The Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh invites you to join us for our Lunch Time Talk. Attend in person or visit our live stream on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.

Lunch Time Talk:  Andrew Cooper

October 17 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EDT

Title: Induction as action: resolving the problem of Whewell’s idealism

Abstract:

William Whewell is a towering and yet ambiguous figure in Victorian science. Together with Herschel and Mill, he sought to develop a logic of induction that could vindicate the cognitive autonomy of science. Yet his theory of induction was severely criticized by Mill for advancing a ‘German, a priori view of human knowledge’, raising what Robert Butts terms ‘the problem of Whewell’s idealism’: did Whewell fail to see that Kant’s transcendental idealism is incompatible with the emerging inductive sciences, or did he successfully harmonize what seem to be historically incompatible philosophical alternatives?

In this paper I take a step back from the Mill-Whewell debate to examine the role of idealism in a broader exchange of ideas between Germany and England, giving particular focus to the institutional context of Trinity College in the first half of the nineteenth century. To address the problem of Whewell’s idealism, I examine his published work against his unpublished letters and notebooks to show that his early encounter with Kant provided a framework to shift inquiry from the objects of science to the practice of science itself. While Whewell’s idealism is not transcendental in the Kantian sense, his philosophy of science nevertheless extends Kant’s distinction between objects and ideas, such that the task of a philosophy of science is to discern the forms of judgment—what Whewell terms ‘mental tendencies’—that determine the inferential structure of scientific inquiry. The result is a distinctly Victorian idealism that, despite having clear continuities with Kant, must be understood on its own terms. I conclude by suggesting that Whewell’s response to British empiricism can assist us to better appreciate the importance of idealism to the early development of philosophy of science.

This talk will also be available live streamed on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.