Item 209 - William Whewell to Richard Jones

4 pp.

Trinity College - Does RJ still persuade himself that he is to write a review of WW's history? ['The History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Time', 3 vols., 1837]. If RJ looks at the last Quarterly Review he will see 'that Lockhart and Murray appear resolved to have none but shallow articles...so I apprehend your chance there is small'. Has RJ seen Macaulay's [Thomas B. Macaulay] article on Bacon in the Edinburgh Review?: 'I rejoice to see how little people yet see the philosophy of induction for Macaulay is no bad example of the general thinker; and yet how scanty and superficial are his views - happily expressed and well illustrated of course'. Sir Charles Bell has complained to WW that he has been located 'with slight and injustice in page 425 of my third volume' ['The History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Time', 3 vols., 1837]. Has RJ put 'down on paper, as clearly and strongly as you can, the reasons which you can find for the opinion you held a little while ago; - namely - that the simplest mechanical truths depend upon experience in a manner in which the simplest geometrical truths do not; - that the axioms of geometry may be self-evident, and known a priori; but that there are not axioms of mechanics so known and so evident. I am very desirous of getting this opinion in its best and most definite shape, because the rejection of it is a very leading point of my philosophy...The whole act of induction depends upon it'.