The Philosophical Breakfast Club
Page 49
4 Whewell, “Mrs. Somerville on the Connexion of the Sciences,” pp. 59–60.
5 See Ross, “Scientist: The Story of a Word,” p. 73.
CHAPTER 1. WATERWORKS
1 Robinson, “Lancaster’s Sail-Cloth Trade in the Eighteenth Century.”
2 For the Bridgewater Canal, and canal building in general, see Uglow, Lunar Men, pp. 107–21.
3 “His people”; information from Helen Moorwood, a relation of the Whewell family.
4 William Whewell to John Whewell, May 19, 1811, in Stair Douglas, The Life and Selections from the Correspondence of William Whewell, p. 7.
5 Redding, The Pictorial History of the County of Lancaster, p. 301.
6 Owen says he was six years old then, making the date 1810, but this is not possible, as by 1810 Whewell was already in Heversham.
7 A number of websites are dedicated to describing and preserving the Lancashire dialect. See, for example, www.mykp.co.uk/my_thoughts/learn_Lancastrian_accent/.
8 Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, pp. 2–3.
9 Ibid., p. 5.
10 Wright, Alma Mater, vol. 1, p. 171n.
11 William Whewell to John Whewell, October 17, 1812, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 8.
12 Distad, Guessing at Truth, p. 23.
13 For costs at Cambridge, see Rothblatt, The Revolution of the Dons, pp. 66–68.
14 See Mitchell, Daily Life in Victorian England, pp. 18–19.
15 O’Brien, “British Incomes and Property,” p. 267. While the number is certainly likely to be suppressed by families trying to avoid paying, O’Brien thinks that, in general, the figure is confirmed by other evidence such as the amount people were able to spend on housing during this time. But even if the true figure is higher, it seems unlikely that a carpenter would earn in the top 20 or 25 percent of income in the country.
16 The price of room and board at the school six years later was 25 guineas. Rothblatt, The Revolution of the Dons, pp. 34–35.
17 Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 5.
18 Wordsworth, The Excursion, book vii.
19 Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 6.
CHAPTER 2. PHILOSOPHICAL BREAKFASTS
1 Letter from T. Forster to William Whewell, December 24, 1841, in Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 1, p. 6. In the letter, Forster gives the year of these breakfasts; Todhunter transcribes it as 1815, but given the handwriting it could be 1813, and that is much more likely. Herschel graduated in the spring of 1813 and Babbage in the spring of 1814; Herschel came back briefly in 1814, and then again in 1815, but Babbage did not return until years later.
2 So named for the followers of Aphrodite on the island of Cyprus, apparently known for their licentious behavior.
3 See Winstanley, Early Victorian Cambridge, pp. 59–60.
4 Wright, Alma Mater, vol. 1, pp. 190–91.
5 See Trevelyan, Trinity College, pp. 17–19.
6 Ibid., p. 90.
7 Wright, Alma Mater, vol. 1, pp. 11–12.
8 Clark, “William Whewell, In Memoriam,” p. 545.
9 Anonymous, “William Whewell.”
10 William Whewell to John Whewell, February 17, 1813, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, 9–10.
11 William Whewell to Mrs. Lyons, December 2, 1812, WP Add. ms. c. 191 f. 6.
12 Trevelyan, Trinity College, p. 86.
13 William Whewell to Mrs. Lyons, December 1812, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 9.
14 William Whewell to John Whewell, February 17, 1813, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 10.
15 William Whewell to John Whewell, January 18, 1814, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 11.
16 See Julius Hare to William Whewell, July 26, 1818, WP Add. ms. a. 215 f. 2.
17 Trevelyan, Trinity College, p. 75n.
18 On Bath Spa, see Flanders, Consuming Passions, pp. 231–34.
19 Clerke, The Herschels and Modern Astronomy, p. 38.
20 Written in 1777, with a libretto by Carlo Goldoni, this opera was performed at the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in February 2010.
21 See Geiringer, Haydn: A Creative Life, p. 127. Herschel wrote twenty-four symphonies and three oboe concertos, as well as numerous chamber and voice pieces. Some of his music has been recorded and can be found today.
22 Clerke, The Herschels and Modern Astronomy, p. 42.
23 Mitchell, “Reminiscences of the Herschels.”
24 Quoted in Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope, p. 9.
25 Ibid.
26 Pat Wilson to John Herschel, June 6, 1811, RS: HS 18.422.
27 Hyman, Charles Babbage, Pioneer of the Computer, pp. 5–6.
28 See Flanders, Consuming Passions, p. 253.
29 Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, p. 12.
