The Philosophical Breakfast Club

by Laura J. Snyder

  115 See ibid., pp. 69–75. For the symbols designating land use, see p. 77.

  116 Whewell claimed that it was because of Jones that any maps were drawn up at all; see his “Prefatory Notice,” Literary Remains of Richard Jones, p. xxxii.

  117 See Rhind and Hudson, Land Use.

  118 See Whewell, “Prefatory Notice,” Literary Remains of Richard Jones, p. xxxi.

  119 Jones to Herschel, January 10, 1831, RS: HS 10.350.

  CHAPTER 8. A DIVINE PROGRAMMER

  1 Charles Darwin to Caroline Darwin, February 27, 1837, Darwin Correspondence Project, letter 346.

  2 See Darwin to Whewell, [March 10] 1837, Darwin Correspondence Project, letter 347.

  3 Minutes of the General Meeting of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, cited in Burkhardt and Smith, eds., The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 2, p. 9n.

  4 Charles Darwin to Caroline Darwin, February 27, 1837, Darwin Correspondence Project, letter 346.

  5 See Creighton, A History of Epidemics in Britain, vol. 2, pp. 725–26, and Anonymous, “Deaths.”

  6 Herschel to Babbage, January 20, 1835, RS: HS 2.289.

  7 Charles Lyell to Herschel, June 1, 1836, RS: HS 11.420.

  8 Martineau, Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, p. 355.

  9 Darwin to Babbage, [n.d.] 1839, BL 37,191 f. 299.

  10 See Ticknor, Life, Letters and Journals, vol. 2, p. 178.

  11 See Cavour, Diario, 23 maggio 1835, p. 172, cited in Hyman, Charles Babbage, Pioneer of the Computer, p. 175.

  12 Cunnington, English Women’s Clothing in the Nineteenth Century.

  13 See Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, pp. 273–74. See also John Richard Lunn to Babbage, July 17, 1834, BL 37,188 f. 452.

  14 See Babbage to Herschel, December 15, 1832, RS: HS 2.275.

  15 The description of the demonstration that follows is based very closely on Babbage’s discussion of it in his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, ch. 8.

  16 For more on the workings of these “feedback functions,” see Bromley, “Charles Babbage’s Tabulations Using the 1832 Model of Difference Engine Number 1.”

  17 See Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, ch. 24.

  18 Crimmins, “Paley, William (1743–1805).”

  19 Paley, Natural Theology, p. 1.

  20 Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, pt. 3, sec. 11, “Of the Probability of Chances.”

  21 Whewell, diary entry, “Reflections on God,” November 13, 1825, in Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 1, pp. 360–65.

  22 Whewell to Rose, November 19, 1826, WP R.2.99 f. 26.

  23 Whewell to Rose, December 12, 1826, WP R.2.99 f. 27. In a letter to his sister Martha four years earlier, however, Whewell went so far as to suggest that we would not have been created with “the imagination, the fancy, the taste,” if it were our duty “not to exercise them”—suggesting that even the enjoyment of champagne and turtle was a way of carrying out our duties to God! See Whewell to Martha Whewell, January 1, 1822, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, pp. 72–73.

  24 See Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 1, p. 32, and Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 101.

  25 See Herschel to Lockhart, November 1, 1832, RS: HS 19.65.

  26 Herschel to Gilbert, July 1, 1830, RS: HS 25.1.5.

  27 See Whewell to Ann Whewell, November 2, 1833, and December 21, 1833, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, pp. 156–57.

  28 See Whewell to Ann Whewell, May 24, 1832, and September 28, 1833; and Whewell to Ann Lyon, July 29, 1833, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, pp. 144, 154–55.

  29 Hare to Whewell, December 13, 1833, in Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 1, p. 64.

  30 See Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 157.

  31 Whewell to Jones, May 21, 1828, in Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 2, p. 91.

  32 Whewell to Jones, July 23, 1831, in Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 2, p. 125.

  33 See also Whewell to Jones, July 28, September 30, and December 6, 1831, WP Add. ms. c. 51, ff. 111, 114, 122.

  34 Whewell, Astronomy and General Physics, p. vi.

  35 Ibid., pp. 150–51.

  36 Ibid., pp. 169–70.

  37 Letter from Newton to Bentley, quoted in Whewell, Astronomy and General Physics, p. 172.

  38 Whewell, Astronomy and General Physics, p. 62.

  39 Ibid., pp. 229–30.

  40 Ibid., pp. 323–24.

  41 Ibid., p. 305.

  42 Ibid., p. 326.

  43 Ibid., pp. 327–28.

  44 Ibid., pp. 335–36.

  45 See Whewell to Jones, March 24, 1833, in Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 2, p. 161.

  46 Cited in Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 1, p. 73. Gilbert was still on friendly terms with Whewell even after the decline-of-science controversy.

