomena, as those connected wtih a country, some division of nature or grou
of natural objectss, a species of anumals or plants, etc. Now rare, exc. in
NATURAL HISTORY.
[In this sense following the similar use of istoria by Aristotle and other
Greek writers, and of historia by Pliny.]

My notes:
1. I didn't know all that.
2. F is a typographic approxiamtion for an obsolote Greek letter
corresponding to sound w, I think. Is Gk. istoria cognate with L. quaestio,
inquiry?
3. Sorry, I haven't figured out the Greek accents yet.
4. Aphetic: The loss of a short unaccented vowel at the beginning of a word.
Because it is so frequent in English, the term was introduced at the
suggestion of an OED editor in 1880.
5. Natural History is the title of a work by the late sculptor (and one of my
teachers) Richard Stankiewicz at the Museum of Modern Art.
6. The OED is an great source of quotes for, among other terms, incubus,
succubus. If you could hold up the heavy tome (along with the magnifying
lens), it'd make great bedtime reading. Suggest you photocopy (and ENLARGE).

David Formanek
Cyrus E. Dallin Art Museum
USS Constitution Museum

Affiliations listed for identification purposes only. Opinions contained in
this e-mail are the writer's own.

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