Studies in nineteenth century English agnosticism

Abstract

This thesis is an essay in the history of ideas. It is an attempt to characterize in detail some of the main features of agnosticism - the intellectual movement gathered around T.H. Huxley, H. Spencer, J. Tyndall, L. Stephen, and W.K. Clifford, during the last four decades of the nineteenth century. General accounts of this movement already exist - for example, A.W. Benn, The History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, R. Metz, A Hundred Years of British Philosophy - and there are good studies of some of the individual figures - for example, H. Petersen, Huxley: Prophet of science, N. Annan, Leslie Stephen, but, as far as I know, no one has produced a detailed historical study of the agnostics as a group, particularly as a group of philosophers. This work is an attempt to meet this need. Obviously, an historical account of an intellectual movement must not only provide expositions of its distinctive doctrines, it must also place the school generally in the context of its age. The 'Introductory' section is concerned with this latter aim. It may appear, at first, to be out of proportion to the rest of the work, but in view of what has been written about agnosticism it has been necessary to go beyond a general exposition of agnostic doctrines and their roots to consider in what sense the agnostics can be called by that name, and to explain how agnosticism differs from empiricism - J.S. Mill, A. Bain, G. Croom Robertson - and positivism - R. Congreve, F. Harrison, J.H. Bridges - two other Victorian intellectual movements.