Strongholds of Amateur Science in England

Abstract

In 1830 a remarkable work issued from the pen of Charles Babbage Esq., FRS, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge (and thus distant successor to Sir Isaac Newton), computing pioneer, and seeker after an infallible method for predicting the winners of horse races. The book in question concerns neither the refinements of his latest ‘calculating engine’ nor the intricacies of punting. It was an expression of acute despair entitled Reflections on the Decline of Science in England. He concluded ‘the pursuit of science does not, in England, constitute a distinct profession, as it does in many other countries’, and so, ‘when a situation, requiring for the proper fulfilment of its duties considerable scientific attainments, is vacant, it becomes necessary to select from among amateurs’.1 How far Babbage was justified in his overall analysis of a ‘neglected and declining’ science in England, and in his particular diatribes against the Royal Society, has been much debated of late and is perhaps no longer very important, since his evidence was selective and ignored almost entirely provincial science.