30 See Garland, Cambridge Before Darwin, pp. 29–30.
31 On Peterhouse, see Winstanley, Early Victorian Cambridge, p. 385.
32 See Becher, “Woodhouse, Babbage, Peacock and Modern Algebra” and “William Whewell and Cambridge Mathematics”; Fisch, “The Emergency Which Has Arrived.”
33 See Buxton, Memoirs of the Life and Labors of the Late Charles Babbage, Esq., pp. 348–49.
34 On this point, see Guicciardini, The Development of Newtonian Calculus in Britain, p. 141.
35 Winstanley, Early Victorian Cambridge, pp. 157–58.
36 See Franksen, Mr. Babbage’s Secret, p. 64.
37 Winstanley, Early Victorian Cambridge, pp. 18–25.
38 See, for example, Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, p. 19.
39 Babbage, Passages, pp. 20–21.
40 Ibid., p. 21.
41 See Wright, Alma Mater, vol. 1, p. 212.
42 Babbage and Herschel, Memoirs of the Analytical Society, p. iv.
43 Flanders, Consuming Passions, pp. 4–5.
44 Fougeret de Montbron, cited in Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century, p. 7.
45 Babbage, Passages, p. 21.
46 Frederick Maule to Charles Babbage, BL Add. ms. 37,182, f. 3, quoted in Hyman, Charles Babbage, Pioneer of the Computer, p. 25.
47 Babbage, cited in Franksen, Mr. Babbage’s Secret, p. 64.
48 Herschel to Babbage, July 1, 1812, RS: HS 2.2; Babbage to Herschel, July 10, 1812, RS: HS 2.3; Herschel to Babbage, [n.d.] 1812, RS: HS 2.4.
49 Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope, p. 13.
50 Babbage, Passages, p. 30.
51 See Warwick, Masters of Theory, pp. 108ff.
52 Jones to Whewell, [n.d.], WP Add. ms. c. 52 f. 1.
53 Reinhart, “The Life of Richard Jones,” p. 22.
54 Thomas Hedley to Whewell, August 1854, quoted in Winstanley, Early Victorian Cambridge, p. 394.
55 See Maria Edgeworth to C. Sneyd Edgeworth, May 1, 1813, in Edgeworth, Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 91; and Wright, Alma Mater, vol. 1, p. 83.
56 Whewell, “Prefatory Notice,” Literary Remains. See also Whewell to Jones, June 19, 1818, WP Add. ms. c. 51 f. 2.
57 See Farrington, Francis Bacon, Philosopher of Industrial Science, pp. 38, 44–45.
58 Bacon noted that investigators using a faulty method “have not collected sufficient quantity of particulars, nor them in sufficient certainty and subtlety, nor of several kinds,” Bacon, Works, vol. 3, p. 247.
59 Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, vol. 2, p. 36; quoted in Garber, Descartes’ Metaphysical Physics, p. 200. For an excellent discussion of this topic, see Garber, p. 55 and ch. 9.
60 As Garber puts it, without this metaphysical grounding in God, “there could be no Cartesian physics” (Descartes’ Metaphysical Physics, p. 293).
61 Bacon, Works, vol. 4, p. 19.
62 Bacon, Advancement of Learning, book 1, in Works, vol. 6.
63 Ibid.
64 Quoted in Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope, p. 10.
CHAPTER 3. EXPERIMENTAL LIVES
1 Herschel’s Experimental Notebooks, Science Museu
m, MS. 478, vol. 1, p. 3.
2 See Golinski, Science as Public Culture, p. 262.
3 James, “Introduction.”
4 Cited in Golinski, Science as Public Culture, p. 206.
5 Ibid., pp. 218–35.
6 See Young, The Bakerian Lecture.
7 See Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope, p. 13.
8 Herschel to Whittaker, January 10, 1814, St. John’s College.
9 See Herschel’s Experimental Notebooks, Science Museum, MS. 478, vol. 1.
10 See Herschel to Babbage, November 9, 1818, RS: HS 2.97; March 25, 1819, Ransom Center, TXU: H/E0051.4, Reel 1054.
11 See Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope, p. 27.
12 Ibid., pp. 24–25.
13 It is now known that the thickness of the layers of mother-of-pearl is 500 nanometers, or 50–7 meters, while the wavelength of visible light varies from 380 nanometers (38–7 meters) to 740 nanometers (74–7 meters).
