Hostname: page-component-669899f699-rg895 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-28T04:39:02.480Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Genius, Method, and Morality: Images of Newton in Britain, 1760–1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Richard Yeo
Richard Yeo
Affiliation:
Division of HumanitiesGriffith University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Focusing on the celebrations of Newton and his work, this article investigates the use of the concept of genius and its connection with debates on the methodology of science and the morality of great discoverers. During the period studied, two areas of tension developed. Firstly, eighteenth-century ideas about the relationship between genius and method were challenged by the notion of scientific genius as transcending specifiable rules of method. Secondly, assumptions about the nexus between intellectual and moral virtue were threatened by the emerging conception of genius as marked by an extraordinary personality – on the one hand capable of breaking with established methods to achieve great discoveries, on the other, likely to transgress moral and social conventions. The assesments of Newton by nineteenth-century scientists such as Brewster, Whewell, and De Morgan were informed by these tensions.

Type
Three Hundred Years of Newton's Principia
Information
Science in Context , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1988 , pp. 257 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abrams, M. H., 1953. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Acton, H., 1833. Religious Opinions and Example of Milton, Locke and Newton. London.Google Scholar
Albury, W. R., 1978. “Halley's Ode on the Principia of Newton and the Epicurean Revival in England”, Journal of the History of Ideas 39: 24–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Algarotti, F., 1737. Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy Explained for the Use of Ladies, trans. Carter, E., 2 vols. London.Google Scholar
Anon., 1816. Buds of Genius: Or Some Account of the Early Lives of Celebrated Characters who were Remarkable in Their Childhood. London.Google Scholar
Anon., 1851. The Life of Sir Isaac Newton. London: Religious Tract Society.Google Scholar
Ault, D., 1975. Visionary Physics: Blake's Response to Newton. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Babbage, C., 1838. Ninth Bridgewater Treatise: a Fragment, 2d ed. London: J. Murray.Google Scholar
Bacon, F., 1857–1864. “Novum Organum,” in The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. Spedding, J., Ellis, R., and Heath, D., 14 vols. London.Google Scholar
Baily, F., 1834. “A short Account of some MSS Letters…“, in British Association for the Advancement of Science Reports. London.Google Scholar
Baily, F., 1835. An Account of the Reverend John Flamsteed, the First Astronomer Royal. London: The Admiralty.Google Scholar
Becker, G., 1978. The Mad Genius Controversy: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance. Beverly Hills: Sage.Google Scholar
Biographia Britannica, or, the Lives of the Most Eminent Persons, 1760. 6 vols. London: W. Innys.Google Scholar
Biot, J. B., 1829. Life of Sir Isaac Newton, trans. Brougham, H.. Library of Useful Knowledge. London: Baldwin and Craddock.Google Scholar
Biot, J. B., 1855. “Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton”, Journal des Savants (October): 589–606.Google Scholar
Brewster, D., 1831. The Life of Sir Isaac Newton. London: J. Murray.Google Scholar
Brewster, D., 1837. “Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences”, Edinburgh Review 66: 110–51.Google Scholar
Brewster, D., [1855] 1965. Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, 2 vols. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation.Google Scholar
British Biography; or an Accurate and Impartial Account of the Lives and Writings of Eminent Persons in Great Britain, 10 vols. 1773–1780. London.Google Scholar
Buckley, T. W., 1853. The Dawnings of Genius Exemplified in the Early Lives of Distinguished Men. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Carlyle, T., 1971. Thomas Carlyle. Selected Writings, ed.Sheiston, A.. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Chalmers, T., 1815. Evidence and Authority of the Christian Revelation, 2d ed. Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Chambers, E., 1728. Cyclopaedia, 2 vols. London.Google Scholar
Christie, J. R. R., 1984. “Sir David Brewster as Historian of Science”, in Martyr of Science: Sir David Brewster 1781–1868, ed. Morrison-Low, A. D., and Christie, J. J. R.. Edinburgh: Royal Scottish Museum.Google Scholar
Clagett, M., ed., 1959. Critical Problems in the History of Science. Madison:University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, I. B., 1960. “Newton in the Light of Recent Scholarship”, Isis 51: 489–514.Google Scholar
Delaney, P., 1969. Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
De Morgan, A., 1837. “Theory of Probabilities—Part 11”, Dublin Review 3: 237–48.Google Scholar
De Morgan, A., 1855. “Sir David Brewster's Life of Newton”, North British Review 23: 307–38.Google Scholar
