Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/93

 nation of the method of anticipation of nature, as opposed to what he considers as the true method of interpretation of nature. As a matter of fact Herschel was too wise to follow Bacon in his condemnation of anticipation; he knew that the guidance of theory was needed for the interpretation of facts.

Whewell was one of the eight persons selected to write the Bridgewater Treatises. His subject was "Astronomy and General Physics considered with reference to Natural Theology," and he received £1000 as well as the profits of the volume. His treatise is divided into three parts: (1) Terrestrial adaptations, (2) Cosmical, arrangements, (3) Religious views. In the first part he aims at demonstrating how the laws and facts of nature work in harmony to secure the well being of man, animals, and plants; and the inference is drawn that such arrangement testifies to the existence of an intelligent and beneficent Creator. In the second part he shows how all the universe is subject to a law of continual decay. The third part has two remarkable chapters on inductive and on deductive habits, the former, he held, had a stronger tendency to religion. This volume was the most popular of the eight Bridgewater Treatises, and it went through seven editions.

Soon after the British Association was founded in 1831 Whewell became one of the most active members; to him is due the important suggestion of the preparation, by committees or specially appointed individuals, of reports upon subjects of scientific importance and their publication in full in the Proceedings. In 1833 he was one of the secretaries of the meeting of the Association held at Cambridge and it fell to him to deliver an address similar to the presidential addresses of later years. By this time Whewell had acquired the reputation through his philosophical researches of being the best authority in Great Britain on scientific language. Faraday in his electrolytic researches had encountered a number of new ideas and for these he wished to have suitable names. Whewell suggested anode, cathode, anion, cation, ion, words which, with their derivatives, are now familiar not only to the electrician, but to people of general culture. Other electrical terms sug-