¹ Quentin Skinner, , ‘Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas’, History and Theory, viii (1969), 7.Google Scholar

² Ibid.

³ Ibid. p. 17.

⁴ Ibid. p. 23.

⁵ Ibid. p. 27.

⁶ Thus, ‘Central to any intellectual tradition is the nucleus or core of ideas that gives the tradition its continuity from generation to generation and its identity amid all the other disciplines that make up the humanistic and scientific study of man’. Nisbet, R. A., The sociological tradition (London, 1967), p. vii.Google Scholar

⁷ According to Szacki, ‘The history of social thought provides examples of the permanence of certain ideas, viewpoints, and systems of values that can be found in today’s sociology, though perhaps worded differently.’ Szacki, Jerzy, History of sociological thought (London, 1979), xivGoogle Scholar. According to Kent, ‘It is up to the historian to draw selected parallels between contemporary phenomena, however well or ill-defined, and certain events in the past.’ Kent, Raymond A., A history of British empirical sociology (Aldershot, 1981), p. 4.Google Scholar

⁸ On the limited applicability of the term ‘sociology’, see Hawthorn, Geoffrey, ‘Characterizing the history of social theory’, Sociology, xiii (1979), 478Google Scholar. On Comte’s first use of the term ‘sociology’ in the 47th chapter of The positive philosophy in 1839, see Hankins, Frank H., ‘A Comtean centenary; Invention of the term “sociology””, American Sociological Review, iv (1939), 16.Google Scholar

⁹ Abrams, Philip, The origins of British sociology, 1834–1914 (Chicago, 1968).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Ibid. p. 7.

¹¹ Ibid. p. 4.

¹² Ibid. p. 101.

¹³ Raymond Aron, Main currents in sociological thought, I (Pelican Books edn, 1968, Harmonds-worth), 7.

¹⁴ See John, Burrow’s review of Geoffrey, Hawthorn’sEnlightenment and despair: A history of sociology (Cambridge, 1976) in the Times Higher Education Supplement (28 January, 1977), p. 19: ‘To write the history of a discipline is to state what the discipline is, and this, in the social sciences, is often highly contentious.’Google Scholar

¹⁵ Aron, Main currents in sociological thought, I, 7.

¹⁶ Kent, British empirical sociology, pp. 20–4. Abrams, Origins of British sociology, pp. 13–31.

¹⁷ See Cullen, M. J., The statistical movement in early Victorian Britain: The foundation of empirical social research (Hassocks, 1975)Google Scholar; Elesh, D., ‘The Manchester Statistical Society: A case study in discontinuity in the history of empirical research’, Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences, viii (1972)Google Scholar; Hilts, V. L., ‘Aliis Exterendum, or the origins of the Statistical Society of London’, Isis (1978)Google Scholar; Eyler, J. M., Victorian social medicine: The ideas and influence of William Farr (Baltimore, 1979), pp. 13–36Google Scholar; Berg, M., The machinery question and the making of political economy, 1815–1848 (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 291–314Google Scholar; Shaw, M. and Miles, I., ‘The social roots of statistical knowledge’, in Irvine, J., Miles, I. and Evans, J. (eds.), Demystifying social statistics (London, 1979); E. M. Yeo, ‘Social science and social change: a social history of some aspects of social science and social investigation in Britain, 1830–1890’, unpublished D. Phil. thesis, University of Sussex (1972), ch. III.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Journal of the Statistical Society of London (JSSL), Nov. 1838, p. 444 (cited in Cullen, Statistical movement, p. 93).

¹⁹ Berg, The machinery question, pp. 297–314.

²⁰ Ibid. p. 314.

²¹ See in this connexion Davis, R. C., ‘Social research in America before the Civil War’, Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences, viii (1972)Google Scholar; Westergaard, H., Contributions to the history of statistics (London, 1932), ch. XIII.Google Scholar

²² See also Morrell, J. and Thackray, A., Gentlemen of science. The early years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford, 1981), 291–6.Google Scholar

²³ Hilts, Aliis exterendum, 31.

²⁴ Cannon, S. F., Science in culture: the early Victorian period (New York, 1978), pp. 240–4.Google Scholar

²⁵ Ibid. p. 240.

²⁶ Ibid. p. 244.

²⁷ Ibid. p. 242.

