History in Depth: The Early Victorian Period

Much of the research on which this article is based was done during the tenure of a grant from the National Science Foundation. I should like to thank the Council of the Royal Society for permission to use the Society's archives, and the Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge, for his co-operation.

For example, Herschel John , “On the action of the rays of the solar spectrum on vegetable colours”, Philosophical transactions, cxxxii (1842) 181–214. I believe that this tends to be true of physics monographs in any era when the field is in the state of development described below.

The same is not true of his gigantic double-star catalogue. His diaries make it clear that this was rote-work he did to fill up his time when he was old and sick and unable (in his own opinion) to do anything that required thought. However on a general feeling prevalent around 1820 that it would be desirable to study every individual star in the heavens, see Dryer J. L. E. Turner H. H. , History of the Royal Astronomical Society (London, 1923) 6.

Cf. George Airy to John Herschel, 1 February 1847 (John Herschel Papers, Royal Society Library), concerning Schumacher's desire to suppress the news of Bessel's lack of faith.

Airy to Herschel, 24 April 1834; Herschel to Physics Committee of the Royal Society, 8 July 1840 (John Herschel Papers, Royal Society Library). Herschel distinguished this kind of observatory from another kind, one to determine physical constants extremely accurately (what we might call a Bureau of Standards).

Herschel seems to have been the only British scientist whom Airy genuinely considered to be his peer.

“Systematic” as distinct from merely taking a picture of the Moon.

Cf. Scott R. H. , “The history of the Kew Observatory”, Proceedings of the Royal Society, xxxix (1885) 45–64.

Chalmers Thomas , The evidence and authority of the Christian revelation (2nd ed., Edinburgh, 1815) 174–175, 204; On natural theology (Glasgow, 1836) i, 229–230. On Chalmers generally, see Hanna William , The life and writings of Thomas Chalmers (New York, 1850–52). The whole Scottish intellectual scene deserves more study than it has received.

See my article, “John Herschel and the idea of science”, Journal of the history of ideas, xxii (1961) 234.

Thirlwall to William Whewell, 31 October 1849 (Whewell Papers, Trinity College, Cambridge).

Campbell Lewis Garnett William , Life of James Clerk Maxwell (2nd ed., London, 1884) 109–110, 150, 156, 217, 273, 301; and see also 89 (on Kant).

Herschel John , Preliminary discourse on the study of natural philosophy (London, 1831) 164, 198, 306; for two of his letters, see my article, “The impact of Uniformitarianism”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, cv (1961) 301–314.

Campbell Garnett , Clerk Maxwell, 178.

Dreyer Turner , Astronomical Society, 73. This would be a good subject for a monograph, especially with relation to the Munich instrument-makers. Fraunhofer figures in over simple books as an optician; but, to satisfy such men as Bessel and Struve, a telescope had to have not only a superior lens but also a superior construction, a superior mounting, and a superior measuring device.

Ibid., 26.

Forbes James D. , “Report upon the recent progress and present state of meteorology”, British Association report, ii (1832) 196–258, and “Supplementary report on meteorology”, British Association report, x (1840) 44–45.

British Association report, i (1831) ix, 22.

Williams Contrast L. Pearce , “The Royal Society and the founding of the British Association for the Advancement of Science”, Notes and records of the Royal Society, xvi (1961) 231.

British Association report, i (1831) 17–18. There is a good account in Shairp J. C. Tait P. G. Adams-Reilly A. , Life and letters of James David Forbes (London, 1873) 75–79, which makes clear the Northern origin of the Association. Roderick Murchison and Charles Babbage were the London scientists most closely involved. Vernon Harcourt, like other Vernon Harcourts, deserves more attention than he has received. So does the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, which should be added to the names given in Robert Schofield, “Histories of scientific societies”, History of science, ii (1963) 76–77.

Herschel to William Whewell, 20 September 1831 (John Herschel Papers, Royal Society Library). Herschel changed his mind and joined in 1832.

Herschel to Vernon Harcourt, 5 September 1831 (John Herschel Papers, Royal Society Library).

King H. C. , The history of the telescope (London, 1955) 192; Mach Ernst , The princip es of physical optics (tr. Anderson J. Young A. , New York, n.d.) 301.

Thomson William , “On geological time”, Popular lectures and addresses (London, 1889–1894) ii, 10–64, and “Of geological dynamics”, Popular lectures, ii, 111–113; Huxley Thomas , “Address of the president”, Quarterly journal of the Geological Society of London, xxv (1869) Part I, xxviii–liii.

