A Scientist's Voice in American Culture: Simon Newcomb and the Rhetoric of Scientific Method

In late nineteenth-century America, Simon Newcomb was the nation's most celebrated scientist and—irascibly, doggedly, tirelessly—he made the most of it. Officially a mathematical astronomer heading a government agency, Newcomb spent as much of his life out of the observatory as in it, acting as a spokesman for the nascent but restive scientific community of his time.

Newcomb saw the "scientific method" as a potential guide for all disciplines and a basis for all practical action, and argued ...