²⁸ For Sedgwick’s initial rejection of the prospectus of the new section during the 1833 meeting because he found it politically controversial, see ‘Lithographed signatures of the members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, who met at Cambridge, June MDCCCXXXIII’ (Cambridge, 1833), p. 90.Google Scholar

²⁹ ‘At a meeting of Gentlemen desirous of forming a Statistical Section of the British Association at Cambridge, Thursday Morning June 27th 1833’, where, ‘The prospects and most desirable method of establishing the section were discussed’, the following were present: ‘Professor Malthus (Chairman), Mr. Aug. Quetelet, Rev. Dr D’Oyley; Rev. Richard Jones; Professor Babbage; Lt. Col. Sykes; Dr Somerville and Mr Drinkwater (secretary).’ There is no evidence that D’Oyley, Sykes, Somerville and Drinkwater exerted any intellectual influence over the movement. See Transcript from the note-book of Mr J. E. Drinkwater, ‘Minutes of the Committee of the Statistical Section of the British Association, June 27, 1833’, p. 1 (Archives of the Royal Statistical Society, London; Box-file 32, folder marked ‘History’). Whewell was in Cambridge as secretary to the 1833 meeting.

³⁰ See, William Whewell, D. D. (ed.), Literary remains consisting of lectures and tracts of the late Rev. Richard Jones (London, 1859), Prefatory Notice.Google Scholar

³¹ See Bonar, J., Malthus and his work (London, 1942 edn)Google Scholar; Moseley, M., Irascible genius: The life of Charles Babbage, inventor (London, 1964)Google Scholar; Todhunter, I., William Whewell D.D.: An account of his writings with selections from his library and scientific correspondence (2 vols., London, 1876).Google Scholar

³² I. Hacking, ‘How should we do the history of statistics?’, I & C, Spring 1981, no. 8, p. 16. The best account of Quetelet’s life and work in English is still F. H. Hankins, ‘Adolphe Quetelet as statistician’, Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, (1908), xxxi. See also Lazarsfeld, P. F., ‘Quetelet’, International encylopedia of the social sciences, xiii (New York, 1968), 247–56.Google Scholar

³³ Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of science, p. 374.

³⁴ Babbage, C., The exposition 0f 1851; or, views of the industry, the science and the government of England (London, 1851), 16–17Google Scholar; ‘Note sur l’origine de la société de statistique de Londres par M. Babbage’, Quetelet papers, Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique (written in September 1853 when Babbage was in Brussels for the first International Statistical Congress); ‘Letter from Charles Babbage, esq. F.R.S.’, in Report of the proceedings of the fourth section of the International Statistical Congress, held in London, July 16, 1860 (London, 1861), pp. 505–7Google Scholar; Babbage, C.. Passages from the life of a philosopher (London, 1864), p. 433.Google Scholar

³⁵ Transcript of the notebook of Mr J. E. Drinkwater, ‘Minutes of the committee of the statistical section of the British Association, June 27, 1833’, p. 1.

³⁶ See also Quetelet’s own account of the origins of the section: ‘Notes extraites d’un voyage en Angleterre aux mois de juin et juillet, 1833’, Correspondance mathematique et physique, III, i (Brussels, 1835), 14–16.

³⁷ Whewell to Jones, 24 Mar. 1833, Whewell Papers, Trinity College Library, Cambridge. Add. MSS c. 51¹⁵⁴.

³⁸ L. G. Johnson, Richard Jones Reconsidered (1955), pp. 6–7. See also Jones to Herschel, 10 Jan. 1831, Herschel Correspondence, Royal Society, London, 10. 350. ‘Do you remember sitting one night at St John’s, with feet on your fender, and the aiming and the wishing that we might, three of us [Jones, Herschel and Whewell] meet some day in mature or even declining life with a comfortable feeling that each had done his part to leave the map of knowledge - the chariot wheels of knowledge I think was your expression - a little in advance of where we found them?’

³⁹ Jones, R., An essay on the distribution of wealth and on the sources of taxation. Part 1. Rent (London, 1831).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Whewell papers. Add. MSS c. 52²⁷, 9 March 1831.

⁴¹ Whewell to jones, Whewell papers, Add. MSS c. 51¹⁰⁴, 24 Apr. 1831. For Jones’s suggestion, see Add. MSS c. 52³⁴, 23 Apr. 1831.

⁴² Whewell papers, Add. MSS c. 51⁴, 16 Aug. 1822: ‘that you and Malthus belong not to the metaphysical but to the ethical school of political economy’.

⁴³ Herschel papers, Sept. 18, 1832, 18.183. See also Malthus to Whewell, Whewell papers, Add. MSS a. 209^{10, 11, 12} (26 May 1829, 31 May 1831, 1 Apr. 1833) and Add. MSS c. 53², 28 Feb. 1831.

⁴⁴ For Babbage’s meeting with Quetelet, see L. A. J. Quetelet, ‘Extracts from a notice of Charles Babbage’, Annual report of the Board of regents of the Smithsonian Institution (1873), p. 184. Whewell met Quetelet at the 1829 session of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärtze: see Todhunter, William Whewell, 1, 41.

⁴⁵ Cannon, Science in culture, p. 63.

⁴⁶ Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of science, p. 21.

⁴⁷ Cannon, Science in culture, pp. 30, 63.

⁴⁸ Whewell (ed.), Literary remains, Prefatory Notice, p. ix.

