Whewell, William

Whewell, William

Whewell, plaster cast of bust by Edward Hodges Baily, 1851; in the National Portrait Gallery, London

(credit: Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)

(born May 24, 1794, Lancaster, Lancashire, Eng.—died March 6, 1866, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) British philosopher and historian. He spent most of his career at the University of Cambridge, where he taught mineralogy (1828–32) and moral philosophy (1838–55) and served as college master (1841–66). He is remembered primarily for his work on the theory of induction. He stressed the need to see scientific progress as a historical process, asserting that inductive reasoning could be employed properly only if its use throughout history was closely analyzed. His major works on induction are History of the Inductive Sciences (3 vol., 1837) and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840). See also problem of induction.