WHEWELL, WILLIAM

(b. Lancaster, England, 24 May 1794; D. Cambridge, England, 6 March 1866),history and philosophy of science, physical astronomy, science education.

Whewell was the eldest son of a master carpenter, who hoped his son would follow him in his trade. Early displays of intellectual ability convinced the father, however, to send him to the grammar school at Heversham, in Westmorland. In 1812 Whewell began a lifelong career at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he received a classical literary education and what he soon recognized as outdated training in mathematics and science. After election as fellow of the college in 1817, Whewell took his M.A. degree in 1819 and his D.D. degree in 1844. He was ordained deacon around 1825 and then priest (1826) in the Church of England. In 1841 Whewell was appointed master of Trinity, a post he held until his death. He was named vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge in 1842 and again in 1855. In 1841 he married Cordelia Marshall, who died in 1855; three years later he married Lady Evering Affleck.

Tall and massively built, Whewell enjoyed good health throughout his life. Friends and foes alike admired his intelligence and breadth of scholarship, his capacity for profound affection, and his generosity. Whewell was self-consciously awkward in dealing with others, however, and he cannot be said to have been a generally popular figure at Cambridge. There can be no doubt about his qucik-tempered resentament of criticism, his autocratic and often arbitrary exercise of academic power, and his jealous defense of his own position. Nevertheles, he was widely recongnized as one of the central figures in Victorian science. He was a member or honorary member of at least twenty-five British and foreign scientific societies, including the Royal Society, the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Irish Academy, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

The range of Whewell’s scholarly and scientific interests was immense. He composed sermons, English hexameter verses, translations of German literary works, and essays on architecture, theology, philosophy, political economy, and university education. He translated Plato’s dialogues into English.

In response to the need for more accurate instruments for use in meteorology Whewell invented a self-registering anemometer that measured the direction, velocity, and temporal duration of the velocity of the wind. Anemometers in use at the time measured direction and pressure of the wind, but did not permit charting of the total movement of the air as did Whewell’s device. Whewell’s instrument failed to show accurate results in measuring slow movements of the air. The technical problem was solved by the Reverend T. R. Robinson in 1846 by modifying Whewell’s instrument by the introduction of the now-familiar windmill with hemispherical cups.

Whewell was especially adept in coining new scientific terms. In correspondence with Michael Faraday he contributed “ion” , “anode” , and “cathode,” among others. To geology he contributed “Eocene,” “Miocene,” and “Pliocene,” and he introduced the terms “physicist” and “scientist.”

Apart from his teaching, Whewell’s major work in the decade beginning with 1819 was in science education, architecture, experimental physics, and mineralogy. As a member of a group of reformers in which John Herschel, Charles Babbage, and George Peacock were prominent, Whewell contributed to the attempt to bring the mathematical methods of the French analysts into Cambridge scientific education. In textbooks on mechanics and dynamics, he introduced the calculus for solving problems, while insisting that analysis is no substitute for experimental physics. The reformers were successful; as a college tutor in the 1820’s and later as a major figure in guiding educational changes at Cambridge, Whewell contributed to the development of British physics and to the centrality of Cambridge in that development. In architecture Whewell attempted to refute the contention that the pointed arch is the defining property of Gothic style, arguing that in the history of German architecture the flying buttress, not the pointed arch, completed the transition from Romanesque to high Gothic.

In 1826 and 1828 Whewell and Airy made unsuccessful attempts to measure the density of the earth at a copper mine in Cornwall. Of greater importance was Whewell’s work in mineralogy. In a paper read before the Royal Society in 1824, Whewell, according to Herbert Deas, “laid the foundations of mathematical crystallography.” His system for calculating the angles of planes of crystals assumed that crystals are aggregates of small rhomboids that can be thought to shrink below the level of possible measurement, thus suggesting that crystals are latticelike. In 1825 Whewell visited Mohs in Germany. In 1828, the year in which Whewell became professor of mineralogy, he published a revision of Mohs’s system of mineralogical classification.

Between 1833 and 1850 Whewell published fourteen memoirs on the tides. Before the 1830’s little reliable observation of the tides had been undertaken: and the two leading theories, the Newton-Bernoulli equilibrium theory and the Laplace dynamical theory, were largely untested. The British Admiralty and the British Association initiated work on the tides that soon became international in scale. Whewell, with the help of John Lubbock, received and interpreted observations from all over the world; their work earned them the Royal Medal. Whewell’s investigation of the tides began with an attempt to apply Thomas Young’s idea of cotidal lines to the world’s oceans. Had the idea applied, it would have allowed plotting the movements of tidal waves through all the oceans on the basis of initial observations of simultaneous high tides at different places. Whewell abandoned the idea in its general application, however, although the application of the idea did obtain some results for small, confined bodies of water and for shorelines.