  47 See Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, ch. 10.

  48 Herschel to Babbage, October 25, 1837, RS: HS 2.290a.

  49 Herschel to Jones, November 29, 1837, RS: HS 21.231.

  50 Whewell, “Lyell’s Principles of Geology, vol. 1,” p. 194. See also Whewell, “Lyell’s Principles of Geology, vol. 2,” p. 117.

  51 Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. 3, p. 574.

  52 Ibid., p. 588.

  53 Leibniz to Caroline, Princess of Wales, November 1715, in Alexander, ed., The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, pp. 11–12.

  54 Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, pp. 24–25. See also pp. 94–98.

  55 Ibid., pp. 44–49.

  56 Ibid., pp. 45–46.

  57 Lyell to Herschel, May 24, 1837, in Lyell, Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, vol. 2, p. 12.

  58 Herschel to Lyell, February 20, 1836, in Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, pp. 226–27.

  59 Lyell to Herschel, May 24, 1837, in Lyell, Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, vol. 2, p. 12.

  60 Whewell, Letter to Charles Babbage, Esq.

  61 Herschel to Jones, [n.d.] 1837, RS: HS 10.410.

  62 In a notebook entry on August 23, 1838, Darwin recorded that he was told this by “Jones.” The editors of the Darwin notebooks claim that “Jones” cannot be identified, but the comment refers to other men who were at Cambridge at the same time as Richard Jones—D’Arbly and Peacock—and this is consistent with my identification of Richard Jones. See Notebook M, p. 99, in Barrett et al., eds., Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, p. 543.

  63 Herschel to Jones, [n.d.] 1837, RS: HS 10.410.

  64 See Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, pp. 248–51, and Cartwright, Tides: A Scientific History, pp. 117–18.

  65 Babbage, The Exposition of 1851, pp. 190–91.

  66 Treasury Report, BL Add. Ms. 37,187, f. 134, quoted in Hyman, Charles Babbage, Pioneer of the Computer, p. 130.

  67 Figure given by Swade, The Difference Engine, p. 67. Calculation of the value of this figure in 2007 made using the GDP deflator, comparing the average price of goods and services produced in the UK in 1830 relative to 2007 amounts. See Office, “Five Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a UK Pound Amount, 1830 to Present.”

  68 It is now believed that Clement purposely drew out the job in order to increase his bills. Engineers studying the surviving pieces have found that even noncritical parts such as spacing pillars were needlessly manufactured to the same high standards as the operationally essential parts such as figure wheels and gear shafts. See Swade, The Difference Engine, p. 69.

  69 Whewell to Airy, September 19, 1834, in Todhunter, William Whewell, vol. 2, pp. 189–90.

  70 Lardner, “Babbage’s Calculating Engine,” p. 52.

  71 Ibid.

  72 Bromley, “Difference and Analytical Engines,” p. 67.

  73 Babbage to James Stuart, July 16, 1834, BL Add. ms. 37,188, f. 450.

  74 See Babbage to Herschel, December 15, 1832, RS: HS 2.275.

  75 Recalled by Babbage in Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, p. 112.

  76 See Swade, The Difference Engine, pp. 114–15.

  77 Babba
ge to Quetelet, quoted in Collier, The Little Engines That Could’ve, p. 136.

  78 Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, p. 23.

  79 Bromley, “Inside the World’s First Computers,” p. 783.

  80 See Essinger, Jacquard’s Web, pp. 85–86.

  81 Vaucanson’s invention was not widely adopted by the French silk weavers, in part because of worries that it would put the skilled weavers out of work. But by the time of Jacquard’s loom, the silk weavers in Lyon had realized that their livelihood was in danger of being overtaken by a new rival, the English silk-weaving industry, and so they accepted the new technology.

  82 See Babbage to Arago, December 1839, cited in Collier, The Little Engines That Could’ve, p. 171.

  83 See Swade, The Difference Engine, pp. 110–13.

  84 Babbage, unpublished manuscript, “On the Mathematical Powers of the Calculating Engine,” cited in Collier, The Little Engines That Could’ve, p. 161.

