Book reviews: Defining Whewell

Abstract

Richard Yeo, Defining Science: William Whewell, Natural Knowledge, and Public Debate in Early Victorian Britain . Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xiv+280, £35.00. ISBN 0-521-43182-4 On a wet and dark morning in October 1811 a young man began a long, tedious journey from Lancaster to Cambridge. It was the beginning of a trip that would take William Whewell (1794-1866) from being the son of a carpenter and joiner to being Master of Trinity College. When he first arrived at Cambridge the war with revolutionary France was still raging, and the English physical and mental landscape was gradually changing to meet the needs of a developing industrial economy. For many it was heralding in a new morality expunged of religion and a very real threat to the English Constitution. It was in this social context that Whewell assimilated into the traditional Anglican culture of the eighteenth century. Within the walls of Trinity College he laboured to protect it from the illusionary and destructive effects of French abstract reason, as well as the growing interests stemming from the new industrial cities such as Manchester. Indeed, he devoted his life to preserving and ensuring that political and intellectual changes did not adversely affect the constitutional marriage between church and state, and the intrinsic role Oxbridge played in this holy alliance.