This collection of primary sources examines scientific methodology in Britain during the long nineteenth century. This volume presents the views laid out by contributors to the philosophy of science in this period.
This collection of primary sources examines scientific methodology in Britain during the long nineteenth century. Perhaps the most striking feature of nineteenth-century works on scientific method is the extent to which they were taken up by authors interested in writing large-scale, systemic works introducing, at one stroke, a philosophy of science, a view of what "good scientific practice" would look like, and investigations of logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. This volume presents the views laid out in the four largest and most important such treatises: Sir John F. W. Herschel’s
Preliminary Discourse on Natural Philosophy, William Whewell’s
History of the Inductive Sciences and
Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, and John Stuart Mill’s
A System of Logic, as well as other contributors to the philosophy of science in this period. This title will be of great interest to students of the history of philosophy and the history of science.
Volume 1: Building Philosophical Systems
General Introduction
Volume 1 Introduction
Part 1: Setting the Stage
1. Isaac Newton, Scholium, from Principia Mathematica, tr. Andrew Motte
(1803 [ 1726, 1729 tr.]), pp. 1:61:14
2.Isaac Newton, Queries, from Opticks (1730)
3. Émilie Du Châtelet, Of Hypothesis, from Foundations of Physics, tr.
Isabelle Bour and Judith P. Zinsser (1740, tr. 2009), pp. 147155
4. Immanuel Kant, Preface from Prolegomena and Metaphysical Foundations of
Natural Science, tr. Ernest Belfort Bax (1883 [ 1786]), pp. 137149
5. Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1786), pp.
1:331:52
6. Mary Shepherd, Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824), pp.
4063
Part 2: Sir John F. W. Herschels Preliminary Discourse
7. John F. W. Herschel, Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural
Philosophy, 2nd ed. (1851),
Chapter I, pp. 1317;
Chapter V, pp. 135138;
Chapter VI, pp. 144175;
Chapter VII, pp. 190200
8. William Whewell, [ Review of] A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of
Natural Philosophy, The Quarterly Review, Vol. 45, No. 90 (1831), pp.
374391, 398402
Part 3: William Whewells History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences
9. William Whewell, Of the Establishment of the Principles of Dynamics, and
Of Certain Characteristics of Scientific Induction, from The Philosophy of
the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon Their History, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (1847),
pp. 1:2151:227, 2:462:74
Part 4: John Stuart Mills System of Logic
10. John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic (1843), Of Observation and
Experiment and Of the Four Methods of Experimental Enquiry, pp.
1:4371:479 and from Of Demonstration, and Necessary Truths and The Same
Subject Continued, pp. 1:296300, 1:311323, 1:328330
Part 5: Positivism
11. Auguste Comte, The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, tr. Harriet
Martineau (1853 [ 1830]), pp. 2538
12. Ernst Mach, Introductory Remarks: Antimetaphysical, from The Analysis
of Sensations, 1st ed., tr. C. M. Williams (1897), pp. 126
13. Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science, 1st ed., (1892), pp. 92104,
116121
Bibliography
Index
Dr. Charles H. Pence is Assistant Professor and Director of the Center for the Philosophy of Science and Society (CEFISES) at the Université catholique de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
