Item 211 - William Whewell to Richard Jones

Has RJ read David Brewster's review of WW's history? ['On the History of the Inductive Sciences', Edinburgh Review, 66, 1837]. Does he think there is anything he needs to answer? Brewster 'has made the article for the most part an angry remonstrance in favour of his own rights unjustly withheld'. For example, WW does not quote from Brewster's 'Life of Newton' or his Edinburgh Journal of Science. That he does not give more credit to Brewster's arrangement of crystals or support his demands for more public rewards to men of science. And by referring to Brewster's controversies with French discoverers: 'I am disposed to stand upon my character and hold my tongue, till I can write my philosophy, and then I can get all to right that is really wrong'. The real injustice is in his history of physiology and neglect of Charles Bell [see WW to RJ, 6 September 1837]: 'If I could find any mode and channel of modifying this I would do it'. Brewster has also taken 'special care to overlook all that I have said of his rival Forbes' [James Forbes] discoveries'.