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I started this essay by expressing dissatisfaction with the phrase “philosophy of paleontology.” Am I now ready to name myself a “thinker of palaetiology”? I’m not. Some phrases move out of utilization for a cause, and whereas palaetiology is hardly an unpleasant phrase, it would not precisely journey off the tongue.
Nonetheless, I’m inclined to provide the ultimate phrase to Whewell, who occurs to be one among my favourite philosophers. So right here he’s, describing the content material of a well-rounded liberal training. After suggesting that the “chemical sciences” usually are not presently “in a situation which makes them essential basic parts of a liberal training,” Whewell notes that there’s one other class of sciences, the palaetiological, “which, from the largeness of their views and the exactness of one of the best parts of their reasonings, are effectively fitted to kind a part of that philosophical self-discipline which a liberal training ought to incorporate.”
These [sciences], [including] ethnography, or comparative philology, and geology, are amongst these progressive sciences which can be most correctly taken right into a liberal training as instructive situations of the broad and wealthy area of information and reasonings with which trendy science offers, nonetheless retaining, in lots of its steps, nice rigour of proof; and as an animating show additionally of the massive and grand vistas of time, succession, and causation, that are open to the speculative powers of man. (Whewell 1845, 20)
Let these phrases stand as an commercial for Extinct: The Philosophy of Palaetiology— er, Palaeontology— Weblog!
References
Bakewell, R. 1815. An Introduction to Geology: Comprising the Parts of the Science in its Current Superior State and all of the Current Discoveries; with an Define of the Geology of England and Wales. London: Longman, Hurst, Orme, Brown, and Inexperienced.
De la Beche, H.T. 1834. Researches in Theoretical Geology. London: Charles Knight.
Fitton, W. 1817. Transactions of the Geological Society, established 1807. Edinburgh Evaluate 18:70– 94.
Hodge, M.J.S. 1991. The historical past of the earth, life, and man: Whewell and palaetiological science. In M. Fisch and S. Schaffer (Eds.), William Whewell: A Composite Portrait, 253–288. Oxford: Oxford College Press.
Lyell, C. 1830. Ideas of Geology, Being an Try to Clarify the Former Modifications of the Earth’s Floor, by Reference to Causes now in Operation. Quantity 1 (First Version). London: John Murray.
O’Connor, R.O. 2007. The Earth on Present: Fossils and the Poetics of Well-liked Science, 1802-1856. Chicago: The College of Chicago Press.
Rudwick, M.J.S. 1982. The Nice Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Data Amongst Gentlemanly Specialists. Chicago: College of Chicago Press.
Rudwick, M.J.S. 2005. Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory within the Age of Revolution. Chicago: College of Chicago Press.
Whewell, W. 1831. Lyell’s Ideas of Geology, Quantity 1. British Critic and Quarterly Theological Evaluate 9:180–206.
Whewell, W. 1837. Historical past of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Current Time. London: John W. Parker.
Whewell, W. 1840. Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Based upon their Historical past. London: John W. Parker.
Whewell, W. 1845. Of a Liberal Training in Basic. London: John W. Parker.
For Some Extra Assets on Whewell, see:
Dethier, C. 2018. William Whewell’s semantic account of induction. HOPOS 8:141–156.
Snyder, L.J. 2006. Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society. Chicago: College of Chicago Press.
Snyder, L.J. 2011. The Philosophical Breakfast Membership: 4 Exceptional Mates who Reworked Science and Modified the World. New York: Broadway Books.
Quinn, A. 2016. William Whewell’s philosophy of structure and the historicization of biology.” Research in Historical past and Philosophy of Organic and Biomedical Sciences 59:11–19.
Quinn, A. 2017. Whewell on classification and consilience. Research in Historical past and Philosophy of Science Half C: Research in Historical past and Philosophy of Organic and Biomedical Sciences 1:65–74.
Yeo, R. 1993. Defining Science: William Whewell, Pure Data, and Public Debate in Early Victorian Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge College Press.