Whewell stressed the “diurnal inequality” of the tides (“that which makes the tide of the morning and evening of the same day at the same place, differ both in height and time of high water, according to a law depending on the time of the year”). He showed large variations in this effect in accordance with local circumstances and thought the inequality to be more basic than other features of the tides. From the failure of the idea of cotidal lines and the empirical prominence of the daily inequality, Whewell concluded that no theory of physical astronomy could account for tidal phenomena in a general way. Instead, the variety and multiplicity of the data suggested that detailed study of each individual shoreline was required. Given this conclusion, it is not surprising that Whewell’s work did not contribute directly to theory of the tides. Consistent with the principles of his own philosophy of science, however, he could regard himself as having fathered the science of the tides. He thought that the beginning of a science involved the laborious collection and organization of data; full theoretical generality, if any, would come later.

From the late 1830’s until his death, Whewell worked mainly in the history and philosophy of science. His three-volume History of the Inductive Sciences appeared in 1837; in 1838 he was appointed professor of moral philosophy; and the first edition of his two-volume the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon Their History was published in 1840. Both the History and the Philosophy were ambitious works, and together they constitute Whewell’s major scholarly achievement. The History had no rivals in its day and remains, despite unevenness, one of the important surveys of science from the Greeks to the nineteenth century. Whewell appreciated the importance of Greek science, especially astronomy, but showed typical disregard for the contributions of medieval scientists. His assessment of the importance of contributions of such major figures as Galileo and Descartes suffers from a heavy intrusion of religious and philosophical biases. But his treatment of Newton and other modern mathematical scientists is fair and sometime brilliant, and is based throughout upon detailed considerations of texts. Whewee’s Philosophy stimulated major philosophical exchanges between its author and Sir John Herschel, Augustus De Morgan, Henry L. Mansel, and John Stuart Mill. Alongside Mill’s System of Logic and Herschel’s Preliminary Discourseon the Study of Natural Philosophy, the work ranks as one of the masterpieces of Victorian philosophy of science.

Whewell’s effort in these works was unique in his attempt to derive a philosophy of science from the general features of the historical development of empirical science. The importance of this attempt has not been fully appreciated. Whewell thought that the history of science displayed a progressive movement from less to more general theories, from imperfectly understood facts to basic sciences built upon a priori foundations that he called “Fundamental Ideas.” All science was theoretical in that no body of data comes to us selforganized; even collection of data involves the imposition of a guiding interpretive idea. Major advances in science occur in what Whewell called an “Inductive Epoch,” a period in which the basic ideas of a science are well understood by one or more scientists, and in which the generality and explanatory power of a science are seen to be much more illuminating than those of rival theories. Each such “Epoch” had a “Prelude,” a period in which older theories experienced difficulties and new ideas were seen to be required, and a “Sequel,” a period in which the new theory was applied and refined.

Largely ignoring the British tradition of empiricist philosophy and methodology, Whewell erected a philosophy of science upon his understanding of history that derived partly from Kant and Plato, and partly from an anachronistic theological position. Like his British predecessors, he thought that induction was the basic method of science. He understood induction not as a form of inference from particulars to generalizations, but as a conceptual act of coming to see that a group of data can best be understood and organized (his term was “colligated”) under a certain idea. Furthermore, induction was demonstrative in that it yields necessary truths, propositions the logical opposites of which cannot be clearly conceived. The zenith of the inductive process was reached when a “consilience of inductions” took place-when sets of data previously considered disjoint came to be seen as derivable from the same, much richer theory. Although Whewell thought that the paradigm form of a scientific theory was deductive, he departed from the orthodox hypothetico-deductivist view of science by claiming that tests of the acceptability of given theories are extraevidential, based on considerations of simplicity and consilience. He made some attempt to justify the necessity of the conclusions that induction yields by arguing for the identity of facts and theories, and for the theological view that we know the world the way it is because that is the way God made it.

In physical astronomy Whewell’s work on the tides ranks second only to that of Newton. Also of great importance was his lifelong effort to modernize and improve science education at Cambridge. The achievement in history and philosophy of science probably is less significant, although recent revival of interest in Whewell has centered mainly upon his insights in philosophy of science and methodology. Interest is growing in the interrelations of history and philosophy of science; and so long as this interest continues to be fruitful, it will be well worthwhile considering what Whewell had to say on the nature of scientific discovery, inductive methodology, and the characteristics of scientific progress.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Whewell’s papers are in the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge. A catalog of these papers is available (to libraries) from the Royal commission on Historical Manuscripts, Quality House, Quality Court, Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1 HP. Unfortunately no complete bibliography of his works exists, although fairly complete ones in history and philosophy of science are available. The projected 10-vol. collection of facsimiles. The Historical and Philosophical Works of William Whewell, G. Buchdahl and L. L. Laudan, eds. (London, 1967–), will help make his works in those areas more easily available. A selection of Whewell’s central works in methodology appears in William Whewell’s Theory of Scientific Method, Robert E. Butts, ed. (Pittsburgy, 1968).

