50 Introduction 



p. ix). He was influenced also by the "Preliminary discourse on the 

 study of natural philosophy" which his friend, Sir John Herschel, 

 had published a few years previously (1830, 1831).''° For such philo- 

 sophical and pedagogical tendencies a classification was necessary. The 

 result of it, irrespective of its value, was that his work was not an inte- 

 grated history of science but a collection of separate histories printed 

 under one cover. Each of the chapters, 6 to 18, deals with a branch of 

 science from the beginning of the seventeenth century to his own time. 

 Whewell's work was not historically up-to-date at the time of its first 

 publication; it is at present almost entirely out-of-date. It is a dangerous 

 book for young students of the history of science, but it has itself become 

 a document of great value enabling us to recapture the scientific outlook 

 of a hundred years ago. Nothing illustrates better the backwardness 

 of our studies than the fact that Whewell's book was still commanding 

 the respect of many thoughtful readers at the beginning of this century. 



If the French readers of last century were immune to Whewell's 

 teaching, they were submitted to that of Ferdinand Hoefer (1811-78), 

 a German exile who spent the best part of his life in Paris and published 

 a series of books dealing each of them with the history of a particular 

 science or group of sciences.^^ The best of them was his history of 

 chemistry which continued an old German tradition. It first appeared 

 in 1842-43 and devoted 1046 pages to that history as against the 80 pages 

 of chapter 14 in Whewell's treatise. It was reprinted with a new final 

 chapter ( 1868-69 ) . Instead of improving his knowledge of the history 

 of chemistry, a field in which he might have become a master comparable 

 to his great rival, Herrmann Kopp,*'- he allowed himself to become a 

 bookseller's hack and published in quick succession a history of physics 

 and chemistry ( 1872 ) , a history of botany, mineralogy and geology 

 (1872), a history of zoology (1872), a history of astronomy (1873), a 

 history of mathematics ( 1874). These books became standard books in 

 the French world, were frequently reprinted, and are found to this day 

 on the reference shelves of French libraries. Their influence was not 

 good. 



It is curious to note that the Whewellian-Hoeferian method of deal- 

 ing with each branch of science separately, instead of attempting to take 

 them all together in a straight chronological order, is still followed today 

 to some extent by Abraham Wolf, sometime professor in the University 

 of London.^^ 



*" Herschel's book was philosophical and methodological rather than historical 

 in purpose; yet it included a number of historical remarks. It was far more popular 

 on the Continent than Whewell's, for it was translated into French (1834) and 

 Itahan (1840). Whewell's work was dedicated to Herschel, who was working 

 at that time at the Observatory of Feldhausen near Cape Town. 



®^ Sarton: Hoefer and Chevreul (Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 8, 

 419-45, Baltimore, 1940). 



"'Max Speter: Vater Kopp (Osiris, 5, 392-460, 1938). 



*^ Abraham Wolf: History of science, technology and philosophy in the six- 

 teenth and seventeenth centuries. With the cooperation of F. Dannemann and A. 

 Armitage (720 p., 316 ill., London 1935; Isis, 24, 164-67); History of science, tech- 



