Evolution by the Numbers

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James Wynn. Evolution by the Numbers

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Rhetoric of Science and Technology

Series Editor: Alan G. Gross

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Each chapter in the book is dedicated to investigating some aspect of the relationship between science, mathematics, and argument. In the first three chapters, the focus is on articulating the general conventions and limitations of mathematical argument in science. The remaining three chapters explore the rhetorical dimensions of making mathematical arguments in science.

Chapter 2, “A Proper Science,” explores nineteenth century epistemological and ontological commitments about the appropriate relationship between mathematics and science by examining the philosophies of two of the period’s most influential, natural philosophers. A close reading of William Whewell’s, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840), and John Herschel’s, Preliminary Discourse on Natural Philosophy (1831), suggests that quantification and mathematical reasoning were considered assets in the production of knowledge about nature because they contributed precision and rigor to scientific research and reasoning. Investigations of these texts also reveal the stages in which quantification and mathematical reasoning contributed to science and the process by which mathematical arguments might be elevated from hypothetical analogies to deductive laws of nature. The views of these two, influential philosophers about the status of mathematical arguments in science provides a framework for assessing the status of mathematical arguments, the choices of arguers as they seek to defend them, and the reactions of nineteenth century audiences as they move to accept or reject mathematical arguments as a legitimate means for making knowledge about nature.

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