⁴⁹ Gordon, Barry, Economic doctrine and Tory liberalism (London, 1979), pp. ix–x.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ R. Jones, An essay on the distribution of wealth, p. 7.

⁵¹ Malthus, T. R., Principles of political economy considered with a view to their practical application (London, 1820), pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

⁵² (W. Whewell), ‘An essay on the distribution of wealth and on the sources of taxation’, The British Critic, x (July 1831), 55.

⁵³ Whewell papers, Add. MSS c. 51⁹² (n.d., 1830 or 1831?).

⁵⁴ Jones’s ‘great design of giving a view of the Political Economy of Nations’ (W. Whewell, literary remains, Prefatory Notice, p. xvii) was never completed. ‘Rent’ was a quarter of the planned work which was to have encompassed the four categories of Distribution in classical theory - rent, wages, profits and taxation.

⁵⁵ Schumpeter, J. A., A history of economic analysis (New York, 1954), p. 822.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Blaug, M., Ricardian economics: A historical study (New Haven, 1958), p. 153Google Scholar; Miller, W. L., ‘Richard Jones: a case study in methodology’, History of political economy, III, (1971), 198–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roll, E., A history of economic thought (London, 1973 edn), pp. 311–18.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ See Coats, A. W., ‘The historist reaction in English political economy, 1870–1890’, Economica (1954), p. 145Google Scholar; Koot, G. M., ‘T. E. Cliffe-Leslie, Irish social reform and the origins of the English historical school of economics’, History of political economy, vii (1975), 313.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Pigou, A. C. (ed.), Memorials of Alfred Marshall (New York, 1956 edn), p. 296Google Scholar. Rashid, however, demonstrating the widespread ignorance of Jones’s work among late-nineteenth-century economists, concludes ‘that the “dominating influence” of Jones upon economists after 1859 is largely invisible. Marshall, it appears, has been misled by his love of continuity of thought.’ See Rashid, Salim, ‘Richard Jones and Baconian historicism at Cambridge’, Journal of Economic Issues, xii, I (March 1979).Google Scholar

⁵⁹ K. Marx, Theories of surplus value, pt. III (Moscow, 1971, trans. J. Cohen and S. W. Ryazan-skaya), 399.

⁶⁰ Whewell papers, Add. MSS c. 51²¹, 24 May 1825.

⁶¹ Whewell papers, Add. MSS c. 52¹⁵, 27 Sept. 1827.

⁶² R. Jones, ‘An introductory lecture on political economy, delivered at King’s College, London, February 27, 1833’, Literary remains, pp. 568–9.

⁶³ Ibid. 570.

⁶⁴ Ibid. 571.

⁶⁵ Jones, R., Essay on the distribution of wealth, p. 14Google Scholar. See also Tribe, K., Land, labour and economic discourse (Cambridge 1978), p. 33: ‘the term “rent” is not an economic category with a unilateral application in agrarian economics, for the conditions of existence of rent as a relation linking land and labour and at the same time dividing them, are not eternally given’.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Whewell papers, 4 Mar. 1831, Add. MSS c. 52²⁵.

⁶⁷ Jones, Essay on the distribution of wealth, pp. 4–5. See also ‘Text book of lectures on the political economy of nations’, Lecture IV: Of the most perfect form of society as to production’, in W. Whewell (ed.), Literary remains, p. 405.

⁶⁸ Jones, Introductory lecture, in W. Whewell (ed.), Literary remains, p. 575.

⁶⁹ Marx, Theories of surplus value, 3, 430.

⁷⁰ Marx’s fourfold division of rents in Capital (vol. III, ch. 47) was based on Jones’s categories. See Lawrence Karder, The Asiatic mode of production. Sources, development and critique in the writing of Karl Marx (Assen, 1975), pp. 7, 54, 55, 182, 307.

⁷¹ W. Whewell, ‘Mathematical exposition of some doctrines of political economy’, and ‘Mathematical exposition of some of the leading doctrines in Mr Ricardo’s “Principles of political economy and taxation’”, Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, III and iv (1831, 1833).

⁷² Whewell to Jones, Whewell Papers, Add. MSS c. 51⁶².

⁷³ Whewell, ‘Mathematical exposition’, III, (1831), 191.

⁷⁴ Whewell to J. D. Forbes, 14 July 1831. Todhunter, William Whewell, II, 122.

⁷⁵ Whewell to Jones, Add. MSS c. 51¹²⁵, 12 Jan. 1832. See also note 81.

