Aspects of William Whewell's philosophy of science

Abstract

The name of William Whewell is certainly more familiar to most philosophers nowadays than it was a few years ago. No longer merely regarded as an opponent of Mill, Whewell, over a period of recent years,1 has emerged as a philosopher of merit in his own right. Indeed this latest judgement has now proceeded to the point where an influential modern thinker can claim in a major work that "throughout this book the view is being maintained that theory can fruitfully be looked upon as the imaginative construction of models according to well-chosen principles, and that, in many ways, the theory of "Ideas" in Whewell's sense, is more helpful in the theory of theories and scientific method generally, than the 2 logic of statements". The favour with which aspects of Whewell's thought are being greeted in some quarters, as an aid in the construction of an alternative philosophy of science to that represented by the tradition of Mill, is a noteworthy phenomenon. Its explanation, however, would be a large task involving no less than a critical summation of the whole of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century British philosophy up until the present. Such a task is obviously beyond the scope of this thesis. Yet if any such summation were to be undertaken in the future, the problem of the historical status of Whewell's philosophy within its own Century would be an issue of importance. This thesis, therefore, is an attempt to place Whewell's thought within the context of Nineteenth Century philosophical problems and issues, particularly as they are related to matters of science. Consequently, it is more inclined to be a history, though a critical one, than an attempt at direct philosophising. Such a history is required, apart from the intrinsic interest of the topic itself, by any attempt to take the overview of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century British philosophy that has been suggested. This is particularly the case in connection with the problems which Whewell1s philosophy, as a species of Kant's, could not solve in its own day, and which continue to trouble philosophers who look back favourably in the direction of Kant. As a history, the thesis opens in Chapter I with a sketch of Whewell's life, followed by a general statement of the motives and intentions of Whewell's philosophical stance. Chapters II and III treat in turn the two pillars of Whewell's thinking, necessary truth and induction, and trace his attempts to reconcile his particular viewpoints on each. The problems associated with this reconciliation are brought out most fully in Chapter IV, and the Final Chapter deals with the fate of Whewell's philosophy, conditioned as it was by the problems which it faced, during the later Nineteenth Century.