  85 Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, ch. 8.

  86 Babbage discusses this in his Exposition of 1851, pp. 184–85. See also Bromley, “Difference and Analytical Engines,” p. 80, and Collier, The Little Engines That Could’ve, pp. 127–29.

  87 Swade, The Difference Engine, p. 115.

  88 Hansard’s Parliamentary Debate, 3rd series, vol. 27, pp. 1154–55; cited in Collier, The Little Engines That Could’ve, pp. 94–96.

  89 Darwin later dated these entries in his “Red Notebook” “about March 1837,” but Darwin scholars now more specifically think they were from the second half of the month. See Red Notebook, and Sandra Herbert, “Red Notebook Introduction” p. 19, in Barrett et al., eds., Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, p. 63.

  90 Darwin saw Jones on August 23, 1838. See Notebook M, p. 99, in Barrett et al., eds., Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, p. 543.

  91 See Darwin, Notebook E, in Barrett et al., eds., Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, p. 413, and note on that page. Although Darwin seemed to have some knowledge of other parts of the letter earlier, this is the first evidence that he had heard of Herschel’s view about natural causes.

  CHAPTER 9. SCIENCES OF SHADOW AND LIGHT

  1 Margaret Herschel to Alexander Herschel, February 9, 1872, cited in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 52.

  2 Herschel’s Experimental Notebooks, Science Museum, MS 478, entry for February 1, 1839.

  3 See Herschel, Experimental Notebooks, Science Museum, MS 478, entries for January 30, 1839.

  4 See Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, pp. 9–13.

  5 Herschel, “Light,” p. 581.

  6 Herschel, “On the Action of Light.” See also Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 33.

  7 See Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 36.

  8 Talbot, introduction to The Pencil of Nature, quoted in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 37.

  9 Lady Elisabeth to William Henry Fox Talbot, quoted in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 47.

  10 Cited in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 42.

  11 Ibid., p. 45.

  12 Talbot, “The New Art,” p. 74.

  13 Ibid.

  14 Ibid., p. 75.

  15 See Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 85, and Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science: Early Years, p. 252.

  16 Herschel, “Letter to the Rev. William Whewell, President of the Section, on the Chemical Action of the Solar Rays.”

  17 See Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 23.

  18 Ibid.

  19 See Herschel, “Letter to the Rev. William Whewell,” and Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, pp. 23–24 and 24n.

  20 See Davy, “An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass”; Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, pp. 25–27.

  21 At least this was the official version of the story until 2008, when it was discovered that a photogram thought to have been one of Talbot’s early efforts may actually have been a surviving “solar picture” of Wedgwood (see Kennedy, “An Image Is a Mystery for Photo Detectives”). No results of tests have been released, however, and critics wonder if the auction house and Larry Schaaf, the historian who made the claim, were leaping too fast to their conclusions.

  22 Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, pp. 30–32.

  23 John Herschel to William Henry Fox Talbot, May 9, 1839, cited in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 75.

  24 See Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope, p. 131, and Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 45.

  25 Talbot, notebook, early 1835, quoted in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, pp. 41–42.

  26 Brewster, “Photogenic Drawing,” p. 333.

  27 See Whewell to Mrs. Sumner Gibson, February 25, 1862, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 527.

  28 See Picard, Victorian London, p. 139.

  29 Brewster, “Photogenic Drawing,” p. 344.

  30 Ibid., p. 312.

  31 Talbot to Babbage, May 10, 1839, BL Add. ms 37,191 f. 159.

  32 See Hyman, Charles Babbage, Pioneer of the Computer, p. 176.

  33 Thomas Sopwith, diary entry, March 16, 1839, in Richardson, Thomas Sopwith, p. 170.

  34 William Henry Fox Talbot to Constance Talbot, February 2, 1840, in The Correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot, document no. 4015.

  35 Talbot to Babbage, February 20, 1844, BL Add. ms. 37,193 f. 22.

  36 Babbage to Talbot, February 26, 1844, in The Correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot, document no. 4949.

  37 Herschel to Schumacher, January 19, 1839, quoted in Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope, p. 155.

  38 Herschel to W. H. Sykes, April 12, 1839, quoted in Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope, p. 119.

  39 See Herschel, experimental notebooks, September 6, 1839, quoted in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 77.

  40 Herschel, experimental notebooks, March 26, 1839, Science Museum, MS 478.

  41 Margaret Herschel to Caroline Herschel, April 28, 1839, quoted in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 69.