14 Whewell to Herschel, June 19, 1818, in Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 2, p. 24.
15 Babbage to Herschel, November 11, 1817, RS: HS 2.88.
16 Wollaston is most likely the unnamed “profoundest of English Chemists” referred to in The Chemist 2 (1824–25), p. 44, cited in Golinski, Science as Public Culture, p. 263.
17 Babbage and Wollaston, Sketch of the Philosophical Characters of Dr. Wollaston and Sir Humphry Davy, pp. 9–10. See also Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 5 and 5n.
18 See Babbage and Herschel, “Account of the Repetition of M. Arago’s Experiments.”
19 Cited in Golinski, Science as Public Culture, pp. 198–99.
20 See Whewell to Jones, June 25, 1825, WP Add. ms. c. 51 f. 22.
21 Herschel to Babbage, October [n.d.] 1813; RS: HS 2.19.
22 Candidates for vacant professorships at Cambridge were selected by a group of electors dictated by the statutes of the university.
23 See Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope, p. 17.
24 Quoted in ibid., p. 18.
25 Herschel to Babbage, October 10, 1816, RS: HS 2.68.
26 See Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope, pp. 22, 30–31, 32–33.
27 Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816), in The Poetical Works and Other Writings of John Keats, vol. 1, pp. 77–79.
28 Evans et al., Herschel at the Cape, p. xvi; Somerville, Personal Recollections, p. 134.
29 Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 2, p. 35.
30 Cited in Swade, The Difference Engine, p. 19.
31 Herschel to Whittaker, May 22, 1813, St. John’s College.
32 See Babbage to Herschel, August 1, 1814, RS: HS 2:25; Herschel to Babbage, August 7, 1814, RS: HS 2:28; Babbage to Herschel, August 10, 1814, RS: HS 2:29.
33 Babbage to Herschel, August 10, 1814, RS: HS 2:29.
34 Other biographers have the date as July 2. But Charles and Georgiana’s marriage license is dated July 25, and his letter to Herschel on August 1 refers to events “of the last few days.”
35 See Swade, The Difference Engine, p. 50.
36 See Laudermilk and Hamlin, The Regency Companion, p. 3.
37 Ibid.
38 William Whewell to John Whewell, June 2, 1814, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 12.
39 See the recollections of Richard Owen, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 4.
40 See “The City of Cambridge: Public Health,” in Roach, The City and the University of Cambridge, pp. 101–8.
41 Whewell to Morland, August 10, 1815, in Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 2, pp. 8–9, and William Whewell to John Whewell, March 22, 1815, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 15.
42 Herschel to Whittaker, August [n.d.], 1812, St. John’s College.
43 William Whewell to John Whewell, January 19, 1816, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, pp. 20–21.
44 See Wright, Alma Mater, vol. 2, pp. 90–96.
45 William Whewell to John Whewell, January 19, 1816, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 21.
46 Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 1, pp. 6–7.
47 Translation by John McCaskey.
48 Wright, Alma Mater, vol. 2, pp. 96–104.
49 Printed flyleaf, preserved in Whewell Papers.
50 Whewell to Morland, November [n.d.] 1816, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, pp. 24–25.
51 Whewell to Herschel, [n.d.] 1817, in Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 2, p. 15.
52 Letter from Mr. Whitcombe to Whewell, April 29, 1817, cited in Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 1, p. 9.
53 Whittaker to Herschel, July 20, 1816, RS: HS 18.243.
54 See William Whewell to Ann Whewell, August 14, 1816, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, pp. 23–24.
55 William Whewell to John Whewell, June 6, 1816, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 23.
56 See Hyman, Charles Babbage, Pioneer of the Computer, pp. 37–38.
57 On hairstyles, see Laudermilk and Hamlin, The Regency Companion, p. 68. On dons, heads of colleges, and wigs, see Clark, Cambridge, Historical and Picturesque, p. 278.
58 For the description of the incident and quotations, see Whewell to Hugh James Rose, March 25, 1817, WP R.2.99 f. 1; Distad, Guessing at Truth, pp. 29–31; and Winstanley, Early Victorian Cambridge, pp. 26–27.