⁷⁶ Babbage, C., On the economy of machinery and manufactures (London, 1832), p. 119. See also a direct response to this from Thomas Tooke: ‘You observe at page 119 that “Political economists have been reproached with too small a use of facts and too large an employment of theory”. On the other hand, it appears to me that those who are par eminence called practical men may with equal justice be charged with too small an employment of theory and a super-abundance of facts.’ Babbage papers, British Museum, Add. MSS 37186, f. 497.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Malthus, Principles, p. 7. N. B. de Marchi and R. P. Sturges have rightly concluded that Malthus’s inductivism was never as extreme as that of Jones and Whewell. The assertion, however, that although Malthus recognized the errors of Ricardian deductivism ‘he was not inclined to align himself with Ricardo’s inductivist critics’ is questionable, given Malthus’s presence in June 1833 at the founding of the statistical section. (‘Malthus and Ricardo’s inductivist critics: four letters to William Whewell’, Economica (1973), 379–93.) Cullen, meanwhile, has mistakenly taken Malthus as a model of deductive orthodoxy and so undervalued his commitment to empirical procedures. (The statistical movement, p. 81.)

⁷⁸ ‘What improvements have been affected in the science of political economy since the publication of Mr Ricardo’s great work; and are any of the principles first advanced in that work now acknowledged to be correct?’ Political Economy Club, minutes of proceedings, 1899–1920. Roll of members and questions discussed, 1821–1920, with documents bearing on the history of the club, vi (London, 1921), 223.

⁷⁹ Berg, The machinery question, p. 118.

⁸⁰ According to Senior, the ‘theoretic branch’ of political economy rested ‘on a very few general propositions, which are the result of observation, or consciousness; and which almost every man, as soon as he hears them, admits as familiar to his thoughts, or at least as included in his previous knowledge’. ‘An introductory lecture on political economy, delivered before the University of Oxford, 6th December 1826’, The Pamphleteer, xxix (London, 1828), 35.

⁸¹ Jones’s disagreements were not solely methodological, however: he disputed the pessimism implicit in Malthusianism and Ricardianism, demonstrating that the growth of secondary wants led voluntarily to later marriage and less children, and that ‘improvements in the arts of production’ contradicted the law of diminishing agricultural returns. (Essay on the distribution of wealth, 1831, pp. 197–202.)

⁸² R. Johnson, Richard Jones, p. 13.

⁸³ John Elliot Drinkwater (Bethune) (1801–51). Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge; legal counsel to the Home Office in the 1830s and assistant commissioner to the 1833 Factory Commission.

⁸⁴ ‘Transcript from the notebook of Mr J. E. Drinkwater’, p. 2.

⁸⁵ See, for example, Jones’s letter to Whewell, dated 18 February 1834, relating the events of a dinner at Babbage’s London home with Malthus, Drinkwater and Hallam at which the foundation of the Statistical Society of London was discussed: ‘I prevailed on Babbage (who was not reluctant) to call a general meeting of the Committee of the Association for next week and get an authority for them to set about forming a society as the best means of carrying the spirit of the Cambridge Instructions into effect.’ Whewell papers, Add. MSS c. 52⁶⁰.

⁸⁶ See Ignatieff, M., ‘Marxism and classical political economy’, in Samuel, R. (ed.), People’s history and socialist theory (London, 1981), pp. 344–52.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Berg, The machinery question, pp. 10, 35, 38.

⁸⁸ Jones, indeed, seems to have begun his project by reading up the history of political economy. He wrote to Whewell in 1822 that he was ‘searching the Museums and Libraries for old Tracts and Pamphlets from 1688 to 1776 to trace its progress of late in England prior to the Dominion of Adam Smith’. Whewell papers, Add. MSS c. 52⁴.

⁸⁹ Jones, Introductory lecture, pp. 574–5.

⁹⁰ R.Jones, ‘Text book of lectures on the political economy of nations, delivered at the East India College, Haileybury’. Lecture iv, ‘Of the most perfect form of society as to production’, in W. Whewell (ed.), Literary remains, pp. 404–5.

⁹¹ [G. P. Scrope], Quarterly Review, xci (Nov. 1831), 82.

⁹² Jones, ‘Text book of lectures’, lecture iv, 406.

⁹³ ‘Third annual report of the Council’, 15 March 1837, p. 5.

⁹⁴ Hawthorn, Enlightenment and despair, p. 103. See also Giddens, A. (ed.), Positivism and sociology (London, 1974), p. 3; N. Annan, ‘The curious strength of positivism in English political thought’, L. T. Hobhouse Memorial Trust Lecture, 28 (1959).Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Quetelet, A., Sur l’homme et le développement de ses facultés: physique sociale (Brussels, 1835)Google Scholar, English translation by DrKnox, J. (Edinburgh, 1842), p. vii. The term ‘Social physics’ had previously been used by Comte to describe his own social-scientific enterprise.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ A. Quetelet, Physique sociale I (Brussels, 1869), 97.

