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The Origins of the British Association for the Advancement of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

A. D. Orange
A. D. Orange
Affiliation:
Department of Humanities, Faculty of Community and Social Studies, Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic, Ellison Building, Ellison Place, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST.
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Extract

That a coherent account of the origins and early history of the British Association for the Advancement of Science has yet to be written is not altogether surprising. Even when the facts of the matter have been retrieved from the scattered papers of Babbage, Brewster, J. D. Forbes, Murchison, John Phillips, Vernon Harcourt, Whewell, and the rest, their organization into a connected whole remains a formidable business. The present paper seeks to identify the roles played in this important chapter in the chronicles of British science by David Brewster (1781–1868), the Scottish natural philosopher, and William Vernon Harcourt (1789–1871), the York clergyman. Inquiries of this kind—into the proper apportioning of the credit for a discovery, a technique, or the rise of an institution—are only saved from sterility if they make possible a better understanding of the critical events. The present review of the origins of the British Association leads to the modest but important conclusion that the organization brought into existence by Vernon Harcourt at York in September 1831 was subtly but significantly different from that which had originally been proposed by Brewster. If this is so, some of the existing accounts of the matter stand in need of revision.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , December 1972 , pp. 152 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1972

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References

1 The most substantial treatment which has appeared in the present century is Howarth, O. J. R., The British Association for the Advancement of Science: a retrospect 1831–1921 (London, 1922), pp. 1–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A number of papers have attempted to relate the foundation of the British Association to a wider background: e.g. Foote, G. A., ‘The place of science in the British reform movement, 1830–50’, Isis, xlii (1951), 192–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, L. P., ‘The Royal Society and the founding of the British Association for the Advancement of Science’, Notes and records of the Royal Society, xvi (1961), 221–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There are important passages in some of the nineteenth-century volumes devoted to eminent men of science, most notably Geikie, A., Memoir of Sir Roderick Murchison (London, 1875), i. 184–90Google Scholar; Gordon, M. M., The home life of Sir David Brewster (2nd edn., Edinburgh, 1870), pp. 144–53Google Scholar; Shairp, J. C., Tait, P. G., and Adams-Reilly, A., Life and letters of James David Forbes (London, 1873), pp. 75–9Google Scholar. A little-used source of a somewhat similar character is Harcourt, E. W. (ed.), The Harcourt papers (Oxford, privately circulated, 1880–1905)Google Scholar, much of vols, xiii and xiv (cited hereafter as Harcourt papers).

2 Two pamphlets composed in connexion with the jubilee meeting of the British Association at York in 1881 are of some interest in presenting opposite points of view on this matter: Hey, W., Sketch of the York founders of the British Association (York, 1881)Google Scholar, and Harrison, W. W., The founding of the British Association (London, 1881).Google Scholar

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12 Ibid., 324. The boards to which Brewster referred, in addition to the Board of Longitude, were the lighthouse boards and the Board of Manufactures.

13 Ibid., 325–6

14 Ibid., 326–7. The names that Brewster threw into the debate left no doubt that his remarks were directed, at least in part, against Oxford and Cambridge. In this he followed a tradition current in Edinburgh since the days of Adam Smith and perpetuated in the Edinburgh review in the opening decades of the nineteenth century. Most of what Brewster had to say, whether of Oxford or Cambridge or of the Scottish universities, was true enough; the holder of a scientific chair had little opportunity to carry out research unless his salary was fixed, his duties unspecified, or his subject unpopular. ‘There is no profession so incompatible with original inquiry as a Scotch Professorship, where one's income depends on the number of pupils', he wrote to J. D. Forbes, early in 1830 (Shairp, , Tait, , and Adams-Reilly, , op. cit. [i], p. 59Google Scholar). And the same was true, he believed, of many of the chairs at Oxford and Cambridge. But the desire to shout more loudly than Babbage led Brewster to assertions about the neglect of research in the universities which could not be substantiated in detail (cf. pp. 160–1). Subsequently he gave at least two extended accounts of the circumstances which led to the formation of the British Association (see notes 83 and 89), both of which were liberally illustrated by extracts from his writings of 1830 and 1831, but nowhere did he reproduce or mention his allegations on the matter of university research.

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16 Babbage, Charles, ‘Account of the great congress of philosophers at Berlin’, Edinburgh journal of science, x (1829), 225–34Google Scholar. The account was also included as an appendix to Reflections on the decline of science in England, on pp. 213–23.Google Scholar

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25 Brewster, to Babbage, , 16 09 1831Google Scholar, Ibid., f. 86.

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31 The Oxford journal, 23 06 1832.Google Scholar

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34 Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1844 (London, 1845), p. xxxiv.Google Scholar

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36 Robison, to Phillips, , 8 06 1831 (19).Google Scholar

37 Johnston, to Phillips, , 11 07 1831 (19).Google Scholar

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39 Whewell to Forbes, 14July 1831, in Todhunter, I., William Whewell, D.D., an account of his writings (2 vols., London, 1876), ii. 122.Google Scholar

40 ‘He [Brewster] is not, as you truly observe, to be identified with the meeting” (Whewell to Forbes, September 1831, Forbes's Papers, no. 32, University of St Andrews Library).

