Most contributions to Whewell scholarship have tended to stress the idealistic, antiempirical temper of Whewell’s philosophy. Thus, the only two monograph-length studies on Whewell, Blanché’s Le Rationalisme de Whewell and Marcucci’s L’ ‘Idealismo’ Scientifico di William Whewell, are, as their titles suggest, concerned primarily with Whewell’s departures from classical British empiricism. Particularly in his famous dispute with Mill, it has proved tempting to parody Whewell’s position in the debate by treating it as a straightforward encounter between an arch-empiricist and an (...) arch-rationalist. There is, however, a danger that an emphasis on the necessitarian and a priori elements in Whewell’s philosophy may well obscure the unmistakable empirical emphasis in Whewell’s theory of science. I think it is time to begin to redress the balance, by focusing attention on the significant ‘empiricist’ strains in Whewell’s philosophy of science. One of the most important of those strains is connected with the operation which Whewell calls ‘the consilience of inductions’. (shrink)

I am happy to see Dr. Hesse’s clarification of her earlier discussion of consilience. I shall not comment here on her interesting, if controversial, thesis that a confirmed theory confers no likelihood on its untested entailments, except insofar as the latter are analogous to previously confirmed entailments of that theory. It would be premature to comment on the thesis until Hesse has spelled out in more detail her account of analogy.

In his paper “William Whewell on the Consilience of Inductions” Professor Laudan has suggested that Whewell’s use of “consilience of inductions” is not the same as mine in my paper of that title. Suppose we have a theory T which entails three empirical laws L1, L2, L3. L1 is supposed already confirmed by direct evidence of its instances, but we have as yet no direct evidence for L2 or for L3. Then Laudan distinguishes two problems: Whewell’s problem: T is suggested (...) to explain L1 and is supported by L1; how much is our confidence in T increased if it also predicts L2, and L2 is subsequently directly confirmed? My problem: T is suggested to explain L1 and is supported by L1; T also entails L3; how much is our confidence that L3 will turn out a correct prediction increased by the fact that T entails it? (shrink)

In his paper “William Whewell on the Consilience of Inductions” Professor Laudan has suggested that Whewell’s use of “consilience of inductions” is not the same as mine in my paper of that title. Suppose we have a theory T which entails three empirical laws L1, L2, L3. L1 is supposed already confirmed by direct evidence of its instances, but we have as yet no direct evidence for L2 or for L3. Then Laudan distinguishes two problems: Whewell’s problem: T is suggested (...) to explain L1 and is supported by L1; how much is our confidence in T increased if it also predicts L2, and L2 is subsequently directly confirmed? My problem: T is suggested to explain L1 and is supported by L1; T also entails L3; how much is our confidence that L3 will turn out a correct prediction increased by the fact that T entails it? (shrink)

William Whewell’s philosophy of scientific discovery is applied to the problem of understanding the nature of unification and explanation by the composition of causes in Newtonian mechanics. The essay attempts to demonstrate: the sense in which ”approximate’ laws successfully refer to real physical systems rather than to idealizations of them; why good theoretical constructs are not badly underdetermined by observation; and why, in particular, Newtonian forces are not conventional and how empiricist arguments against the existence of component causes, and against (...) the veracity of the fundamental laws, are flawed. (shrink)

The paper attempts to elucidate and evaluate William Whewell's notion of a "consilience of inductions." In section I Whewellian consilience is defined and shown to differ considerably from what latter-day writers talk about when they use the term. In section II a primary analysis of consilience is shown to yield two types of consilient processes, one in which one of the lower-level laws undergoes a conceptual change (the case aptly discussed in Butts [1977]), and one in which the explanatory theory (...) undergoes conceptual "stretching." In section III both consilient cases are compared to the non-consilient case in reference to L. J. Cohen's method of relevant variables. In section IV we examine the test procedures of the theory in all three cases, and it is shown that in the event of genuine consilience (consilience of the second type) a theory acquires extraordinarily high support. In the final section something is said of the short-comings of standard Bayesian confirmation theories that are highlighted by Whewellian consilience. (shrink)

The contrast between the two approaches alluded to in the title has gained a certain prominence in our own day. With the knowledge of hindsight it will be of interest therefore to study its incidence in an earlier period, in the writings of Whewell and Mill, Which may thus yield added significance for a later generation. Right at the start there is a difficulty. Not all inductivists agree on their principles, or their interpretation of the logic of scientific reasoning, and (...) the same is true of deductivism, and the differences can therefore be discussed only in connection with individual writers. When this is done, we do find moreover some considerable variations in the treatment of their respective doctrines by the members of each of our two schools. To define these differences, we need a finer structure of elements of classification, indicative of criteria for the acceptance of scientific hypotheses. (shrink)

Foreword I. Critical rationalism is a genuinely new philosophical perspective. It is not, however, one systematic view. The development of it by Popper and ...

William Whewell was a giant of Victorian intellectual culture. His influence, whether recognized or forgotten, is palpable in areas as diverse as moral philosophy, mineralogy, architecture, the politics of education, physics, engineering, and theology. Recent studies of the place of the sciences in nineteenth-century Britain have repeatedly indicated the significance of Whewell's sweeping and critical proposals for a reformed account of scientific knowledge and moral values. However, until now there has been no detailed study of the context and impact of (...) his project. This collection of essays by recognized authorities in the fields of history, history of science, and philosophy thus represents the first attempt to do justice to a magisterial nineteenth-century intellectual. More generally, it makes an important contribution to our understanding of Victorian intellectual life and its aftermath. (shrink)

Discussion of William Whewell on Kepler on the orbit of Mars. A paper in *An Intimate Relation*, a volume presented to Robert E. Butts on his 60th Birthday.