This article analyses the history of the term "chercheur" from the seventeenth century until the beginning of the twentieth century, focusing, in particular, on the work of the naturalist and philosopher Charles Bonnet (1720-1793) and on research traditions related to the life sciences. Although the term was initially used in a pejorative sense, to describe an English Puritanical sect, it came to assume its modern meaning through a series of transformations.