Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society

by Laura J. Snyder

The Victorian period in Britain was an “age of reform.”  It is therefore not surprising that two of the era’s most eminent intellects described themselves as reformers. Both William Whewell and John Stuart Mill believed that by reforming philosophy—including the philosophy of science—they could effect social and political change. But their divergent visions of this societal transformation led to a sustained and spirited controversy that covered morality, politics, science, and economics. Situating their debate within the larger context of Victorian society and its concerns, Reforming Philosophy shows how two very different men captured the intellectual spirit of the day and engaged the attention of other scientists and philosophers, including the young Charles Darwin.
 
Mill—philosopher, political economist, and Parliamentarian—remains a canonical author of Anglo-American philosophy, while Whewell—Anglican cleric, scientist, and educator—is now often overlooked, though in his day he was renowned as an authority on science. Placing their teachings in their proper intellectual, cultural, and argumentative spheres, Laura Snyder revises the standard views of these two important Victorian figures, showing that both men’s concerns remain relevant today.
 
A philosophically and historically sensitive account of the engagement of the major protagonists of Victorian British philosophy, Reforming Philosophy is the first book-length examination of the dispute between Mill and Whewell in its entirety. A rich and nuanced understanding of the intellectual spirit of Victorian Britain, it will be welcomed by philosophers and historians of science, scholars of Victorian studies, and students of the history of philosophy and political economy.  
 

Genres: History, Philosophy, Science

386 pages, Hardcover

First published August 8, 2006

About the author

An expert on Victorian science and culture, Fulbright scholar Laura J. Snyder just completed a term as President of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, and is Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. John's University.

Reviews

[Jared Neumann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reforming Philosophy represents the pinnacle of contemporary research on William Whewell's philosophy of science and its relationship with his desire for social and political reform. I was not impressed by Snyder's treatment of Mill when it comes to the content of his debate with Whewell. She often inserts rude commentary, such as when she calls Mill's arguments 'strange'. It is obvious that she favors Whewell, and this causes her to be unsympathetic to Mill. Snyder is also known for her other work on Whewell, which is largely intended to save him from the misinterpretations of earlier historians and philosophers of science (such as Peter Achinstein and Larry Laudan). She has argued that Whewell was no hypothetico-deductivist, as many have claimed, but was actually an inductivist as he himself claimed. I think this is true to some extent, but even contemporaries of Whewell (including logicians like Augustus De Morgan) faulted him for his use of the word 'induction'. He was an inductivist, sure, but the name denoted something other than logical inquiry; it was Baconian in the sense that it was a broad term for all of scientific methodology. There is a lengthy list of dichotomous relationships between logical induction and scientific induction, but Snyder seems content to lump them all together in order to contrast Whewell with 20th-century philosophy of science.