Cf. Powell Baden , “Report on the recent progress of discovery relative to radiant heat”, British Association report, x (1840) 10, 35, 36; Draper John W. , Scientific Memoirs (New York, 1878) 50, 79–80, 385, 402.

Cardwell D. S. L. , “Science and technology in the eighteenth century”, History of science, i (1962) 30; Hall A. R. , “Merton revisited”, History of science, ii (1963) 13 (Merton is here not the college, as one might expect, but an American sociologist). Since writing this paper I have seen Scientific Change, ed. Crombie A. C. (London, 1963). In the differing emphases of Henry Guerlac and Alexandre Koyré (797 ff., 847 ff.), it is obvious that I side with Professor Guerlac although his presentation seems to me still too intellectualist, as he says that “the history of science is primarily (but not exclusively) the history of thought about nature” (811, his italics).

Dunnington C. W. , Carl Friedrich Gauss (New York, 1955) 114–117 and chapter 10 generally; 163–166; 174–190.

Taylor E. G. R. , The mathematical practitioners of Tudor & Stuart England (Cambridge, 1954) 151–157. describes the various schemes proposed in 1714 and 1715 after the Parliamentary reward was offered. Some of them were very abstruse (and also useless).

Taylor , op. cit., 157 vs. 155, 162.

The importance of Gauss in the enterprise, especially because of the excellence of his newly-designed instruments, is indicated by the fact that observations were to be co-ordinated, at least from 1842 on, to “Göttingen mean time”. See Royal Society Committee of Physics and Meteorology, Revised instructions for the use of the magnetic and meteorological observatories and for the magnetic surveys (London, 1842) 8; and Herschel to Gauss, 4 September 1842 (John Herschel Papers, Royal Society Library). The instruments used in the expedition were improvements by Humphrey Lloyd of Gauss's original designs.

Report of the Committee of Physics of the Royal Society (London 1840) 54. I am using the definition of Shaw Napier , Manual of meteorology (Cambridge, 1932) i, 8, 160–162, that modern meteorology was founded when and only when a continuously existing large-scale network of observatories, making large-scale weather maps possible, came into existence.

Whewell William , History of the inductive sciences (3rd ed., New York, 1890) ii, 231.

Was this one of the first recognitions of structural unemployment? The idea of the unemployed warrior as social victim is to be contrasted to the notion, at least as old as the First Crusade, of the unemployed warrior as social danger.

The influences of voyages on scientists is a matter not yet, I believe, thoroughly studied on a comparative basis. The differences are as striking as the similarities even when, as with Darwin and Wallace, the voyages led to the same theory.

The first such scientific organisation was that of geodesists, in 1864, although it did not call itself international until 1886.

As with Laplace, whose scientific collaborator Lavoisier was a Physiocrat of sorts.

Cf. Babbage Charles , On the economy of machinery and manufactures (London, 1832) passim.

Bamford T. W. , Thomas Arnold (London, 1960) 205.

See especially Whewell William , “Mathematical exposition of some doctrines of political economy” and “Mathematical exposition of some of the leading doctrines in Mr Ricardo's ‘Principles of political economy and taxation’”, in Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, iii (1830) 191–230, and iv (1833) 155–198; Babbage , Economy of machinery. One example taken from the other side of the opposition is Mill's decision to attack Laplace on several points in his System of logic; he soon found out from Herschel that his reasoning was often at fault; cf. Mill-Herschel Correspondence (John Herschel Papers, Royal Society Library).

I have not checked Gauss, but the social use of statistics was advocated by the others named. On John Lubbock (the father of Darwin's Lubbock) see as only one example his letter to Whewell, 25 June 1829 (William Whewell Papers, Trinity College, Cambridge). Lubbock's papers at the Royal Society would repay detailed study, I believe.

That he really believed in the validity of the analogy is shown by the fact that he used it to interest other scientists in his work: cf. Quetelet to Herschel, 23 August 1834, Herschel to Quetelet, 8 June 1837 (John Herschel Papers, Royal Society Library).

Galloway was Professor of Mathematics at Sandhurst, and was employed as actuary by the Amicable Life Assurance Office in 1833. He is best known for his use of probability methods on the problem of the proper motion of the solar system; see “Report of the Council—obituary of Thomas Galloway”, Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, xii (1851–52) 87–89.

