CONTRIBUIÇÕES DOS HERSCHEL PARA O DESENVOLVIMENTO DA CIÊNCIA

A humanidade estabelece vínculos investigativos sobre o céu há muito tempo e desde que se tem o registro de suas primeiras verificações até o momento, muitas coisas mudaram: o conhecimento a respeito do universo se expandiu, planetas e outros corpos celestes foram descobertos, o Sol e sua relação com a Terra ficaram melhor compreendidos. Com o passar do tempo, estabeleceram-se estudos mais difundidos na área, houve melhorias nos equipamentos de pesquisa e, com isso, um número maior de pessoas vem atuando nesta área científica. Os irmãos William e Caroline Herschel começaram a investigar os céus da Inglaterra ainda no século XVIII com seus telescópios artesanais. Caroline colocou seu nome na ciência e carregou consigo as honras de ter sido a primeira mulher reconhecida oficialmente como astrônoma, bem como membro da prestigiada Royal Society. William consagrou-se como astrônomo, construtor de telescópios e passou seu conhecimento às gerações seguintes, iniciando por John Herschel, seu filho. John continuou os trabalhos do pai e da tia, além de contribuir para outras áreas, pois seus interesses iam desde as ciências naturais e exatas até as artes. Este trabalho apresenta um resumo da história dos Herschel que, mesmo tendo contribuído para a ciência, seus nomes são pouco conhecidos em sala de aula. Os esforços científicos de William e Caroline Herschel, que de músicos tornaram-se astrônomos renomados, pode ser visto como incentivo nos dias atuais.

The Knowledge Problem in Mature Science

In the course of the nineteenth century, physical scientists became increasingly self-conscious of the need for a theory of how scientific knowledge was produced. Though many theories were proposed, none won a consensus. As explicitly stated by William Whewell, the core problem was the same for everyone: how to ground claims of knowledge of experience in a way that also justified claiming that the object of these claims was a reality independent of experience that caused experience. Everyone was acutely aware of the Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent and of the logical gulf between induction and deduction. John Herschel, Whewell, John Stuart Mill, August Comte, Hermann Helmholtz, Pierre Duhem, and Ernst Mach were some who proposed theories of science. Of these, Mach alone decisively rejected reality as the objective of science. Meanwhile, the nonscientist J. B. Stallo argued for the fundamental role played by metaphysical concepts in modern science.

Sacrifice in Service to Truth

Victorian men of science struggled to address a central question of nineteenth-century British thought: how do fallible human beings recognize truth? Their solution, embodied within the principles establishing the British Association for the Advancement of Science, focused on a stable set of selfless epistemic virtues—patience, humility, diligence, disinterest, self-control—that provided moral stability amid the relentless advance of new and revised theories of physical reality. But if well-founded ideas flow from virtuous practices, did it not follow that dangerously unsound ideas stem from vice? For this reason, a widely shared commitment to virtuous conduct meant that intellectual disagreements often degenerated into accusations of immoral behavior. This essay explores the complicated role of epistemic virtue in Victorian science by examining three towering products of the University of Cambridge: John Herschel, Adam Sedgwick, and William Whewell.

Trust in Glass: Negotiating the Purchase of the Object Glass for the Airy Transit Circle

The Airy Transit Circle of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich is one of the most important instruments in the history of astronomy, navigation and time distribution. However, there has been very little research done on the history of the instrument. This article examines how the purchase of the object glass for the Airy Transit Circle involved active negotiations between George Biddell Airy and three different opticians: Georg Merz, Noel Paymal Lerebours, and William Simms. The article also shows the involvement of John Herschel and Richard Sheepshanks in Airy’s decision making process. By highlighting the presence of these individuals, the article shows how Airy’s trust and distrust in different instrument makers influenced his choice of supplier for the object glass of the Airy Transit Circle.

A “Confounded Scrape”: John Herschel, Neptune, and Naming the Satellites of the Outer Solar System

This paper examines John Herschel’s role in establishing nomenclature for the moons of the outer solar system. Prior to the publication of Herschel’s Cape Results in 1847, moons of the solar system were referred to either collectively (e.g. the Medicean stars) or by number. The common narrative is that with the discovery of additional moons around Saturn, this numbering convention became confused, causing Herschel to propose proper names for Saturn’s moons in his Cape Results. An examination of Herschel’s correspondence and journals, however, indicates that this new convention was likely motivated not by issues of clarity but by controversy in planetary naming brought about by the discovery of Neptune. Herschel offered mythological names for Saturn’s satellites as a way to resolve this controversy, which he had helped initiate. This new naming narrative highlights Herschel’s role as arbiter in the international astronomical community as well as the cultural and political background of naming conventions in the solar system.

Science, 19th century philosophy of

In the nineteenth century, science was organized, it tested and confirmed positive knowledge of the natural world and achieved remarkable theoretical development and hitherto unimagined practical application. Science drove industry and free enterprise, and became a powerful catalyst in the battle between defenders of knowledge as power and advocates of knowledge as love. Fruitful scientific theories and observations were plentiful. Darwin, Wallace and Spencer caused a revolution in biology. Faraday, Maxwell and Hertz contributed seminal ideas in electromagnetic theory. Hermann von Helmholtz studied the physiology of tones and discovered a principle of the conservation of force. Lyell’s efforts established geology as a science. Ernst Mach argued for the elimination of absolute space in favour of a space and time consisting of observable relations between things, thus providing incentive for Einstein’s theory of relativity. Sir John Herschel added many observed double stars to the growing catalogue of celestial bodies. These and other observational, theoretical and applied achievements in nineteenth-century science were replete with philosophical consequences. Until the nineteenth century natural philosophy and science coexisted as a single discipline. Now science and traditional philosophy drew apart. Some held that henceforth science would deal with the world revealed in experience, and philosophy with the world existing (if any does) beyond what we experience. Others (including prominent scientists) were unwilling to yield to philosophy licence to speculate beyond the limits of what could be ascertained by means of observation and experimentation: even if science and philosophy were no longer one unified intellectual enterprise, philosophy had a substantial role to play in philosophizing about science. To satisfy changing expectations, a new intellectual discipline was created in the nineteenth century: the philosophy of science. Unlike previous philosophy, whose subject matter was everything that is (or is not), the philosophy of science had a distinct and determinate subject matter: theoretical texts and experimental and observational reports of scientists (the word ‘scientist’ having been invented by William Whewell). Theoretical scientific systems and their logical structure were one focus of attention. Science was also said to discover laws. Were such laws timeless and exceptionless truths about nature, or simply convenient, economical ways of cataloguing information? These laws were discovered (or invented) generalizations that provided tested information about nature. This discovery and confirmation relied upon the method of induction – thought by most nineteenth-century philosophers of science to have a logic – to involve decisions concerning the validity or invalidity of inferences based on knowledge from experience. Was this alleged logic trustworthy? These questions exemplify the complex problems concerning the epistemic reliability of scientific explanation.