William Whewell | |
|---|---|
 | |
| 27th Master ofTrinity College, Cambridge | |
| In office 1841–1866 | |
| Preceded by | Christopher Wordsworth |
| Succeeded by | William Hepworth Thompson |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1794-05-24)24 May 1794 Lancaster, England |
| Died | 6 March 1866(1866-03-06) (aged 71) Cambridge, England |
| Spouses | |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | |
| Awards |
|
| Academic background | |
| Academic advisor | John Gough[1] |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | |
| Institutions | University of Cambridge (1817–1866) |
| Notable students | Augustus De Morgan[1] |
| Main interests | |
William Whewell (/ˈhjuːəl/HEW-əl; 24 May 1794 – 6 March 1866) was an Englishpolymath. He was Master ofTrinity College, Cambridge. In his time as a student there, he achieved distinction in bothpoetry andmathematics.
The breadth of Whewell's endeavours is his most remarkable feature. In a time of increasing specialisation, Whewell belonged in an earlier era whennatural philosophers investigated widely. He published work inmechanics,physics,geology,astronomy, andeconomics, while also composingpoetry, writing aBridgewater Treatise, translating the works ofGoethe, and writingsermons andtheological tracts. In mathematics, Whewell introduced what is now called theWhewell equation, defining the shape of a curve without reference to an arbitrarily chosen coordinate system. He also organized thousands of volunteers internationally to studyocean tides, in what is now considered one of the firstcitizen science projects. He received theRoyal Medal for this work in 1837.[2]
One of Whewell's greatest gifts to science was his word-smithing. He corresponded with many in his field and helped them come up withneologisms for their discoveries. Whewell coined, among other terms, scientist,[3]physicist,linguistics,consilience,catastrophism,uniformitarianism, andastigmatism;[4] he suggested toMichael Faraday the termselectrode,ion,dielectric,anode, andcathode.[5][6]
Whewell was born inLancaster, the son of John Whewell and his wife, Elizabeth Bennison.[7]His father was a mastercarpenter, and wished him to follow his trade, but William's success inmathematics atLancaster Royal Grammar School andHevershamgrammar school won him anexhibition (a type of scholarship) atTrinity College, Cambridge in 1812. He was the eldest of seven children having three brothers and three sisters born after him. Two of the brothers died as infants while the third died in 1812. Two of his sisters married; he corresponded with them in his career as a student and then a professor. His mother died in 1807, when Whewell was 13 years old. His father died in 1816, the year Whewell received his bachelor degree at Trinity College, but before his most significant professional accomplishments.[8]
Whewell married, firstly, in 1841, Cordelia Marshall, daughter ofJohn Marshall. Within days of his marriage, Whewell was recommended to be master of Trinity College in Cambridge, followingChristopher Wordsworth. Cordelia died in 1855. In 1858 he married again, to Everina Frances (née Ellis), sister ofRobert Leslie Ellis and widow ofSir Gilbert Affleck, 5th Baronet.[9][10] She died in 1865. He had no children.
In 1814 he was awarded theChancellor's Gold Medal for poetry.[11] He wasSecond Wrangler in 1816, President of theCambridge Union Society in 1817, became fellow and tutor of his college.
He was professor ofmineralogy from 1828 to 1832 andKnightbridge Professor of Philosophy (then called "moral theology and casuistical divinity") from 1838 to 1855.[12][13] During the years as professor of philosophy, in 1841, Whewell succeededChristopher Wordsworth as master.
Whewell influenced the syllabus of theMathematical Tripos at Cambridge, which undergraduates studied. He was a proponent of 'mixed mathematics':applied mathematics,descriptive geometry andmathematical physics, in contrast withpure mathematics. Under Whewell, analytic topics such aselliptical integrals were replaced by physical studies of electricity, heat and magnetism. He believed an intuitive geometrical understanding of mathematics, based on Euclid and Newton, was most appropriate.[14]
Whewell died in Cambridge in 1866 as a result of a fall from his horse.[15] He was buried in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, whilst his wives are buried together in theMill Road Cemetery, Cambridge. A window dedicated to Lady Affleck, his second wife, was installed in her memory in the chancel ofAll Saints' Church, Cambridge and made byMorris & Co.
A list of his writings was prepared after his death byIsaac Todhunter in two volumes, the first being an index of the names of persons with whom Whewell corresponded.[16][17] Another book was published five years later, as a biography of Whewell's life interspersed with his letters to his father, his sisters, and other correspondence, written and compiled by his niece by marriage, Janet Mary Douglas, called Mrs Stair Douglas on the book's title page.[8] These books are available online in their entirety as part of the Internet Archive.