Whewell’s major writings in science include An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics (Cambridge, 1819); A Treatise on Dynamics (Cambridge, 1823); “A General Method of Calculating the Angles Made by Any Planes of Crystals, and the Laws According to Which They Are Formed,” in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 115 (1825), 87–130; An Essay on Mineralogical Classification and Nomenclature; With Tables of the Orders and Species of Minerals (Cambridge, 1828); Architectural Notes on German Churches, With Remarks on the Origin of Gothic Architecture (Cambridge, 1830); Analytical Statics (Cambridge, 1833); “Essay Towards a First Approximation to a Map of Cotidal Lines,” in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 123 (1833), 147–236; “On the Results of an Extensive System of Tide Observations Made on the Coasts of Europe and America in June 1835,” ibid., 126 (1836), 289–341; “On the Diurnal Inequality Wave Along the Coasts of Europe,” ibid., 127 (1837), 227–244; The Mechanical Euclid (Cambridge, 1837); and “On the Results of Continued Tide Observations at Several Places on the British Coasts,” in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 140 (1850), 227–233.

Major writings in history and philosophy of science include “On the Nature of the Truth of the Laws of Motion,” in Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 5 (1834), 149–172; History of the Inductive Sciences, 3 vols. (London, 1837); The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Forsuled Upon Their History, 2 vols, (London, 1840), the 3rd ed. of which appeared as 3 separate vols.: The History of Scientific Ideas, 2 pts. (London, 1858), Norusn organon renovatum (London, 1858), and On the Philosophy of Discovery (London, 1860).

II. Secondary Literature. There is very little informed and up-to-date commentary on Whewell’s scientific achievements; in recent years his philosophy of science has begun to receive the attention it deserves. There are two biographies: Mrs. Stair Douglas, Life and Selections From the Correspondence of William Whernell (London, 1881), on his personal, including university, life: and Isaac Todhunter, William Whenell (London, 1876), which surveys his scientific and scholarly work. Both works contain large collections of letters; Todhunter is the best source of bibliography. Of considerable interest are Robert Robson, “William Whewell, F.R.S. (1794-1866), I. Academic Life,” and Walter F. Cannon “II. Contributions to Science and Learning,” in Notes and Records. Royal Society of London, 19 , no. 2 (Dec. 1964), 168–191. Cannon’s paper is the first attempt at a general assessment of Whewell’s scientific achievements. Robert Willis, Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages, Especially of Italy (Cambridge, 1835), extends and improves upon Whewell’s work in architecture. George Airy, “Tides and Waves,” in Encyclopaedia metropolitana, V (London, 1845), secs. VII and VIII, esp. arts. 496 and 571, praises Whewell’s work on the tides, especially his methods of graphical representation of results of observations. Airy preferred the Laplace theory, however, and argued against Whewell’s continuing reliance upon the Bernoulli equilibrium theory. Herbert Deas, “Crystallography and Crystallographers in Early 19th-Century England,” in Centaurus, 6 (1959), 129–148, presents a sympathetic evaluation of Whewell’s work in that area.

Whewell’s philosophy attracted no disciples; and except for various references to his work in the writings of C.S. Peirce, his system received no serious study until the early 1930’s. There are two book-length studies: Robert Blanché, Le rationalisme de Whewell (Paris, 1935); and Silvestro Marcucci, L’ “idealismo” scientifico di William Whewell (Pisa, 1963). British and American studies of Whewell’s philosophy in the context of contemporary problems in philosophy of science have taken the form of monographs and papers on specific problems. A potentially quite productive exchange of views on Whewell’s concept of consilience of inductions exemplifies the richness and novelty of his insights in methodology. Among the relevant papers are Robert E. Butts, “Whewell’s Logic of Induction.” in Ronald Giere and Richard Westfall, eds., Foundations of Scientific Methods: The Nineteenth Century (Bloomington, Ind., 1973), 53–85; Mary Hesse, “Consilience of Inductions,” in Imre Lakatos, ed., The Problem of Inductive Logic (Amsterdam, 1968), 232–247; and Larry Laudan, “William Whewell on the Consilience of Inductions,” in Monist, 55 , no. 3 (1971), 368–391

Robert E. Butts