Abstract
L. Pearce Williams has suggested that Faraday’s attitude towards the politics of science should be understood as an extension of his attitude towards politics in general.1 This observation underpins the present chapter, which concerns Faraday’s attitudes towards science and the part he played in such scientific organisations as the Royal Institution, the British Association and the Royal Society. First, however, we shall examine Faraday’s conception of the role of the scientist, and here it will be argued that he considered that the scientist should hold values very similar to those advocated by the Sandemanians in prescribing Christian virtue. Thus, I want to delineate several specific ways in which Faraday the scientist reflected the values of Faraday the Sandemanian.
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Notes
L.P. Williams, Michael Faraday: A biography (London, 1965), p.357.
F. Bacon, Novum organum in J. Spedding, R.L. Ellis and D.D. Heath, eds, The works of Francis Bacon (fourteen vols, London, 1872–4), vol.8, p.210; Faraday to Whewell, 7 November 1848: Correspondence, 528.
A.S. Eve and C.H. Creasey, Life and work of John Tyndall (London, 1945), pp.32 and 40.
D.P. Miller, ‘Between hostile camps: Sir Humphry Davy’s presidency of the Royal Society of London, 1820–1827’, British Journal for the History of Science, 16 (1983), 1–47;
M.J.S. Rudwick, The great Devonian controversy: The shaping of scientific knowledge among gentlemanly specialists (Chicago and London, 1985).
J. Morrell and A. Thackray, Gentlemen of science: Early years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford, 1981), p.546.
On London science, see I. Inkster and J. Morrell, eds, Metropolis and province: Science in British culture, 1780–1850 (London, 1983);
M. Berman, Social change and scientific organization. The Royal Institution, 1799–1844 (London, 1978);
M.B. Hall, All scientists now: The Royal Society in the nineteenth century (Cambridge, 1984); Rudwick, op. cit. (n.25);
On London science, see I. Inkster and J. Morrell, eds, Metropolis and province: Science in British culture, 1780–1850 (London, 1983); M. Berman, Social change and scientific organization. The Royal Institution, 1799–1844 (London, 1978); M.B. Hall, All scientists now: The Royal Society in the nineteenth century (Cambridge, 1984); Rudwick, op. cit. (n.25); J.B. Morrell, ‘London institutions and Lyell’s career: 1820–41’, British Journal for the History of Science, 9 (1976), 132–46;
B.H. Becker, Scientific London (London, 1874).
H.B. Woodward, The history of the Geological Society of London (London, 1907), pp.48 and 54–5.
T.S. Moore and J.C. Philip, The Chemical Society, 1841–1941: A historical review (London, 1947), p.16.
Jones, 1, 339. See also ibid., 299–314; Williams, op. cit. (n.1), p.160; D. Knight, ‘Davy and Faraday: Fathers and sons’, in D. Gooding and F.A.J.L. James, eds, Faraday rediscovered: Essays on the life and work of Michael Faraday, 1791–1867 (Basingstoke and New York, 1985), pp.32–49, esp. pp.42–6.
A.C. Todd, Beyond the blaze: A biography of Davies Gilbert (Truro, 1967), p.237.
Morrell and Thackray, op. cit. (n.26), pp.52–7; J. Barrow, Sketches of the Royal Society and the Royal Society Club (London, 1849).
Anon., The customs of the Churches of Christ as found in the New Testament (Edinburgh, 1908), pp.18–19. 1 John 4:1–6 also cited.
H. Ward, History of the Athenaeum 1824–1925 (London, 1926); [F.R. Cowell, et al], The Athenaeum. Club and social life in London 1824–1974 (London, 1975).
J. Tyndall, Faraday as a discoverer (5th ed., London, 1894), pp.183–4.
J. B. Morrell, ‘Professionalisation’, in R.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor, J.R.R. Christie and M.J.S. Hodge, eds, Companion to the history of modern science (London, 1990), pp.980–9.
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W.T. Brande, Dictionary of science, literature, & art (London, 1842), p.217. Emphasis added.
H.C. Oersted, ‘Experiments on the effect of a current of electricity on the magnetic needle’, Annals of Philosophy, 16 (1820), 273–6.
D. Gooding, ‘“Magnetic curves” and the magnetic field: Experimentation and representation in the history of a theory’, in D. Gooding, T. Pinch and S. Schaffer, eds, The uses of experiment: Studies in the natural sciences (Cambridge, 1989), pp.183–223, esp. pp.193–201.
