"Facts" and "Ideas": Richard Jones, William Whewell, and the Entangled Histories of Science and Political Economy in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain.

Abstract

This essay explores hitherto unnoticed conceptual transactions between reflections on scientific method and a rethinking of political-economic categories in early-nineteenth century Britain through the writings of William Whewell and Richard Jones. Closely examining personal correspondences between Whewell and Jones, their works, contemporary debates on political economy and the problem of scientific method, Jones's pedagogic practices, Karl Marx's engagements with Jones, and his receptions as a teacher of political economy in colonial governance and imperial education, I argue that Jones drew upon Whewell's philosophical considerations on the relation between "fact" and "idea," to reconstitute the epistemological orientation of political economy.