5. Augustus De Morgan

Augustus De Morgan’s work on mathematics and logic in the mid-nineteenth century is familiar to historians of both disciplines. What is less known is his work on scientific method, where he went against the grain of the dominant English view of knowledge, embodied most prominently by his former teacher William Whewell. De Morgan argued that in so far as induction rests upon probability, mathematics rather than observation is the motor of scientific progress. Drawing on De Morgan’s published work as well as on unpublished sources, such as his correspondence with Whewell, this chapter examines De Morgan’s meta-scientific views. What emerges is a rounded picture of De Morgan as a pioneer of a new probabilistic image of human knowledge that challenged the prevailing orthodoxy.