John Herschel and the Idea of Science

1961 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter F. Cannon
Keyword(s):  
John Herschel

John Herschel und der Newton des Grashalms

2013 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-335
Author(s):  
Anne Christina Thaeder
Keyword(s):  
John Herschel

Hugh James Rose’s Anglican Critique of Cambridge: Science, Antirationalism, and Coleridgean Idealism in Late Georgian England

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (02) ◽  
pp. 218-242
Author(s):  
David A. Valone
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Mathematical Work ◽  
Undergraduate Instruction ◽  
John Herschel ◽  
Anglican Theology ◽  
Georgian England ◽  
The University

On Commencement Sunday in the summer of 1826, Hugh James Rose ascended the pulpit of the University Church at Cambridge to deliver a sermon. As Rose surveyed the assembled crowd, he would have been well aware that before him sat the future of English political, religious, and intellectual life—present and future members of Parliament, the leaders and local prelates of the Church of England, and the next generation of Cambridge scholars. While commencement addresses today are rather formulaic in their celebratory character, the sermon Rose had prepared for that day was far from uplifting. Rose had chosen to preach on Ecclesiastes chapter eleven, verse five: “No man can find out the work, which God maketh, from the beginning to the end.” Using this passage as a decree upon the limits of human knowledge, Rose launched into a blistering attack on the University and the educational philosophy that he believed it espoused. Far from praising the University and its graduates, Rose called into question much of what Cambridge had been doing to educate its students. The essence of Rose’s critique was that the University had lost its way as a religious institution and had become dominated by the search for “knowledge of the material Universe.” Pursuing this end, Rose warned, was a tremendous danger, because in so doing Cambridge was failing to provide a proper moral and religious foundation for those who would guide the nation. Naturally, Rose’s sermon came as a shock to many of those gathered before him, especially since it not only took the University to task but also implicitly seemed to indict some of Rose’s closest friends. His sermon battered one of the girders of Cambridge intellectual and religious life, and of Anglican theology more generally: the notion that natural philosophy was an appropriate handmaiden to religion. The tradition of reasoning up from nature to the Creator had long flourished at Cambridge in the hands of both men of science and theologians. Most at Cambridge took for granted the compatibility between the study of God’s creation and religious faith. For the previous three decades Cambridge had made the works of alumnus William Paley, replete with the ways nature manifested the wisdom and goodness of God, a cornerstone of undergraduate instruction. Ironically, many of Rose’s acquaintances from his own undergraduate days at Cambridge were themselves involved in scientific and mathematical pursuits and were generally sympathetic to Natural Theology. His dearest friend at the University was William Whewell, an intellectual polymath who excelled in mathematics, physics, and mineralogy, as well as moral philosophy, history, and theology. Rose also was a close associate of John Herschel and Charles Babbage, men who were renowned for their astronomical and mathematical work. Himself a fairly accomplished mathematician a decade earlier, Rose even had considered publishing some work to support Herschel and Babbage’s efforts to revitalize Cambridge mathematics during his undergraduate days.

On the Origin of Theories: Charles Darwin’s Vocabulary of Method

2017 ◽  
Vol 122 (4) ◽  
pp. 1079-1104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry M. Cowles
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Historical Imagination ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
John Herschel ◽  
Scientific World ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract This is an essay on the origin of theories. It argues that methodology can do more than shape scientific theories—sometimes, vocabularies of method become such theories. The origin of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is a case in point: Darwin’s well-known attention to methodological matters not only framed but bled into his theory of nature. A careful student of contemporary methodology, Darwin sought guidance for using a controversial tool in the scientific world in which he came of age: the hypothesis. In the process of reading the works of John Herschel and William Whewell, Darwin turned nature itself into a man of science. The hypotheses and testing of scientific practice were mirrored in the variations and selection of the natural world. Though unintentional, Darwin’s naturalization of a vocabulary of method helped pave the way for applications of evolutionary theory to the study of the human mind and, completing the circle, to the philosophy of science. Considering the role of vocabularies of method in the origin of theories suggests new directions for the study of cognitive history and the power of language to transform the historical imagination.

Sir John Herschel and Contact Lenses

Science ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 111 (2888) ◽  
pp. 501-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. L. WALLS
Keyword(s):  
Contact Lenses ◽  
John Herschel

Making stars physical: the astronomy of Sir John Herschel

2018 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-230
Author(s):  
Lee T. Macdonald
Keyword(s):  
John Herschel

scholarly journals Review of the Occultation Technique for the Study of Binaries

1983 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 60-62
Author(s):  
Nathaniel M. White
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Double Star ◽  
Systematic Search ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Data Handling ◽  
Spectroscopic Binary ◽  
John Herschel

The systematic search for stellar multiplicity by observations of lunar occultations began in 1969. David Evans will review a large portion of the data collected since then in the second paper of this session. Here we will outline the historical development of the technique and comment on its limitations, contributions to double star research, and future improvements.Sir John Herschel (1865) may have been the first to suggest that “a double star, too close to be seen divided with any telescope, may yet be detected to be double by the mode of its disappearance.” However, the visual discovery of duplicity by occultation is not sufficient, for the observations are not subject to analysis after the fact. The power of the occultation technique was realized more than 100 years after the suggestion, with the application of photomultipliers and electronic digital data handling. Whitford (1939) took the first step in using a cesium photo tube, oscilloscope, and moving film to record the occultations of Beta Capricorni and Upsilon Aquarii. The resolution of the spectroscopic binary Beta Capricorni was discussed, but he concluded his data were not able to resolve it, an observation which was later accomplished at several observatories and summarized by Evans and Fekel (1979).

scholarly journals A letter from Captain C. M. Elliot, Madras Engineers, to Lieut,-Col. Sabine, For. Sec. R. S., transmitted through the court of directors of the East India company. Communicated by Lieut.-Col. Sabine

1851 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 908-910
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Magnetic Survey ◽  
John Herschel ◽  
The Way

Having undertaken the magnetic survey of the Indian Archipelago at the recommendation of the Royal Society, I think a slight sketch, detailed as briefly as possible, of my operations may not be uninteresting to Sir John Herschel and the Committee of Physics of which he is Chairman, prior to the publication of the Survey. I trust likewise I have acted strictly in accordance with the wishes of those who so kindly recommended me for the Survey, and I hope that my earnest efforts to do my duty will gain for me that approbation which I have under no ordinary difficulties incessantly striven to obtain. I will in the first place mention the different stations I visited, and then describe in a few words, the way in which the observations were taken.

scholarly journals On the change of refrangibility of light

1854 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 195-200 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Weak Solution ◽  
Blue Light ◽  
Transmitted Light ◽  
Blue Colour ◽  
John Herschel

The author was led into the researches detailed in this paper by considering a very singular phenomenon which Sir John Herschel had discovered in the case of a weak solution of sulphate of quinine, and various other salts of the same alkaloid. This fluid appears colourless and transparent, like water, when viewed by transmitted light, but exhibits in certain aspects a peculiar blue colour. Sir John Herschel found that when the fluid was illuminated by a beam of ordinary daylight, the blue light was produced only throughout a very thin stratum of fluid adjacent to the surface by which the light entered. It was unpolarized.

scholarly journals Sir John Herschel

Nature ◽  
1871 ◽  
Vol 4 (82) ◽  
pp. 69-71
Author(s):  
C. P.
Keyword(s):  
John Herschel
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