⁹⁷ Hankins, ‘Adolphe Quetelet’, p. 33. Quetelet’s statistical positivism has obvious affinities with the ‘social mathematics’ of Condorcet and the ‘social physiology’ of Saint-Simon. As historians of ‘sociology’ have come to recognize the important contribution of empirical procedures in generating the ‘sociological tradition’, so Quetelet’s significance has grown. According to Szacki, ‘He founded under the name “social physics” a sociology that was more the forerunner of twentieth-century sociology than Comte’s.’ History of sociological thought, p. 198. For similar claims see P. Lazarsfeld, ‘Quetelet’, p. 255; Hankins, ‘Adolphe Quetelet’, p. 105; Sarton, G., ‘Quetelet’, in Stimson, D. (ed.), Sarton on the history of science (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), p. 236CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Lazarsfeld, P. F., ‘Toward a history of empirical sociology’, in Melanges en l’honneur de Fernand Braudel, ed. Privat, E. (Toulouse, 1973), p. 297. E. Shils, ‘Tradition, ecology and institution in the history of sociology’, Daedalus, xcix (Fall, 1970), 766. R. Aron, Main currents in sociological thought, ii, 8.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ A. Quetelet, Sur l’homme, English trans., p. 96.

⁹⁹ Cannon, Science in culture, p. 105.

¹⁰⁰ Cannon explicitly associates Quetelet with Humboldtianism, ibid. p. 82.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., p. 104.

¹⁰² See Hilts, ‘Aliis exterendum’, 25: Rashid, ‘Richard Jones and Baconian historicism at Cambridge’, passim.

¹⁰³ Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of science, pp. 269–71.

¹⁰⁴ ‘Mathematicization’ was the badge of scientific maturity to the early nineteenth century. According to Quetelet, ‘we might even judge of the degree of perfection of which a science is capable of being carried, by the greater or less facility with which it admits of calculation’ (Instructions populaire sur le calcul des probabilités, Brussels, 1828, p. 230). Whewell consistently said the same and led a concerted ‘Cambridge programme’ to reform mathematical analysis and place it at the head of all scientific research and education (Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of science, pp. 479–84).

¹⁰⁵ Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of science, p. 513.

¹⁰⁶ Babbage, Passages from the life of a philosopher, pp. 198–202.

¹⁰⁷ Edinburgh Journal of Science, N.s. XII (1832), 334–40.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid. p. 334.

¹⁰⁹ Ibid. p. 340.

¹¹⁰ BAAS report, III (1833), xxxvii, and 490–1.

¹¹¹ Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of science, pp. 274, 426–7.

¹¹² [Sir John Herschel], ‘Letters addressed to H.R.H. the grand-duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha on the theory of probabilities as applied to the moral and political sciences’ (A. Quetelet, London, 1849. English edn), Edinburgh Review, XCII (July-Oct. 1850), 14.

¹¹³ Hankins, ‘Quetelet as statistician’, p. 20

¹¹⁴ R. Jones, ‘Tract on the incidence of taxes and commodities that are consumed by the labourer. Pt. II. On the effect of fluctuations in the real wages of labour on the movement of population’, W. Whewell (ed.), Literary remains, pp. 181–2.

¹¹⁵ Ibid.

¹¹⁶ Proceedings of the Statistical Society, vol. I, (1834–7), 16 Jan. 1837, p. 209.

¹¹⁷ Whewell papers, Add. MSS c. 51¹⁴⁷, 21 Dec. 1832.

¹¹⁸ Whewell papers, Add. MSS c. 52⁴⁰, 18 Feb. 1834. This classification formed the basis of the statistical society’s prospectus, issued on 30 Apr. 1834. For its employment in the early society see Bonar, J. and Macrosty, H. W., Annals of the Royal Statistical Society, 1834–1934 (London, 1934), p. 24.Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ Jones, R., Syllabus of a course of lectures on the wages of labour proposed to be delivered at King’s College, London (London, 1833), ‘Recapitulation’, p. 24.Google Scholar

¹²⁰ [W. Whewell], ‘An essay on the distribution of wealth and on the sources of taxation’, The British Critic, x (July 1831), 60.

¹²¹ Skinner, ‘Meaning and understanding’, p. 49.

¹²² Whewell to Jones, Whewell papers, Add. MSS c. 51¹¹⁸, 8 Nov. 1831, and Add. MSS c. 51¹⁴², 11 Oct. 1832: ‘You who have made “social economy” your study.’

¹²³ J. S. Mill, Autobiography (London, 1873), P. 180.

¹²⁴ Mill to J. P. Nichol, January 1834. Earlier letters of John Stuart Mill, 1812–1848, ed. F. E. Mineka (Toronto, 1963), p. 211.

¹²⁵ Mill, ‘On the definition of political economy; and on the method of philosophical investigation in that science’. London and Westminster Review, iv and xxvi (October 1836), 10–12.