De Morgan, A., 1885. Newton: His Friend and His Niece, by his wife [De Morgan, S.E. and Ranyard, A.C. London: E. Stock.Google Scholar
De Morgan, A., 1914. “Newton,” in Essays on the Life and Work of Newton, ed.Jourdain, P. Chicago: Open Court.Google Scholar
De Morgan, A., [1915] 1954. A Budget of Paradoxes, 2d ed., 2 vols. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Dieckmann, H, 1941. “Diderot's Conception of Genius”, Journal of the History of Ideas 2: 151–82.Google Scholar
[Drinkwater, J.], 1833. “The Life of Kepler”, in Lives of Eminent Persons. London: Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.Google Scholar
Duff, W, 1767. An Essay on Original Genius.London.Google Scholar
Edgar, J. G, 1853. The Boyhood of Great Men. London: 0. Barclay.Google Scholar
Engell, J, 1981. The Creative Imagination. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Figala, K, 1977. “Newton as Alchemist”, History of Science 15: 102–37.Google Scholar
Fontenelle, B., Le Bovier, de, 1728. The Elogium of Sir Isaac Newton. London: J. TomsomGoogle Scholar
Fox, R, 1974. “The Rise and Fall of Laplacian Physics”, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 4: 89–136.Google Scholar
[Galloway, T.], 1833. “French and English Biographies of Newton”, Foreign Quarterly Review 12: 1–27.Google Scholar
Gascoigne, J, 1985. “The Universities and the Scientific Revolution”, History of Science 23: 39–434.Google Scholar
Gerard, A, 1774. An Essay on Genius. London: W. Strahan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillispie, C. C, 1959. “The Encyclopédie and the Jacobin Philosophy of Science,” in Clagett 1959, 255–89.Google Scholar
Gjertsen, D, 1986. The Newton Handbook. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Guerlac, H, 1965. “Where the Statue Stood: Divergent Loyalties to Newton in the Eighteenth Century”, in Wasserman 1965, 317–34.Google Scholar
Hahn, R, 1971. The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harman, P., ed., 1985. Wranglers and Physicists: Studies in Cambridge Physics in the Nineteenth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Hays, J. N, 1964. “Science and Brougham's Society”, Annals of Science 20: 227–41.Google Scholar
Hutton, C, [1795–96] 1815. A Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary, new ed., 2 vols. London.Google Scholar
Jones, W. P, 1966. The Rhetoric of Science: A Study of Scientific Ideas and Imagery in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry. London.Google Scholar
Keynes, J. M, 1972. “Newton, the Man”, in Collected Works, 14 vols. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Lamb, C., 1935. Complete Works and Letters of Charles Lamb. New York: The Modern Library.Google Scholar
Laudan, L, 1981. “Thomas Reid and the Newtonian Turn of British Methodological Thought”, in his Science and Hypothesis: Historical Essays on Scientific Methodology. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levine, P, 1986. The Amateur and the Professional. Antiquarians, Historians, and Archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–1886. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lodge, E, 1835. Portraits of Illustrious Personages, 12 vols. London: Harding.Google Scholar
McEvoy, J. G, 1979. “Electricity, Knowledge and the Nature of Progress in Priestley's Thought”, British Journal for the History of Science 12: 1–30.Google Scholar
McEvoy, J. G., and McGuire, J. E., 1975. “God and Nature: Priestley's Way of Rational Dissent”, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 6: 325–404.Google Scholar
McGuire, J. E., and Rattansi, P. M., 1966. “Newton and the ‘Pipes of Pan'”, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 21: 108–43.Google Scholar
McKie, D., and De Beer, G. R., 1951–1952. “Newton's Apple”, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 9: 46–54.Google Scholar
Manuel, F, 1968. A Portrait of Isaac Newton. Boston: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Munby, A. N. L, 1968. The History of Science in England: The First Phase, 1833–1845. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Nicolson, M. H., 1946. Newton Demands the Muse. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Nisbet, J. F., 1891. The Insanity of Genius. London.Google Scholar
Olson, R, 1975. Scottish Philosophy and British Physics 1750–1880. Princeton:Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Outram, D, 1978. “The Language of Natural Power: The ‘Eloges’ of Georges Cuvier and the Public Language of Nineteenth-Century Science”,History of Science 16: 153–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Outram, D., ‘1980]. “Politics and Vocation: French Science, 1793–1830”, British Journal for the History of Science 13: 27–43.Google Scholar
Pemberton, H, 1728. View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy. London.Google Scholar
Peters, W, 1846. Newton Rescued from the Precipitancy of his Followers: a few practical reasons suggested by fact and supported by Scripture, for questioning the soundness of the Newtonian Theory of the Universe. London:privately printed.Google Scholar
