Abstract
Most historians explain changes in conceptions of the epistemic virtues and vices in terms of social and historical developments. I argue that such approaches, valuable as they are, neglect the fact that certain changes also reflect changes in metaphysical sensibilities. Certain epistemic virtues and vices are defined relative to an estimate of our epistemic situation that is, in turn, defined by a broader vision or picture of the nature of reality. I defend this claim by charting changing conceptions of the virtue of epistemic humility in nineteenth century intellectual culture, focusing on claims about the humility or hubris of the Victorian scientific naturalists.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Barton, Ruth. 1998. “Huxley, Lubbock, and half a dozen others”: Professionals and gentlemen in the formation of the X Club, 1851–1864. Isis 89: 410–444.
Blumenberg, Hans. 1983. The legitimacy of the modern age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Clifford, William Kingdon. 1879. Lectures and essays, vol. 1, ed. Leslie Stephen and Frederick Pollard. London: Macmillan and Co.
Comte, Auguste. 1988. Introduction to positive philosophy, ed. and trans. Frederick Ferré. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Cooper, David E. 2002. The measure of things: Humanism, humility, and mystery. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
———. 2017. Superstition, science, and life. In Wittgenstein and scientism, ed. Jonathan Beale and Ian James Kidd, 28–38. New York: Routledge.
Corneanu, Sorana. 2011. Regimens of the mind: Boyle, Locke, and the early modern cultura animi tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Craig, Edward. 1987. The mind of God and the works of man. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. 2007. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books.
Harrison, Peter. 2007. The fall of man and the foundations of science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Huxley, Thomas Henry. 1872. Lay sermons, addresses, and reviews. New York: D. Applegate and Company.
———. 1893. Essays. London: Macmillan.
———. 1894. Methods and results: Essays. London: Macmillan and Co..
———. 1913. Life and letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, vol. 1, ed. Leonard Huxley. London: Macmillan and Company.
———. 1971. T.H. Huxley on education: A selection from his writings, ed. Cyril Bibby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kidd, Ian James. 2015. Educating for intellectual humility. In Intellectual virtues and education: Essays in applied virtue epistemology, ed. Jason Baehr, 54–70. London: Routledge.
———. 2016a. Intellectual humility, confidence, and argumentation. Topoi 35: 395–402.
———. 2016b. Inevitability, contingency, and epistemic humility. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 55: 12–19.
———. 2017. Reawakening to wonder: Wittgenstein, Feyerabend, and scientism. In Wittgenstein and scientism, ed. Jonathan Beale and Ian James Kidd, 101–115. London: Routledge.
Levine, George. 2014. Paradox: The art of scientific naturalism. In Victorian scientific naturalism: Community, identity, continuity, ed. Bernard Lightman and Gowan Dawson, 79–100. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lloyd, Genevieve. 2000. Feminism in history of philosophy: Appropriating the past. In The Cambridge companion to feminism in philosophy, ed. Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Hornsby, 245–263. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Macleod, Roy. 1982. The ‘bankruptcy of science’ debate: The creed of science and its critics, 1885–1900. Science, Technology, and Human Values 7 (4): 2–15.
Merton, Robert. 1957. Priorities in scientific discovery: A chapter in the sociology of science. American Sociological Review 22: 635–659.
Montaigne, Michel de. 1991. Essays, ed. and trans. M.A. Screech. London: Penguin.
Olson, Richard. 2008. Science and scientism in nineteenth-century Europe. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Pardue, Stephen T. 2013. The mind of Christ: Humility and the intellect in early Christian theology. London: Bloomsbury.
Paul, Harry W. 1968. The debate over the bankruptcy of science in 1895. French Historical Studies 5: 299–327.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1974. Collected papers, 2 vols., ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
———. 1986. Writings of C.S. Peirce: A chronological edition, vol. 3. 1872–1878. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
———. 1992. The essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings: vol. 1, 1867–1893, e. Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
———. 1998. The essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings, vol. 2, 1893–1913, ed. Peirce Edition Project. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Roberts, Robert C., and W. Jay Wood. 2007. Intellectual virtues: An essay in regulative epistemology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Shapin, Steven. 2008. The scientific life: A moral history of a late modern vocation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Spencer, Herbert. 1867. First principles. London: Williams and Norgate.
Stanley, Matthew. 2014. Huxley’s church and Maxwell’s demon: From theistic science to naturalistic science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tyndall, John. 1867. On the study of physics. In The culture demanded by modern life: A series of addresses and arguments on the claims of scientific education, ed. Anon. New York: D. Appleton and Company.
———. 1874. Address delivered before the British Association Assembled at Belfast. London: Green and Co..
———. 1897. Fragments of science: A series of detached essays, addresses, and reviews. Vol. 1. New York: D. Appleton and Company.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1967. On certainty, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright. Trans. Dennis Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Zagzebski, Linda. 1996. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Knowledge and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Chiara Ambrosio, David E. Cooper, colleagues at Durham, the editors, and the participants at the conference from which this volume emerged for helpful comments, encouragement, and discussion.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kidd, I.J. (2017). Confidence, Humility, and Hubris in Victorian Scientific Naturalism. In: van Dongen, J., Paul, H. (eds) Epistemic Virtues in the Sciences and the Humanities. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 321. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48893-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48893-6_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-48892-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-48893-6
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)