In 1826 and 1828, Whewell was engaged withGeorge Airy in conducting experiments inDolcoath mine inCornwall, in order to determine thedensity of the earth. Their united labours were unsuccessful, and Whewell did little more in the way ofexperimental science. He was the author, however, of anEssay on Mineralogical Classification, published in 1828, and carried out extensive work on the tides.[18][13]
When Whewell started his work ontides, there was a theory explaining the forces causing the tides, based on the work ofNewton,Bernoulli, andLaplace. But this explained the forces, not how tides actually propagated in oceans bounded by continents. There was a series of tidal observations for a few ports, such asLondon andLiverpool, which allowed tide tables to be produced for these ports. However the methods used to create such tables, and in some cases the observations, were closely guarded trade secrets.John Lubbock, a former student of Whewell's, had analysed the available historic data (covering up to 25 years) for several ports to allow tables to be generated on a theoretical basis, publishing the methodology.[19][20] This work was supported byFrancis Beaufort,Hydrographer of the Navy, and contributed to the publication of theAdmiralty Tide Tables starting in 1833.[21]
Whewell built on Lubbock's work to develop an understanding of tidal patterns around the world that could be used to generate predictions for many locations without the need for long series of tidal observations at each port. This required extensive new observations, initially obtained through an informal network, and later through formal projects enabled by Beaufort at the Admiralty. In the first of these, in June 1834, every Coast Guard station in the United Kingdom recorded the tides every fifteen minutes for two weeks.[22]: 169–173 The second, in June 1835, was an international collaboration, involving Admiralty Surveyors, other Royal Navy and British observers, as well as those from theUnited States,France,Spain,Portugal,Belgium,Denmark,Norway, and theNetherlands. Islands, such as theChannel Islands, were particularly interesting, adding important detail of the progress of the tides through the ocean. The Admiralty also provided the resources for data analysis, and J.F. Dessiou, an expert calculator on the Admiralty staff, was in charge of the calculations.[22]: 175–182
Whewell made extensive use of graphical methods, and these became not just ways of displaying results, but tools in the analysis of data.[22]: 182 He published a number of maps showingcotidal lines (a term coined by himself, but first published by Lubbock, acknowledging the inventor[24]: 111 [25]) – lines joining points where high tide occurred at the same time. These allowed a graphical representation of the progression of tidal waves through the ocean. From this, Whewell predicted that there should be a place where there was no tidal rise or fall in the southern part of the North Sea.[23] Such a "no-tide zone" is now called anamphidromic point. In 1840, the naval surveyorWilliam Hewett confirmed Whewell's prediction. This involved anchoring his ship, HMSFairy, and taking repeated soundings at the same location withlead and line, precautions being needed to allow for irregularities in the sea bed, and the effects of tidal flow. The data showed a rise of no more than 1 foot (0.30 m), near the limit of accuracy.[26][24]
Whewell published about 20 papers over a period of 20 years on his tidal researches. This was his major scientific achievement, and was an important source for his understanding of the process of scientific enquiry, the subject of one of his major worksPhilosophy of the Inductive Sciences.
His best-known works are two voluminous books that attempt to systematize the development of the sciences,History of the Inductive Sciences (1837) andThe Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon Their History (1840, 1847, 1858–60). While theHistory traced how each branch of the sciences had evolved since antiquity, Whewell viewed thePhilosophy as the "Moral" of the previous work as it sought to extract auniversaltheory of knowledge through history.
In the latter, he attempted to followFrancis Bacon's plan for discovery. He examined ideas ("explication of conceptions") and by the "colligation of facts" endeavored to unite these ideas with the facts and so construct science.[13] This colligation is an "act of thought", a mental operation consisting of bringing together a number of empirical facts by "superinducing" upon them a conception which unites the facts and renders them capable of being expressed in general laws.[27] Whewell refers to as an exampleKepler and the discovery of the elliptical orbit: the orbit's points werecolligated by theconception of the ellipse, not by the discovery of new facts. These conceptions are not "innate" (as in Kant), but being the fruits of the "progress of scientific thought (history) are unfolded in clearness and distinctness".[28]
Whewell analyzedinductive reasoning into three steps:
Upon these follow special methods of induction applicable to quantity: the method of curves, the method of means, the method of least squares and the method of residues, and special methods depending on resemblance (to which the transition is made through the law of continuity), such as the method of gradation and the method of natural classification.[13] InPhilosophy of the Inductive Sciences Whewell was the first to use the term "consilience" to discuss the unification of knowledge between the different branches of learning.