Porter, R., 1987. Mind-Forg'd Manacles. A History of Madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency. London:Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Powell, B., 1834. An Historical View of the Progress of the Physical and Mathematical Sciences. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Powell, B.,1856. “Sir Isaac Newton”, Edinburgh Review, 103: 499–535.Google Scholar
Priestley, J., [1767] 1775. The History and Present State of Electricity, 4th ed. London.Google Scholar
Rashid, S., 1985. “Dugald Stewart, ‘ Baconian’ Methodology, and Political Economy”, Journal of the History of Ideas 46: 245–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reid, T, 1863. Works.Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Rigaud, S. P, 1838. Historical Essay on the First Publication of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia. Oxford.Google Scholar
Rigaud, S. P., 1851. Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. OxfordGoogle Scholar
Schaffer, S., 1986. “Scientific Discoveries and the End of Natural Philosophy”, Social Studies of Science 16: 387–420.Google Scholar
Schuster, J. A., and Yeo, R. R., eds., 1986. The Politics and Rhetoric of Scientific Method: Historical Studies. Dordrecht:Reidel.Google Scholar
Secord, J, 1985. “Newton in the Nursery: Tom Telescope and the Philosophy of Tops and Balls”, History of Science 23: 127–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shelley, P. B., 1964. The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed.Jones, F. L. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Smiles, S., 1894. Self Help. London.Google Scholar
Spence, J., 1964. Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters … from the Conversations of Mr. Pope, and other eminent persons of his time, ed. Simpson, S.. London: Centaur Press.Google Scholar
Stewart, D., 1854–1860. The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart, ed. Hamilton, W., 11 vols. Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Stukeley, W., 1936. Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life. Being some account of his family and chiefly of the junior part of his life, ed. Hastings White, A.. London: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Taylor, H. M, 1875–1889. “Newton”, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed., 25 vols., 17: 444. Edinburgh: A. and C. Black.Google Scholar
Theerman, P., 1985. “Unaccustomed Role: The Scientist as Historical Biographer—Two Nineteenth-Century Portrayals of Newton”, Biography 8: 145–62.Google Scholar
Tonelli, G., and Wittkower, R., 1968–1973. “Genius”, in Wiener 1968–73, 2: 293–302.Google Scholar
Tumor, E, 1806. Collections for the History of Grantham. Containing Authentic Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton. London: W. Miller.Google Scholar
Voltaire, , 1738. The Elements of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy, trans. Hanna, J.. London: S. Austen.Google Scholar
Wasserman, E. R., ed., 1965. Aspects of the Eighteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.Google Scholar
Webster, C., 1982. From Paracelsus to Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Westfall, R. S., 1965. “Introduction” to Brewster 1965.Google Scholar
Westfall, R. S., 1980. Never at Rest. A Biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Whewell, W., 1830. “Lyell's Principles of Geology”, Quarterly Review 43: 411–69.Google Scholar
Whewell, W., 1834. Astronomy and General Physics considered with reference to Natural Theology, 2d ed. London: W. Pickering.Google Scholar
Whewell, W., 1836. Newton and Flamsteed. Remarks on an article in number cix of the Quarterly Review, 2d ed. Cambridge: J. Deighton.Google Scholar
Whewell, W., 1837. History of the Inductive Sciences, 3 vols. London: J. Parker.Google Scholar
Whewell, W., 1847. The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, 2d ed., 2 vols. London.Google Scholar
Wiener, P., ed., 1968–1973. Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 4 vols. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
Wilson, D., 1985. “The Educational Matrix…”, in Harman 1985, 23–28.Google Scholar
Wittkower, M., and Wittkower, R., 1963. Born under Saturn: the character and conduct of artists: a documented history from Antiquity to the French Revolution. London.Google Scholar
Wormhoudt, A., 1949. “Newton's Natural Philosophy in the Behemensitic Works of William Law”, Journal of the History of Ideas 10: 411–29.Google Scholar
Yeo, R., 1979. “William Whewell, Natural Theology and the Philosophy of Science in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Britain”, Annals of Science 36: 493–516.Google Scholar
Yeo, R., 1985. “An Idol of the Market-Place: Baconianism in Nineteenth-Century Britain”, History of Science 23: 251–98.Google Scholar
Yeo, R., 1986. “Scientific Method and the Rhetoric of Science in Britain, 1830–1917”, in Schuster and Yeo 1986, 259–98.Google Scholar
Young, E., [1759] 1966. Conjectures on Original Composition. Leeds: Scholar Press.Google Scholar
Zedler, J. H, 1740. Grosses Universal Lexicon, 64 vols. Leipzig.Google Scholar