Babbage Charles , Passages from the life of a philosopher (London, 1864) 474–476.

Lithographed signatures of the members of the British Association … with a report of the proceedings at the public meetings (Cambridge, 1833) 82, 90–92. A sixth, behind-the-scenes, worker was William Whewell. He and his friend Jones had been conspiring on this subject for several months before the meeting; Todhunter Isaac , William Whewell (London, 1876) ii, 161.

His biographers suggest that it was Maxwell's work on the rings of Saturn which drew Maxwell's attention to the problem of dealing with many small bodies. And at the same time (1857) he was reading John Herschel's Essays, one of which was a long discussion of probability in the form of a review of Quetelet. Equally, he could have become aware of the virtues of a probabilistic approval from several astronomical sources, in particular by the direct method of reading Gauss's famous Theoria Motus. At an early age he was well aware of the calculus of probabilities as the best approach to moral philosophy, but this was a common position even in the eighteenth century. Campbell Garnett , Clerk Maxwell, 231, 210, 97. Of course the direct inspiration to Clerk Maxwell came from Clausius. For a discussion of some of the intellectual problems which made the transfer of this approach to physics difficult, see Hesse's Mary “Commentary”, in Scientific Change, ed. Crombie A. C. (London, 1963) 471–476.

Parliamentary reports were used as social evidence by, for example, Babbage Charles , Economy of manufactures, vi. But they have always been most useful to social reformers like Marx and Engels, for the reason stated in the text.

As a reasonably trivial example: There seem to be about three people, outside of Colonel Glenn's family, who are aware that America's first astronaut is named John Herschel Glenn, Jnr.

Jacobowitz Henry , Electronic computers (Garden City, New York, 1963) 130–136.

Herschel to Airy, 22 December 1870 (John Herschel Papers, Royal Society Library).

The study of the instruments is comparatively neglected for the modern period; as it develops, it should throw light on many interesting questions, for example, why certain phenomena were known but relatively neglected. Charles Babbage, for example, pointed out that Fraunhofer's lines were hard to see with existing instruments: Reflections on the decline of science in England (London, 1830) 210–21; his friend Herschel had the great advantages of having been shown how to see them by Fraunhofer himself, and having been given some Fraunhofer glass. In this case we do have written testimony, but it is so incomplete that it immediately suggests a variety of experiments.

“At the time of writing”: That is, I have not seen Gavin de Beer's forthcoming book. There is, however, one article which constitutes a beginning: Vorzimmer Peter , “Charles Darwin and blending inheritance”, Isis, liv (1963) 371–390.

The statement in the text should perhaps be qualified by “except for the development of the museum concept in science as in other fields”.

The idea permeates Lyell's entire historical introduction in Principles of geology (2nd ed., London, 1832–1833) i, 2–98.

Gillispie Charles , Genesis and geology (Cambridge, Mass., 1951) ix.

See my article, “The bases of Darwin's achievement”, Victorian studies, v (1961) 109–134.

Williams L. Pearce , “The physical sciences in the first half of the nineteenth century”, History of science, i (1962) 7.

Discussed at greater length in my forthcoming article, “Scientists and Broad Churchman: An early Victorian intellectual network”, Journal of British studies.

The standard church history is not always sure that the Broad Church had a philosophy, and, if metaphysics is philosophy, it did not; it had only a morality and perhaps an epistemology.

I know of no scientist bishops; one bishop, Connop Thirlwall, was originally a scholar. There were two scientist deans, the geologist William Buckland, who was not a great success at Westminster, and the mathematician George Peacock, who was outstanding at Ely.

The letters are in the John Herschel and Edward Sabine Papers at the Royal Society Library.

Since Ross, the only suitable leader, would have had to accept another appointment: Sabine to Herschel, 3 December 1838 (John Herschel Papers, Royal Society Library).

The statement that the Scientific Revolution “outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements within the system of medieval Christendom”, from the preface to Butterfield Herbert , The origins of modern science (London, 1949).

This sentence is designed to annoy intellectualist historians, since I do not see, on intellectualist grounds, why it is foolish. Nor did Babbage.

Thus there are many stupid scientists but few brilliant politicians.

Cf. “Extracts from Treasury Minute dated 28 April 1829” and “Mr. Stewart to Secretary, Royal Society, 24 December 1831” (Domestic Manuscripts, vol. iv, Royal Society Library).