¹²⁶ Mill to Gustave d’Eichtal, 3 Oct. 1829, cited in J. H. Burns, ‘J. S. Mill and the term “social science”‘, Journal of the History of Ideas, xx (1959), 432.

¹²⁷ Owen wrote of a ‘science of society’ in the Outline of a rational system of society (London, 1830), p. 6Google Scholar, and of a ‘social science’ in the Book of the new moral world (p. 61) in 1836. Gray used the term in The social system: A treatise on the principles of exchange (Edinburgh, 1831), pp. 1, 2Google Scholar. See Iggers, G. G., ‘Further remarks about the early uses of the term ‘social science’, Journal of the History of Ideas, xx (1959), 435Google Scholar. See also Bentham to Toribio Nunez, 21 April 1812, cited in Baker, K. M., ‘The early history of the term “social science”‘, Annals of Science, xx (1964), 225Google Scholar, and Burns, J. H., Jeremy Bentham and University College (London, 1962), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

¹²⁸ Mill, ‘On the definition of political economy’ (1836), pp. 11, 19.

¹²⁹ Fourth annual report of the council of the Statistical Society of London, Journal of the Statistical Society of London, May 1838, p. 8. Fifth annual report, Journal of the Statistical Society of London, April 1839, p. 133.

¹³⁰ As one later president of the society, Prof. W. A. Guy, explained in retrospect, ‘The original prospectus of this society...did really establish a social science...this society may be said to have from the first cultivated both social and political science in the only satisfactory way - by the accumulation of facts.’ Guy, W. A., ‘On the original and acquired meaning of the term statistics, and on the proper functions of a Statistical Society’, Journal of the Statistical Society of London, xxviii (1865), 492.Google Scholar

¹³¹ Earlier appellations for a science of society such as ‘social physics’ or ‘social physiology’ gradually gave way to ‘social science’ in the course of the 1820s. Charles Fourier first used ‘social science’ in the introduction to the ‘Théorie des quatre mouvements et des destinées générates’ (1808); Comte first employed it in 1822 in the Plan des travaux scientifiques nécessaires pour réorganisei la société. See Iggers, ‘Further remarks’, 433, and Burns, ‘J. S. Mill and the term social science’, p. 432.

¹³² Mill, Autobiography, p. 163.

¹³³ Whewell papers, Add. MSS c. 52⁴⁶, 17 June 1832.

¹³⁴ Whewell papers 19 Feb. 1832. Add. MSS c. 51¹²⁹ See also Whewell to Jones, Add. MSS c. 51¹²⁸, 3 Feb. 1832, and Jones to Whewell, Add. MSS c. 52⁴⁷, 21 June 1832. During 1828 the Saint-Simonians held regular meetings in Paris to formulate their doctrine. At the end of the year. Bazard delivered a series of bi-weekly lectures, starting on 17 December, entitled ‘Exposition de la Doctrine St Simonienne’. They were published as Doctrine de Saint-Simon: Exposition: Premiere année: 1828–9. According to Markham, ‘The content of the lectures was the joint product of the whole group, but the main influence on the religious and economic doctrine must be attributed to Enfantin’ (Markham, F. M. H. (ed.), Henri Comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825): Selected writings (Oxford 1952), p. xxxvGoogle Scholar. See also Iggers, G. G. (ed.), The doctrine of Saint-Simon: An exposition: First year 1828–9 (New York, 1958), Introduction, p. xxiii.Google Scholar

¹³⁵ Whewell, W., ‘Comte and positivism’, MacMillan’s Magazine (March 1866), p. 358Google Scholar. (A review of Mill, J. S., Auguste Comte and positivism (London, 1865).) See also R. K. P. Pankhurst, ‘Saint-Simonism in England’, The twentieth century, Dec. 1952 and Jan. 1953, pts. I, II.Google Scholar

¹³⁶ Whewell papers, Add. MSS c. 52⁸¹, 17 May 1843.

¹³⁷ See G. G. Iggers (ed.), ‘The doctrine of Saint-Simon’, pp. 32, 156: L’Organisateur (Paris), 29 Aug. 1829; 20 Dec. 1829; 24 Feb. 1830. See also Iggers, ‘Further remarks’, pp. 434–5.

¹³⁸ For Comte’s criticism of political economy, see Aron, Main currents, I, 74.

¹³⁹ [G. Robertson] ‘Transactions of the Statistical Society of London’, vol. I, pt. I, 1837. The London and Westminster Review, xxxi, i (Apr.–Aug. 1838), 47.

¹⁴⁰ Minute Book 7, ‘Committee on moral and intellectual statistics, 1834–5’, Archives of the Royal Statistical Society, London. No record of Whewell’s classification survives.

¹⁴¹ Herschel correspondence, 6 Apr. 1836, 18. 186. See also Whewell to Herschel, 4 Dec. 1836: ‘After doing great service to the ministers and bishops by drawing up a bill for the Commutation of Tithes in England and helping to carry it through, he was appointed one of the three commissioners whom it created with a salary of £1500 a year’ (I. Todhunter (ed.), William Whewell, D.D., p. 249).