W. Sturgeon, ‘Remarks on the preceding paper, with experiments’, Annals of Electricity, Magnetism and Chemistry, 1 (1836–7), 186–91 and 367–76.
Sturgeon set himself up as adversary to many of the leading scientists of the period. Joseph Henry, for example, reported that ‘Mr Sturgeon first became dissatisfied with the Royal Institution by a harshe remarke of Sir H Davey who when Mr S shewed him some exp. on magnetism said he had better mind his last than be dabling in science’: N. Reingold, et al., eds, The papers of Joseph Henry (five vols, Washington, 1972–85), vol.3, p.250.
For Sturgeon’s Manchester background and other controversies, see D.S.L. Cardwell, James Joule: A biography (Manchester, 1989), esp. pp.25–8.
E. Stone, A new mathematical dictionary… (London, 1726).
W.F. Barrett, review of J.H. Gladstone’s Michael Faraday in Nature, 6 (1872), 410–13, esp. 412;
J. Fenwick Allen, Some founders of the chemical industry (London and Manchester, 1906), pp.151–98;
A.F. Yarrow, ‘An incident in connection with Faraday’s life’, Proceedings of the Royal Institution, 25 (1926–8), 480.
D. Stein, Ada. A life and a legacy (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1985), pp.136–7. See also Jones, 2, 186 and Faraday to Ada, Countess of Lovelace, 24 October 1844: ibid., 188–92.
Faraday to Schoenbein, 18 December 1946: Schoenbein, 162–3. Cf. G.W.A. Kahlbaum, ed., The letters of Jons Jakob Berzelius and Christian Friedrich Schonbein, 1836–1847 (London, 1900), pp.92–103.
[R. Sandeman?], The philosophy of the Creation, as narrated in Moses’ principia, Gen. Chap.I. v.1–18 (Edinburgh, 1835), p. vi.
A. Ellegard, Darwin and the general reader: The reception of Darwin’s theory of evolution in the British periodical press, 1859–1872 (Goteborg, 1958);
T.F. Glick, ed., The comparative reception of Darwinism (Austin, 1974);
D.L. Hull, ed., Darwin and his critics: The reception of Darwin’s theory of evolution by the scientific community (Cambridge, Mass., 1973);
J.C. Greene, The death of Adam: Evolution and its impact on Western thought (Ames, 1959).
J. Oppenheim, The other world: Spiritualism and psychic research in England, 1850–1914 (Cambridge, 1985);
L. Barrow, Independent spirits: Spiritualism and English plebeians, 1850–1910 (London and New York, 1986);
A. Gauld, The founders of psychical research (London, 1968);
I. Grattan-Guinness, ed, Psychical research: A guide to its history, principles and practices, in celebration of 100 years of the Society for Psychical Research (Wellingborough, 1982).
For example, R. Sandeman, The law of nature defended by Scripture in Sandeman, Discourses on passages of Scripture: With essays and letters (Dundee, 1857), pp.276 and 281.
For example, Faraday, The chemical history of a candle (London, 1907), pp.14 and 62.
L[loyd], op. cit. (n.99), p.67; D.M. Knight, ‘The scientist as sage’, Studies in Romanticism, 6 (1967), 65–88.
R.M. MacLeod, ‘The Alkali Acts administration, 1863–84: The emergence of the civil scientist’, Victorian Studies, 9 (1965), 85–112.
R.M. MacLeod, ‘Science and government in Victorian England: Lighthouse illumination and the Board of Trade, 1866–1886’, Isis, 60 (1969), 5–38.
See reports in The Times for 2, 3, 4, 11 and 14 October 1844. On coroners’ inquests see F.A. Barley, ‘Coroners’ inquests held in the manor of Prescot, 1746–89’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 86 (1934), 21–39;
E.H. East, A treatise of the pleas of the Crown (two vols, London, 1803), vol.2, pp.52–70. Berman, op. cit. (n.27) is mistaken in characterising the coroner’s inquest as a ‘trial’.
Faraday, ‘The ventilation of mines, and the means of preventing explosion from fire damp’, The Civil Engineer and Architect’s Journal, 8 (1845), 115–18, esp. 115.
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© 1991 Geoffrey N. Cantor
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Cantor, G. (1991). Scientific Institutions. In: Michael Faraday: Sandemanian and Scientist. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13131-0_6
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