Overview
Wilhelm Whewell was one on the most prolific and influential writers of early Victorian England. Fisch reconstructs the historical origins of Whewell's two works, History of the Inductive Sciences from the Earliest to the Present Time and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences Founded upon their History, and evaluates their philosophical claims. In the last part of the book the author gives a critical appraisal of Whewell's mature philosophical position, having first traced the development of his thought. Whewell emerges as the only writer of his generation to have risen fully to the philosophical challenge of the mathematical physics of his day, and to have established in response a theory of science intriguingly akin to the new theories of emergence which were being offered by Lyell and Darwin.