¹⁴² Whewell papers, Add. MSS c. 51¹⁶¹ (n.d.).

¹⁴³ Cullen, The statistical movement, p. 93.

¹⁴⁴ Whewell to Jones, Whewell papers, 22 Apr. 1834, Add. MSS c. 51¹⁶⁵.

¹⁴⁵ Whewell to Jones, Whewell papers, 23 Mar. 1834. Add. MSS c. 51¹⁶⁴.

¹⁴⁶ Whewell to Quetelet, 4 Aug. 1834 and 2 Oct. 1835 in Todhunter (ed.), William Whewell D.D. II, 185, 228–9.

¹⁴⁷ Whewell to Sir R. I. Murchison, 2 Oct. 1840, in ibid. p. 289.

¹⁴⁸ The Athanaeum (1836), p. 657.

¹⁴⁹ Sir R. I. Murchison to W. V. Harcourt, 18 Sept. 1837, The Harcourt papers, ed. Harcourt, E. W. (1880–1905, Oxford), xiii, 362.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁰ ‘At a meeting of Gentlemen desirous of forming a statistical section of the British Association at Cambridge, Thursday morning, 27 June 1833’, Babbage seems to have addressed the assembly on the application of the normal distribution to social phenomena. ‘Mr Babbage exhibited a set of curves, drawn with a view to shew the effects of averages in producing a perceptible law in phenomena apparently of the most arbitrary character when considered separately.’ Drinkwater Notebook, I.

¹⁵¹ Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of science, p. 291.

¹⁵² Cullen, The statistical movement, p. 80.

¹⁵³ Babbage, ‘On the economy’, pp. 311–12.

¹⁵⁴ ‘Proceedings of the second meeting of the BAAS’, Transactions of the BAAS, I (1831–2), 107. Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of science, pp. 166–7.

¹⁵⁵ For doubts concerning Babbage’s ‘hindsight’ see Cullen, The statistical movement, p. 78.

¹⁵⁶ ‘Letter from Charles Babbage’, p. 505.

¹⁵⁷ Babbage, The exposition of 1851, p. 18. For a comparison of Babbage and Whewell’s attitudes to the criteria for membership of the early Victorian scientific community, see A. D. Orange, ‘The British Association for the Advancement of Science: the provincial background’, Science Studies, I (1971), 315–29. In 1831, for example, in relation to the emerging BAAS, Babbage favoured no limitations on membership of the new body while Whewell’s approach was far more exclusive.

¹⁵⁸ Whewell to Quetelet, 4 Aug. 1834, in Todhunter (ed.), William Whewell, II, 185.

¹⁵⁹ O’Brien, D. P., The classical economists (Oxford, 1975), 12.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁰ Hilts, ‘Aliis exterendum’, p. 22.

¹⁶¹ Jones to Whewell, Whewell papers, Add. MSS c. 52²⁰, 24 Feb. 1831.

¹⁶² Whewell to Jones, Whewell papers, Add. MSS c.51¹²², Dec. 1831.

¹⁶³ McCulloch’s, J. R. reputation was based on three compendious works: A dictionary, practical, theoretical and historical, of commerce and commercial navigation (London, 1832)Google Scholar; A statistical account of the British Empire, exhibiting its extent, physical capacities, population, industry, and civil and religious institutions (London, 1837)Google Scholar; A dictionary, geographical, statistical and historical, of the various countries, places and principal natural objects in the world (London, 1841).Google Scholar

¹⁶⁴ For a revision of this traditional view, see O’Brien, D. P., J. R. McCulloch: A study in classical economics (London, 1970), pp. 16, 121–3, 403–5. O’Brien contends that McCulloch must be placed broadly in the Scottish tradition of Smith and Hume into which ‘he attempted to incorporate Ricardian elements’ (p. 121).Google Scholar

¹⁶⁵ McCulloch, J. R., A discourse on the rise, progress, peculiar objects and importance of political economy: containing an outline of a course of lectures on the principles and doctrines of that science (Edinburgh, 1824), p. 75Google Scholar. For similar statements, see also McCulloch, J. R., The principles of political economy with a sketch of the rise and progress of the science (Edinburgh and London, 2nd edn., p. 64; 4th edn, pp. 59–60). O’Brien has attempted to argue, somewhat unconvincingly, that these statements of division between statistics and economics ‘did not truly represent his attitude’. See D. P. O’Brien, J. R. McCulloch: A study in classical economics, p. 84.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁶ McCulloch, A discourse on the rise...of political economy, p. 75.

¹⁶⁷ Blaug, M., Economic theory in retrospect (London, 2nd edn, 1968), p. 667.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁸ Ibid. pp. 667–8. But for evidence that political economists did attend to empirical evidence see O’Brien, J. R. McCulloch, pp. 96–8.

