Thomas Henry Huxley on History of the Inductive Sciences

“By a happy chance, the first edition of Whewell's 'History of the Inductive Sciences' was published in 1837, and it affords a very useful view of the state of things at the commencement of the Victorian epoch.”

“Those who still repeat the once favorible objection that Darwin's 'Origin of Species' is nothing but a new version of the 'Philosophie zoologique' will find that so late as 1844, Whewell had not the slightest suspicion of Darwin's main theorem, even as a logical possibility. In fact, the publication of that theorem by Darwin and Wallace, in 1859, took all the biological world by surprise.”

“Even the second edition of the 'History of the Inductive Sciences,' which was published in 1846, contains no allusion either to the general view of the 'Correlation of Forces' published in England in 1842, or to the publication in 1843 of the first of the series of experiments by which the mechanical equivalent of heat was correctly ascertained. Such a failure on the part of a contemporary, of great acquirements and remarkable intellectual powers, to read the signs of the times, is a lesson and a warning worthy of being deeply pondered by anyone who attempts to prognosticate the course of scientific progress.”