Scientific Methodology in Nineteenth Century Britain

Volume I: Building Philosophical Systems

Charles H. Pence

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040390764
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts

This collection of primary sources examines scientific methodology in Britain during the long nineteenth century. Perhaps the most striking feature of nineteenth-century works on scientific method is the extent to which they were taken up by authors interested in writing large-scale, systemic works introducing, at one stroke, a philosophy of science, a view of what "good scientific practice" would look like, and investigations of logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. This volume presents the views laid out in the four largest and most important such treatises: Sir John F. W. Herschel's Preliminary Discourse on Natural Philosophy, William Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, and John Stuart Mill's A System of Logic, as well as other contributors to the philosophy of science in this period. This title will be of great interest to students of the history of philosophy and the history of science.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Preface
• General Introduction to the Collection
• Introduction to Volume I
• Part 1 Setting the Stage
• Part 2 Sir John F. W. Herschel’s Preliminary Discourse
• Part 3 William Whewell’s History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences
• Part 4 John Stuart Mill’s System of Logic
• Part 5 Positivism
• Bibliography to Volume I
• Index