Here, as in hisethical doctrine, Whewell was moved by opposition to contemporaryEnglish empiricism. FollowingImmanuel Kant, he asserted againstJohn Stuart Mill thea priori nature ofnecessary truth, and by his rules for the construction of conceptions he dispensed with theinductive methods of Mill.[13] Yet, according toLaura J. Snyder, "surprisingly, the received view of Whewell's methodology in the 20th century has tended to describe him as an anti-inductivist in thePopperian mold, that is it is claimed that Whewell endorses a 'conjectures and refutations' view of scientific discovery. Whewell explicitly rejects the hypothetico-deductive claim that hypotheses discovered by non-rational guesswork can be confirmed by consequentialist testing. Whewell explained that new hypotheses are 'collected from the facts' (Philosophy of Inductive Sciences, 1849, 17)".[29] In sum, thescientific discovery is a partlyempirical and partlyrational process; the "discovery of the conceptions is neither guesswork nor merely a matter of observations", we infer more than we see.[30]
One of Whewell's greatest gifts to science was his wordsmithing. He often corresponded with many in his field and helped them come up withnew terms for their discoveries. In fact, Whewell came up with the termscientist itself in 1833, and it was first published in Whewell's anonymous 1834 review ofMary Somerville'sOn the Connexion of the Physical Sciences published in theQuarterly Review.[31] (They had previously been known as "natural philosophers" or "men of science").
Whewell was prominent not only in scientific research and philosophy but also inuniversity and college administration. His first work,An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics (1819), cooperated with those ofGeorge Peacock andJohn Herschel in reforming the Cambridge method of mathematical teaching. His work and publications also helped influence the recognition of the moral and natural sciences as an integral part of the Cambridge curriculum.[13]
In general, however, especially in later years, he opposed reform: he defended thetutorial system, and in a controversy withConnop Thirlwall (1834), opposed the admission ofDissenters; he upheld the clerical fellowship system, the privileged class of "fellow-commoners", and the authority of heads of colleges in university affairs.[13]
He opposed the appointment of the University Commission (1850) and wrote two pamphlets (Remarks) against the reform of the university (1855). He stood against the scheme of entrusting elections to the members of the senate and instead, advocated the use of college funds and thesubvention of scientific and professorial work.[13]
He was electedMaster of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1841, and retained that position until his death in 1866.
TheWhewell Professorship of International Law and the Whewell Scholarships were established through the provisions of his will.[32][33]
Aside from Science, Whewell was also interested in thehistory of architecture throughout his life. He is best known for his writings onGothic architecture, specifically his book,Architectural Notes on German Churches (first published in 1830). In this work, Whewell established a strict nomenclature for German Gothic churches and came up with a theory of stylistic development. His work is associated with the "scientific trend" of architectural writers, along withThomas Rickman andRobert Willis.
He paid from his own resources for the construction of two new courts of rooms at Trinity College,Cambridge, built in aGothic style. The two courts were completed in 1860 and (posthumously) in 1868, and are now collectively namedWhewell's Court (in the singular).
Between 1835 and 1861 Whewell produced various works on the philosophy ofmorals andpolitics, the chief of which,Elements of Morality, includingPolity, was published in 1845. The peculiarity of this work—written from what is known as theintuitional point of view—is its fivefold division of the springs of action and of their objects, of the primary anduniversal rights of man (personal security, property, contract, family rights, and government), and of the cardinal virtues (benevolence,justice,truth,purity andorder).[13]
Among Whewell's other works—too numerous to mention—were popular writings such as:
Whewell was one of the Cambridgedons whomCharles Darwin met duringhis education there, and when Darwin returned fromtheBeagle voyage he was directly influenced by Whewell, who persuaded Darwin to become secretary of theGeological Society of London. The title pages ofOn the Origin of Species open with a quotation from Whewell'sBridgewater Treatise about science founded on anatural theology of a creator establishing laws:[38]
But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this—we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws.
Though Darwin used the concepts of Whewell as he made and tested his hypotheses regarding thetheory of evolution, Whewell did not support Darwin's theory itself.
"Whewell also famously opposed the idea of evolution. First he published a new book,Indications of the Creator, 1845, composed of extracts from his earlier works to counteract the popular anonymous evolutionary workVestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Later Whewell opposed Darwin's theories of evolution."[39]
In the 1857 novelBarchester Towers Charlotte Stanhope uses the topic of the theological arguments, concerning the possibility of intelligent life on other planets, between Whewell andDavid Brewster in an attempt to start up a conversation between her impecunious brother and the wealthy young widow Eleanor Bold.[43]
Fanny (Everina Frances), the eldest child, was born in 1807 and the last to die, in 1865, the year before her second husband William Whewell, Master of Trinity.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Whewell, William".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 587.{{citation}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link) (The Origin of Species page ii.) Retrieved on 5 January 2007
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Master of Trinity College, Cambridge 1841–1866 | Succeeded by |
| Conceptions of God |
| ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Existence of God |
| ||||||||||||
| Theology |
| ||||||||||||
(by date active) |
| ||||||||||||
| Related topics | |||||||||||||
| _shield.svg) | |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