¹⁶⁹ M. Blaug, Ricardian economics, p. 185.

¹⁷⁰ Ibid. p. 188.

¹⁷¹ Journal of the Statistical Society of London, May 1838, ‘Introduction’, p. 1.

¹⁷² Sixth annual report of the Statistical Society of London, JSSL, III (1840), 1–2.

¹⁷³ Whewell papers, Add. MSS c. 52⁴⁰, 18 Feb. 1834. The full quotation reads, ‘We expect Whigs and Lords in abundance...We want tories and look too whiggish and ministerial at present - I am to ask Goulburn to ask Peel etc. - Catch us some tones if you can, D^o radicals, - but we count on Warburton, Hume and the illustrious Howard Elphinstone - pretty well to begin with...I dine with the Bishop of London tomorrow and hope to get him to come and take part in its formation.’

¹⁷⁴ ‘In the halls of Westminster, from Ricardo to Mill, economists as backbenchers had an impact on legislation by voting, by speeches, by sponsoring of legislation, and by activities on committees, that is unmatched by any other time or in any other country.’ Fetter, F. W., ‘The influence of economists in parliament on British legislation from Ricardo to John Stuart Mill’, Journal of Political Economy, lxxxiii, 5 (1975), 1060Google Scholar. See also, Gordon, Barry, Political economy in parliament, 1819–1823 (London, 1976), and Economic Doctrine and Tory Liberalism.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷⁵ Richard Yeo, ‘Scientific method and the image of science’, in Macleod, R. and Collins, P. (eds.), The parliament of science: The British Association for the Advancement of Science 1831–1981, (London, 1981), pp. 73, 77.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁶ Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of science, p. 96.

¹⁷⁷ For the background to science in the 1830s see Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of science Macleod and Collins, Parliament of science; Cannon, Science in culture; G. Foote, ‘The place of science in the British reform movement, 1830–1850’, Isis, 1951; J. B. Morrell, ‘Individualism and the structure of British science in 1830’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, III (1971). A. D. Orange, ‘The British Association for the Advancement of Science: the provential background’.

¹⁷⁸ Whewell papers, Add. MSS a. 200¹⁹², 15 May, 1820.

¹⁷⁹ Cannon, Science in culture, p. 244.

¹⁸⁰ Elesh, The Manchester Statistical Society, p. 282.

¹⁸¹ Ashton, T. S., Economic and social investigation in Manchester, 1833–1933: A centenary history of the Manchester Statistical Society (London, 1934), p. 14Google Scholar. See also Elesh, ‘The Manchester Statistical Society’, p. 414; Wilkinson, T. R., ‘On the origin and history of the Manchester Statistical Society’, Transactions of the Manchester Statistical Society, 1875–1876, pp. 9–17.Google Scholar

¹⁸² For a recent summation of the internalist-externalist methodological debate within the historiography of science, see Macleod, R., ‘Changing perspectives in the social history of science’, in Spiegel-Rösing, I. and Price, D. de Solla (eds.), Science, technology and society: A cross-disciplinary perspective (London, 1977), pp. 76–159.Google Scholar

¹⁸³ P. Anderson, ‘Components of the national culture’, New Left Review, vol. L (1968).

¹⁸⁴ See Harrison, F., Autobiographical memoirs (London, 1911), I, ch. xiv, ‘Studies in sociology’Google Scholar. Harrison, F., ‘The limits of political economy’, Fortnightly Review, I (1865), 356–76Google Scholar. Adelman, P., ‘Frederic Harrison and the “positivist” attack on orthodox political economy’, History of political economy, III (1971), 170–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸⁵ See, for example, Ingram, J. K., ‘Presidential Address’, Section F, Economic Science and Statistics, BAAS Report Dublin 1878 (London, 1879). This address began a debate on the relative merits of political economy and sociology that lasted for a decade. The most important reply was delivered by Sidgwick in 1885 when he was president of the Section. See Abrams, Origins of British sociology, pp. 81–2.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁶ C. Booth, ‘The inhabitants of Tower Hamlets (School Board Division), their condition and occupations’, Journal of the Statistical Society, L, 376.

¹⁸⁷ B. Webb, My apprenticeship (1979 edn, Cambridge), pp. 289–94. See also B. Webb, ‘On the nature of economic science’, Appendix to My apprenticeship (1950 edn), p. 373.

¹⁸⁸ But for an astute criticism of the implications of this methodology which must fragment ‘an intelligibly connected history’, see Hawthorn, ‘Characterizing the history of social theory’, p. 478.

¹⁸⁹ Jones, Essay on the distribution of wealth, xlxi. See also, Whewell (ed.), Literary remains; Detached notes and remarks; ‘On definitions’, pp. 598–600.