History of the Inductive Sciences - Volume 1

A central figure in Victorian science William Whewell (17941866) held professorships in Mineralogy and Moral Philosophy at Trinity College Cambridge before becoming Master of the college in 1841. His mathematical textbooks such as A Treatise on Dynamics (1823) were instrumental in bringing French analytical methods into British science. This three-volume history first published in 1837 is one of Whewell''s most famous works. Taking the ''acute but fruitless essays of Greek philosophy'' as a starting point it provides a history of the physical sciences that culminates with the mechanics astronomy and chemistry of ''modern times''. Volume 1 studies Greek physics and metaphysics attributing their failure to a method that derived its principles from the common use of language. It surveys the state of the physical sciences in the middle ages and deals with the rise of ''formal'' astronomy - based on observation rather than calculation - as exemplified by Copernicus.