The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded upon their History

William Whewell, 1794–1866, was an intellectual giant of English philosophy, mathematics and science, and coined the word ‘scientist’. As an historian of science, he cast doubt on the status of experience and experiment as having the capacity to make knowledge. Superseded by events, his argument on this matter with Mill was perhaps definitive of the subsequent celebration of experience. Clairaut’s difficulty was removed by a more exact calculation of the effect of the sun’s force on the motion of the apogee. The suggestion of Bessel, that the intensity of gravitation might be different for different planets, was found to be unnecessary, when Professor Airy gave a more accurate determination of the mass of…