William Whewell
British philosopher and historian of science. He was influenced by the Kantian philosophy and propounded a theory of induction which emphasizes the conceptual or ideal element for unifying experiences. In his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840), he regarded "the colligation of facts by means of a concept" as the essence of induction. Such colligation may be attained by the hypothetico-deductive method. And he extended the same idea to the confirmation of scientific theories as well; that is, a theory is decisively confirmed if it attains "the consilience of inductions": many independent inductions from experience are unified and fit together by means of that theory, as is the case with Newtonian mechanics and the wave theory of light in the 19th century. In view of this philosophy, he tried to reconstruct the history of science, and the result is his History of the Inductive Sciences (1837).
He is also known for inventing new words, including "scientist" and important technical words in electro-chemistry, in cooperation with Michael Faraday; e.g., "electrode", "electrolyte", "anode", "cathode", and "ion".
He later taught moral philosophy, and his position was named "dogmatic intuitionism" by Henry Sidgwick. Whewell became the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and he was hostile against Darwin's evolutionary theory.
See Whewell on Induction
