See Maurice Cowling's obituary essay on Butterfield in Proceedings of the British Academy, lxv (1981), 599.
2.
ButterfieldH., The Whig interpretation of history (London, 1931, and several times reprinted), preface.
3.
ibid., 3.
4.
ibid., 11–13.
5.
ibid., 12.
6.
ibid., 8.
7.
ibid., 62. Butterfield was careless in his use of the word ‘history’, giving it many connotations such as, the past, the records of the past, a historian's narrative of the past, or (as here) the process of historical writing.
8.
ibid., 7.
9.
ibid., 97, 101–2.
10.
ibid., 103.
11.
ibid., 16.
12.
ibid., 17.
13.
Ibid., 18. In science or engineering it may sometimes be possible to answer precisely (and therefore legitimately) a question of the form “Who first …?”. To the question “Who achieved powered controlled flight by men?” the answer unequivocally is the Wright brothers and I can see no reason why the question should not be asked, since it can be answered.
14.
ibid., 113.
15.
ibid., 132.
16.
ibid., 19–20.
17.
ibid., 72.
18.
I do not mean to accuse these or other linear studies of Whiggism! But as I go on to explain all exceed Butterfield's limits for true history.
19.
Whig interpretation, 58.
20.
BentleyPhyllis, “O dreams, O destinations”: An autobiography (London, 1962), 167.
21.
In ΣΩZEIN TA ØAINOMENA: Essai sur la notion de théorie physique de Platon à Galilée (Paris, 1908).
22.
ThackrayArnold, “The pre-history of an academic discipline: The study of the history of science in the United States, 1891–1941”, Minerva, xviii (1980), 448–73, p. 458.