41 For biographical information see the article in the Dictionary of national biography; Proceedings of the Royal Society, xx (1871–1872), pp. xiii–xviiiGoogle Scholar (obituary by John Phillips); Harcourt papers, vols, xiii and xiv.Google Scholar

42 While most of the family were known, from the beginning of 1831, by the surname ‘Harcourt’, it is probable that William Vernon, at least originally, intended his new surname to be ‘Vernon Harcourt’. In the present paper this latter form is used, as far as possible, in relation to the period from 1831 and ‘Vernon’ for the earlier period.

43 E.g. Vernon, W., “Account of the strata north of the Humber’, Annals of philosophy, xi (1826), 435–9Google Scholar; ‘On a discovery of fossil bones in a marl pit near North Cliff’, Philosophical magazine, 2nd ser., vi (1829), 225–32Google Scholar, and 2nd ser., vii. 1–9.

44 Some of them are summarized in Stokes, G. G., ‘Notice of the researches of the late Rev. William Vernon Harcourt’, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1871 (London, 1872), Transactions, pp. 38–41.Google Scholar

45 His daughter says of the period: ‘His circumstances were extremely embarrassed. Having no private means, no regular profession, no remuneration from his inventions, his greatest literary undertaking [the Edinburgh encyclopaedia] having proved a complete failure in a pecuniary sense, and with three sons to send out into the world, his spirits often sank at his prospects'; see Gordon, , op. cit. (i), pp. 156–7Google Scholar. Whether or not Brewster did see the British Association as a means of improving his own position, as some suggested (see p. 172, below), his condition did mend remarkably in the 1830s, with a knighthood, an annual grant from the government, and, in 1838, an appointment from the Crown as principal of the united college of St Salvator and St Leonard in the University of St Andrews.

46 The valuable preferments accorded to the family of Archbishop Vernon (Harcourt) were an easy target for some of the more radical opinion of the time; see, for example, Wade, John (ed.), The extraordinary black book, or reformers' bible (2nd edn., London, 1831), p. 532Google Scholar. In February 1831 the Yorkshire gazette found it necessary to refute statements made in other newspapers about the income which the family derived from ecclesiastical sources; see The Yorkshire gazette, 12 02 1831.Google Scholar

47 The Yorkshire gazette, 10 10 1831.Google Scholar

48 Johnston, J. F. W., ‘First meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science’, Edinburgh journal of science, new ser., vi (1831–1832), 4.Google Scholar

49 Brewster, to Babbage, , 16 09 1831 (25).Google Scholar

50 Op. cit. (26), p. 10.Google Scholar

51 Harcourt, Vernon to Babbage, , 08 1831Google Scholar, in Harcourt papers, xiii. 235–6.Google Scholar

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid., 237.

54 Ibid.

55 Babbage, to Harcourt, Vernon, 31 08 1831Google Scholar, Ibid., xiii. 239–42.

56 Herschel, to Harcourt, Vernon, 5 09 1831Google Scholar, Ibid., xiii. 244–6.

57 Whewell, to Harcourt, Vernon, 1 09 1831Google Scholar, in Todhunter, , op. cit. (39), ii. 126.Google Scholar

58 Whewell, to Harcourt, Vernon, 22 09 1831Google Scholar, Ibid., ii. 131.

59 Geikie, , op. cit. (1), i. 186.Google Scholar

60 Orange, A. D., ‘The British Association for the Advancement of Science: the provincial background’, Science studies, i (1971), 315–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 Whewell, to Harcourt, Vernon, 22 09 1831Google Scholar, in Harcourt papers, xiv. 18Google Scholar. Whewell wrote two letters to Vernon Harcourt bearing this date, one personal (cited in note 58) and one to be read, at his correspondent's discretion, at the York meeting.

62 Report of the British Association, 1831, pp. iii–iv.Google Scholar

63 See p. 171 below.

64 The negotiations, prolonged by changes in the administration in the year 1827, resulted in an act of Parliament extending to die whole country provisions which until then had related only to London for the application of Crown land to scientific and charitable use.

65 The Yorkshire gazette, 6 02 1830.Google Scholar

66 The more distinguished visitors were accommodated throughout the week at the archiepiscopal palace at Bishopthorpe.

67 Shairp, , Tait, , and Adams-Reilly, , op. cit. (1), p. 77.Google Scholar

68 Johnston, , op. cit. (48), 12.Google Scholar

69 Report of the British Association, 1831, p. 9.Google Scholar

70 Ibid. p. 10.

71 Ibid. pp. 11–12.

72 Ibid. pp. 13–15.

73 Ibid. p. 17.

74 Ibid. p. 19.

75 Ibid. p. 21. Vernon Harcourt referred particularly to the possibility of harnessing the talents and energies of the members of the provincial literary and philosophical societies.

