In the early Victorian period there was a wide-ranging set of debates on the nature of science. These embraced topics such as the ethos, method, epistemology, and religious and social implications of natural science, the moral and intellectual character of its practitioners, and the historical development of its theories and procedures. We recognize some of these topics today as parts of the philosophy of science, of the history of science, or of science policy. Some of them are now confined to the domain of specialized and professional scholarly disciplines; others intersect with political and social controversy in the public realm.

William Whewell (1794–1866), the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, wrote two monumental works on the history and the philosophy of science before these became specialist and technical subjects. He did this at a time when the social and intellectual status of ‘science’ and ‘scientists’ were still matters of contention. This is partly reflected by the fact that Whewell coined terms such as anode, cathode, physicist, and scientist, thus contributing not only to scientific vocabulary, but to the language in which science is now discussed. A part from his major works, Whewell engaged with other writers in a discourse about the nature of science in reviews, addresses, and sermons, and in doing so established himself as the leading critic of science – a role that perhaps compares with the cultural criticism of contemporaries such as Coleridge and Carlyle.