59 The will of John Whewell, Lancaster Record Office, W RW/A 1816.
60 See Garland, Cambridge Before Darwin.
61 Distad, Guessing at Truth, p. 56.
62 William Whewell to Ann Whewell, June 5, 1817, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 27.
63 Whewell to Rose, October 8, 1817, WP 2.99 f. 9.
64 Whewell to Herschel, November 1, 1818, in Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 2, p. 30.
65 See Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 1, p. 13.
66 Reported in ibid., vol. 1, p. 7.
67 Whewell, Notebook, WP R.18.16 f. 1.
68 Whewell to Jones, August 21, 1818, in Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 2, p. 27.
69 Jones to Herschel, September 17, 1816, RS: HS 10:345.
70 See Evans, The Contentious Tithe, pp. 29–32.
71 Distad, Guessing at Truth, pp. 123–25.
72 Macaulay, History of England, vol. 1, quoted in Evans, The Contentious Tithe, p. 3.
73 Information about Jones’s time in Ferring is from Ed Miller of the Ferring Historical Society.
74 Herschel to Whewell, August 19–20, 1818, RS: HS 20:56.
75 See letter of Maria Edgeworth, who accompanied Mary Herschel on this visit, to her sister Mrs. Butler, March 29, 1831, in Edgeworth, Letters from England, p. 499.
76 Mary Herschel to John Herschel, May 6, 1821, Ransom Center, TXU: H/M-0620.1, Reel 1086.
77 Mary Herschel to Charles Babbage, July 9, 1821, RS: HS 20.121.
78 See Laudermilk and Hamlin, The Regency Companion, pp. 90–91.
79 See Babbage to Mary Herschel, July [n.d.] 1821, copy, Ransom Center, TXU: H/M-0968, Reel 1083.
80 See Laudermilk and Hamlin, The Regency Companion, pp. 211–12.
81 Ibid., pp. 223–25.
82 Whewell, Travel Notebook, WP Add. ms. a. 80 f. 2, p. 1b.
83 See Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope, pp. 37–39; Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 7.
84 See Babbage and Herschel, “Barometric Observations Made at the Fall of the Staubbach.”
CHAPTER 4. MECHANICAL TOYS
1 Babbage to Herschel, December 20, 1821, RS: HS 2.169.
2 See Croarken, “Tabulating the Heavens.”
3 Babbage’s “recollections” in his Passages are often inaccurate; later biographers who have relied heavily on Babbage’s account of key episodes in his life, without adequate fact-checking, have perpetuated Babbage’s self-promoting rewriting of history.
4 Cited in Martin, The Calculating Machines, p. 38.
5 Kistermann, “How to Use the Schickard Calculator,” p. 82.
6 Williams, “Early Calculation,” p. 38.
7 This method is also known as “clock arithmetic.” Imagine a clock wi
th a certain number of digits around its face (either twelve, as in a regular clock, or another number, such as ten). In the operation of addition, the sum is expressed as if going around the clock. So, in a clock that goes up to 10, or with a 10 “modulus,” when we add 8 and 7 we get 5 (because after reaching 10 the numbers start at 1 again). Subtraction is performed by adding the complement of the number relative to the modulus. The complement of a number is the number that must be added to it to reach the modulus. The tens complement of the number 4 is the number 6, because 4 + 6 = 10. So if we want to subtract 4 from 8, we instead add 6 to 8, to get the same result moving around the clock in the clockwise direction: 4.
8 Williams, “Early Calculation,” p. 42.
9 See Buxton, Memoirs of the Life and Labours of the Late Charles Babbage Esq., pp. 49–50; and Williams, “Early Calculation,” pp. 40–42.
10 Williams, “Early Calculation,” pp. 42–49.
11 Cited in Lardner, “Babbage’s Calculating Engine,” p. 323.
12 See Johnston, “Making the Arithmometer Count”; Williams, “Early Calculation”; and the site www.arithmometre.org.
13 Anonymous, “Varieties, Literary and Philosophical,” p. 444.
14 The “longitude problem” and its solution by John Harrison is discussed by Dava Sobel in her Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time.
15 Croarken, “Tabulating the Heavens.”
16 Swade, The Difference Engine, p. 13.
17 Grattan-Guinness, “Work for the Hairdressers,” pp. 179–80.
18 Babbage, A Letter to Sir Humphry Davy, in Works, vol. 2, p. 10.
19 Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, p. 195.
20 For example, if we wish to compute a table of square numbers, the function F(x) = x2, we start by calculating the initial values of F(x) when x equals 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. We find that the square numbers at the start of the series are 0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64. The first order of difference is obtained by subtracting each number in the series from its successor, yielding 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15. By a further subtraction of the numbers from their successors in the first order of difference, the second order of difference is obtained, which we know will be constant: 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2. To get the next numbers in the series of squares, all that is needed is to perform two additions. First, add 2 to the first order of difference; second, add the number obtained in this way to the square number preceding it. Thus, by adding 2 to 15 we get 17, and by adding 17 to 64 we get 81, the next square in the series. By adding 2 to 17 we get 19, and by adding 19 to 81 we get 100, the square of 10, and so on.