British meaning?

[eloise_herisson]

Barbara:

> I was just wondering if the British definition of "Philosopher" is 
> close to the American definition of "Sorcerer." If not, I can't 
> understand the change from the British to American book versions. A 
> philosopher is a thinker, a scholar, in the American dictionary. 
> Sorcerer means magician. So I was just wonder if there is a British 
> meaning of Philosopher that is close to magician or did the 
> publishers just make a goofy change for us dumb Americans? :^)

Yes and no.

The modern British meaning of "philosopher" is exactly the same as 
the American one. However, the US publishers apparently thought that 
the specific term "philosopher's stone" was too obscure for the 
intended audience to grasp. I doubt actually that a very high 
proportion of JKR's British readership knew what the philosopher's 
stone was before they read the book (my intelligent and well educated 
husband certainly thought it was obscure). I guess that the 
Scholastic editors thought that "Sorceror's" told you instantly that 
the book was about magic, but I do find it a very irritating change.

It is, of course, a term from alchemy and dates from a time when the 
word "philosophy" had different connotations. In the Renaissance, a 
philosopher was essentially a scientist, one who examined the 
properties of matter and tried to understand how the universe worked 
(although that search might take in a wider field that what today 
would be regarded as science). This is reflected in Philip Pullman's 
use of the word in "His Dark Materials" where what we would call 
scientific instruments are referred to as "philosophical instruments".

So yes, it's a goofy change. Although some alchemists were interested 
in magic and there was no real boundary between magic and alchemy and 
what we would call science, I don't think that you could ever say 
that "philosopher" and "sorceror" were synonymous.

Having said that, I've just come across a book called, "Isaac Newton: 
The Last Sorceror" (Newton was into natural magic, alchemy, 
mysticism, etc. and did himself pursue the philospher's stone) so 
perhaps that's unfair. Or again, perhaps it's another example of a 
book title being (as that awful phrase current over here is) "sexed 
up" in order to make it more saleable.

~Eloise