76 Ibid., pp. 24–5.

77 Ibid., pp. 25–7; see also note 89.

78 Ibid., pp. 28–33.

79 Babbage's name was included in the list of members appended to the Report of 1831 (26), published in 1832; Herschel's was in the corresponding list in the Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1831–1832 (London, 1833)Google Scholar. The latter volume reproduced the report of the York meeting and added that of the Oxford meeting of 1832.

80 Geikie, , op. cit. (1), i. 185.Google Scholar

81 Brewster, to Phillips, , 19 11 1831 (19).Google Scholar

82 Forbes, loc. cit. (33). It may be noted that the friendship of Brewster and Forbes was under some strain at this time, the two men having been rival candidates for the vacant chair of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh in the winter of 1832–3.

83 Anon., ‘Report of the first and second meetings of the British Association … report of the third meeting of the British Association …’, Edinburgh review, lx (1834–1835), 363–94.Google Scholar

84 See, for example, Whewell's letters to Forbes, , 14 02 1835Google Scholar, and to Hamilton, , 12 04 1835Google Scholar, in Todhunter, , op. cit. (39), ii. 204 and 209.Google Scholar

85 The Athenaeum, 8 08 1835, p. 641Google Scholar. Brewster is cited as the author in Houghton, W. E., The Wellesley index to Victorian periodicals (Toronto, 1966), 480.Google Scholar

86 Ibid., p. 642.

87 Edinburgh review, lx (1834–1835), 371.Google Scholar

88 Ibid., 377.

89 Ibid., 379. It is of some interest to consider how faithfully the official report of the York meeting reproduces the substance of the speeches by Vernon Harcourt and Lord Milton. The report itself records that Vernon Harcourt ‘asked permission to revise what he had said, previous to its publication’ (Report of the British Association, 1831, p. 37Google Scholar). In 1851 Brewster published a new essay on the early history of the Association (North British review, xiv [1850–1851], 235–87Google Scholar), reproducing passages from the business of the opening meeting which had not appeared in the original report:

[Lord Milton] was understood to object ‘to all direct encouragement of science by the State’, and to characterize such a mode of advancing it as ‘un-English’, and calculated ‘to make men of science the servile pensioners of the Ministry’. In the discussion, however, which followed, a clear and positive claim for such national encouragement was made by Mr. Harcourt, who, in urging correct views in reference to this fundamental object of the Association, remarked,—‘I should undoubtedly be very sorry to see any system of encouragement adopted by which the men of science in England should become servile pensioners of the Ministry: and no less sorry am I to see them under the present system, when exerting the rarest intellectual faculties in the scientific service of the State, chained down in a needy dependence on a too penurious Government … As things stand at present, the deeper, drier, and more exalted a man's studies are, the drier, lower, and more sparing must be his diet … I cannot see any reason why, with proper precautions, men of science should not be helped to study for the public good, as well as statesmen to act for it; nor do I see why they should not be as independent with fixed salaries, as statesmen hold themselves to be in places revocable at will. At the present moment there is a man of science [Lord Brougham], and more than one friend, to the direct encouragement of scientific men, at the head of affairs. Our starving philosophers are indulging no unjustifiable hope that the fortunes of philosophy may be mended under the influence of the present lords of the ascendant. It cannot be wondered that they should be unwilling to have it proclaimed ex cathedra, from the midst of themselves, that there is something illegitimate in the direct encouragement of science, though they are ready enough to own that there is something in it very un-English …' (pp. 255–6; cf. Gordon, , op. cit. (1), p. 148).Google Scholar

All of this compares oddly with Brewster's complaints in November 1831.

90 Edinburgh review, lx (1834–1835). 379.Google Scholar

91 Ibid., 381.

92 Ibid., 382.

93 Ibid., 388–9.

94 Ibid., 374.

95 Ibid., 390.

96 Ibid., 391.

97 Ibid., 390–1.

98 Report of the British Association, 1834 (London, 1835), p. xivnGoogle Scholar. An earlier and, in this case, unsuccessful attempt by Vernon Harcourt to avoid the inclusion in the official publications of the Association of any material sufficiently controversial to divide its ranks was recorded by G. B. Airy, who in October 1831 had agreed to write a report on the recent progress of astronomy: ‘Mr. Vernon Harcourt wrote deprecating the tone of my Report on Astronomy as related to English Astronomers, but I refused to alter a word’; see Airy, Wilfrid (ed.), Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy (Cambridge, 1896), p. 97Google Scholar. In the report Airy, although he overtly denied the decline of science, contended that ‘in all important branches of science’ England continued to lag behind foreign countries, and that in many parts of astronomy ‘Englishmen alone of all the nations professing to support a high scientific character, have stood still’ (Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1831–1832 [cited in note 79], pp. 180–6 etc.).

99 Vernon Harcourt to Sabine, , 1853, in Harcourt papers, xiii. 228–32.Google Scholar