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Genius, Method, and Morality: Images of Newton in Britain, 1760–1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Richard Yeo
Richard Yeo
Affiliation:
Division of HumanitiesGriffith University
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Abstract

Focusing on the celebrations of Newton and his work, this article investigates the use of the concept of genius and its connection with debates on the methodology of science and the morality of great discoverers. During the period studied, two areas of tension developed. Firstly, eighteenth-century ideas about the relationship between genius and method were challenged by the notion of scientific genius as transcending specifiable rules of method. Secondly, assumptions about the nexus between intellectual and moral virtue were threatened by the emerging conception of genius as marked by an extraordinary personality – on the one hand capable of breaking with established methods to achieve great discoveries, on the other, likely to transgress moral and social conventions. The assesments of Newton by nineteenth-century scientists such as Brewster, Whewell, and De Morgan were informed by these tensions.

Type
Three Hundred Years of Newton's Principia
Information
Science in Context , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1988 , pp. 257 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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