It is generally not recognized that Whewell's conception of necessary truth evolved only gradually; his early statements are misleading. For this reason, and because of certain peculiarities in his expository style over his publishing history, he is commonly thought to have used the term "necessary" in the sense of "absolutely necessary". I argue that, on the contrary, the term is essentially relational in his mature view. This conclusion leads, in turn, to a re-interpretation of his doctrine of "fundamental ideas". Here (...) I argue that the crux of his position is that cognitive principles which are initially regulative become, through invention, repeated employment, and stipulative definition, constitutive ones. (shrink)

In a recent paper,[3], Harold T. Walsh has argued that Whewell's commentators have in the past misunderstood his use of “necessary,” that Whewell's theory of necessary truth developed only gradually through thirty years of scholarly activity, finally finding a “mature” expression in Philosophy of Discovery, published in 1860, and that a proper understanding of Whewell's “mature” theory of necessary truth leads to a fundamental re-interpretation of the nature of the Ideas and of their role in scientific systems—that the meaning of (...) “necessity” as Whewell expresses it in Philosophy of Discovery leads, in short, to a new and more illuminating reading of his philosophy of inductive science. It is my view that the three propositions asserting Walsh's view are incorrect, expecially the two important and crucial ones and. In what follows, I shall state what seem to me to be the grounds for rejecting Walsh's view that Whewell's theory of necessity was not arrived at before 1860, and hence for rejecting his interpretation of some basic aspects of Whewell's philosophy of science. (shrink)