Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• LIGHTMAN, BERNARD

Titel

Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society

Ist Teil von

• Victorian Review, 2009, Vol.35 (1), p.256-258

Ort / Verlag

Edmonton: Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada

Erscheinungsjahr

2009

Quelle

Literature Online (LION)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Snyder undermines the conventional, polarized pictures of these two figures by demonstrating that much of Whewell's criticism is valid only of the young Mill, before he undertook his critique of Bentham's one-sided utilitarianism; by pointing to a series of cases where Mill misunderstood Whewell's position; and by insisting that we read Mill and Whewell in context in order to recover the full complexity of their positions. Chapter 2 deals with Mill's radicalization of induction—his attempt to build an ultra-empiricist scientific method that demonstrated that mind contributed nothing to knowledge of the physical world. Chapter 3 focuses on the controversy between Mill and Whewell over the confirmation of scientific theories, using their evaluation of Darwin's theory of evolution as a case study.