William Whewell’S Odyssey: From Mathematics to Moral Philosophy

Abstract William Whewell was born on 24 May 1794, and died on 6 March 1866. What the ‘ruddy strapping divine’ crowded into his life brought forth from Sidney Smith, the satirist, a breakfast-party quip: ‘Science is his forte and omniscience is his foible.’ Smith’s epigram was clever, but it provided little insight into the object of his barb. Even today the name Whewell is ubiquitous in historical literature while the man himself remains an unresolved nebula, a testimonial to the difficulty of placing Whewell’s wide-ranging interests into some kind of fathomable pattern. Since Whewell was both a significant influence, and a reliable mirror, on his age, bringing him into focus is of historical importance, and the direction of this essay is towards that end.