In his Preface to the Philosophy, Whewell recalled that Sedgwick had asked for the ‘moral’ of the History, and that he had replied that ‘the moral would be as long as the story itself’ (Whewell 1840a, 1, iii). It is not certain that what Whewell provided in 1840 was the moral Sedgwick had in mind, but there was definitely more than collegiality behind the dedication of this second major work to the Woodwardian Professor of Geology. Whewell presented his new book as a continuation of the fight against the ‘fallacies of the ultra-Lockian school’ – an enemy that Sedgwick engaged in 1833 in the field of ethics or moral philosophy, in his famous A discourse on the studies of the university of Cambridge. Whewell announced the continuation of this battle into the philosophy of the natural sciences (Whewell 1847a, 1, iv).

This chapter shows how Whewell's Philosophy, the culmination of his thought on the nature and growth of science, can be considered as part of a moral discourse on science.