  42 John Herschel to Caroline Herschel, June 26, 1839, TXU: H/L-0584.46, Reel 1058.

  43 Herschel to Talbot, February 28, 1839, quoted in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 62.

  44 Herschel, “Instantaneous Photography,” p. 13.

  45 Herschel, “On the Chemical Action of the Rays,” p. 2.

  46 See Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope, p. 137.

  47 A number of these fine photographs were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in August 2009.

  48 Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 70.

  49 Herschel to Giovanni Amici, June 29, 1827, quoted in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, pp. 92–93.

  50 See Picard, Victorian London, p. 34.

  51 John Herschel to Caroline Herschel, February 28, 1840, quoted in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 92.

  52 Margaret Herschel to Caroline Herschel, May 10, 1841, and John Herschel to Margaret Herschel, August 10, 1841, quoted in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 132.

  53 See Picard, Victorian London, p. 10.

  54 Talbot to Herschel, April 30, 1840, and John Herschel to Caroline Herschel, August 10, 1840, quoted in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, pp. 97–101.

  55 As described in Brewster, “Photogenic Drawing,” p. 338.

  56 Herschel to Talbot, August 30, 1840, quoted in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 100.

  57 Talbot, Notebook, September 26, 1840, quoted in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 105.

  58 See Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope, p.150.

  59 See Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 124.

  60 See Report of the Eleventh Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1842, pt. 2, p. 40.

  61 Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope, pp. 141–42.

  62 Atkins, Photographs of British Algae, preface.

  63 See Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, pp. 130–31.

  64 Herschel, diary entry, October 21, 1837, in Evans et al., Herschel at the Cape, pp. 322–23.

  65 Herschel, diary entry, December 21, 1835, in Evans et al., Herschel at the Cape, p. 204.

  66 See letters between the summer of 1836 and the fall of 1
837, in The Royal Society John Herschel collection.

  67 See Bacon, Works, 1857, vol. 1, p. 169.

  68 See Pumfrey, “Gilbert, William (1544?–1603).”

  69 See Curtis, The Backpacker’s Field Manual, ch. 6.

  70 See Hall, All Scientists Now, p. 156, and Cawood, “The Magnetic Crusade,” p. 494n.

  71 Harcourt, “Presidential Address,” p. 4.

  72 Cawood, “The Magnetic Crusade,” p. 445n.

  73 See Whewell, “On the Results of Observations Made with a New Anemometer.”

  74 See Cawood, “The Magnetic Crusade,” p. 494.

  75 See Stern, “A Millennium of Geomagnetism.”

  76 See Cawood, “The Magnetic Crusade,” pp. 507–8.

  77 Whewell to Herschel, September 10, 1838, RS: HS 18.189.

  78 See letters from William Whewell to Ann Whewell, March 25 and April 12, 1838, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, pp. 190–91.

  79 Herschel, diary entry, October 15, 1838, quoted in Cawood, “The Magnetic Crusade,” p. 509.

  80 See Baily to Herschel, December 1, 1836, RS: HS 3.136.

  81 See Mawer, South by Northwest, p. 52.

  82 Herschel to Whewell, August 7, 1839, WP Add. ms. a. 207 f. 40.

  83 Herschel to Daguerre, August 1, 1839, quoted in Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, pp. 79–80.

  84 See Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope, pp. 136–37.

  85 Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, pp. 79–80.

  86 Talbot to Ross, August 22, 1839, in The Correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot, document no. 3920.

  87 Schaaf, Out of the Shadows, p. 79.

  88 Hall, All Scientists Now, pp. 207–8.

  89 See Stern, “A Millennium of Geomagnetism.”

  90 See ibid. and Cawood, “The Magnetic Crusade,” pp. 512–13.

  91 Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, 3rd ed., vol. 3, p. 51.

  92 Herschel to Whewell, [n.d.] [1846–47], RS: HS 25.14.35.

  93 See Mawer, South by Northwest, p. 151.

  94 See Cawood, “The Magnetic Crusade,” p. 516.

  95 Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, 3rd ed., vol. 3, p. 55.

  96 See Evans et al., Herschel at the Cape, p. xix, and Clerke, The Herschels and Modern Astronomy, p. 43.

  CHAPTER 10. ANGELS AND FAIRIES

  1 Whewell to Hare, December 13, 1840, in Stair Douglas, Life and Selections, p. 207.