Scientific Methodology in Nineteenth Century Britain: Volume III: Quantifying Life: Statistical, Social and Human Sciences

by Charles H. Pence (Editor)

Overview

This collection of primary sources examines scientific methodology in Britain during the long nineteenth century. The nineteenth century played host to the development, for the first time, of statistical and probabilistic methods across the biological, human, and social sciences. A new kind of quantified, statistical social science came into being. Such innovations were quickly marshaled for use in the life sciences, from evolution to agriculture to eugenics. This title will be of great interest to students of the history of philosophy and the history of science.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781040390771
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/25/2025
Series:	Nineteenth-Century Science, Technology and Medicine: Sources and Documents
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	260
File size:	715 KB

About the Author

Dr. Charles H. Pence is Assistant Professor and Director of the Center for the Philosophy of Science and Society (CEFISES) at the Université catholique de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

Table of Contents

Volume 3: Quantifying Life: Statistical, Social, and Human Sciences

General Introduction

Volume 3 Introduction

Part 1: Statistical Methodology

1. Adolphe Quetelet, “On Man”, A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1835 [tr. 1842]), pp. 5–9

2. William Jevons, The Principles of Science (1877), 2nd ed., pp. vii–xii, 265–269, 551–553

Part 2: Statistics in Biology

3. Francis Galton, Natural Inheritance (1889), pp. 63–70, 192–198

4. Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science, 2nd ed. (1900), pp. 372–375, 402–408

5. William Bateson, “Heredity, Differentiation, and Other Conceptions of Biology: A Consideration of Professor Karl Pearson’s Paper ‘On the Principle of Homotyposis’,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 69 (1901), pp. 193–205

Part 3: The Social Sciences

6. Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. I, 3rd ed. (1887 [1876]), pp. 3–23, 34–39

7. Agnes Sinclair Holbrook, “Map Notes and Comments”, in Jane Addams and Residents of Hull House, Hull-House Maps and Papers (1895), pp. 3–14

8. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Study of the Negro Problems”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 11 (1898), pp. 1–23

9. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, A Red Record (1895), pp. 7–15

Part 4: Physiology and Perception

10. Hermann von Helmholtz, “The Facts in Perception”, in Hermann von Helmholtz, Epistemological Writings, trans. Paul Hertz and Moritz Schlick (1878 [tr. 1921]), pp. 117–146

11. Ernst Mach, “On Physiological as Distinguished from Geometrical Space”, The Monist, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1901), pp. 321–338

Part 5: Method in Psychology

12.Herbert Spencer, “Life and Mind as Correspondence” and “The Correspondence as Increasing in Generality”, The Principles of Psychology, 2nd ed. (1873), pp. 291–294, 350–369

13. William James, Lecture 1, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), pp. 1–25

14. J. M. Cattell, “Mental Tests and Measurements”, Mind, Vol. 15, No. 59 (1890), pp. 373–381

15. E. B. Titchener, Experimental Psychology: A Manual of Laboratory Practice (1901), Vol. 1, pp. xiii–xviii, Vol. 2, pp. xix–xl

Bibliography

Index