The Idea of Science in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain

Abstract

This chapter argues that the scholarly potential of statistics is best understood in the context of the development of modern science. But what was science in early nineteenth-century Britain when statistics was being institutionalised and formally introduced into public and scientific debates? To answer this question, this chapter analyses the nineteenth-century understanding of science in the works of John Herschel, William Whewell and John Stuart Mill who were the major writers on the methodology and philosophy of science at the time. This analysis will serve as the basis for an assessment of nineteenth-century statistics within the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Statistical Society of London which follows in the next two chapters.