Item 30 - Letter from John Herschel

4 pp

Slough - Thanks WW for a copy of his book [The History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Time, 3 vols., 1837]. Although JH has only perused vol. 1, he has been struck by two things: 1/. The view that Aristotelian Philosophy has established induction in the wrong direction: 'raising it in the casual and vulgar use of words instead of phenomena': 2/. The idea of art being the parent of science. JH thinks WW undervalues 'the direct influence of science in improving some processes and originating others...If necessity and luxury have been the parents of art - science has been its wet nurse'. JH is impressed with WW's claim that the threads to truth are in the framing, trying and rejecting of an hypothesis (as discussed in WW's intellectual character of Kepler). The new gage at Simon's Bay broke but has now been repaired. JH has reduced and arranged 654 nebulae and 475 double stars, and observed several revolutions of the 6th Satellite of Saturn - the only other person to have seen it was his father.