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Mary Somerville's Vision of Science Mary Somerville’s vision of science James Secord Citation: Physics Today 71, 1, 46 (2018); doi: 10.1063/PT.3.3817 View online: https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3817 View Table of Contents: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/toc/pto/71/1 Published by the American Institute of Physics ARTICLES YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN Earth’s skin is an interdisciplinary laboratory Physics Today 71, 22 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3813 Crystal growth in ice and snow Physics Today 71, 34 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3844 Commentary: Thinking differently about science and religion Physics Today 71, 10 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3831 Gender matters Physics Today 71, 40 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3870 Discovering Earth’s radiation belts Physics Today 70, 46 (2017); https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3791 The relentless pursuit of hypersonic flight Physics Today 70, 30 (2017); https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3762 MARY SOMERVILLE (1780–1872), mathematician and writer. Portait by Thomas Phillips (1834). James Secord is a professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge in the UK. This article is adapted from his book, Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age (2014). Mary Somerville’s vision of science James Secord The Scottish mathematician and writer shaped the way we think about science and carved a place for herself in the intellectual world of the 19th century. n 1834 mathematician and author Mary Somerville published On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, a work that was instrumental in the making of modern physics as a discipline. Contemporaries praised the book’s clear and lucid Isurvey of astronomy, experimental physics, and chemistry, and it became a classic of Victorian scientific writing. But Connexion also posed key questions for a rapidly expanding and largely male-dominated world at a moment of intense intellectual ferment. Could women excel at science? Were the scientific writings of a woman inherently different from those of a man? “Notwithstanding all the dreams of theorists,” wrote Cambridge philosopher William Whewell in his review of Connexion, “there is a sex in minds”—in other words, Whewell felt that Somerville’s sex would always set her writings apart from those of her male contemporaries.1 During her long life, Somerville occupied an im- taking a prism and a hammer from her handbag to portant place in the physical sciences. Her books demonstrate an experiment about light. In October brought readers up to date with subjects ranging she appeared on the new £10 note of the Royal Bank from astronomy and anthropology to microscopy and of Scotland (see the box on page 48), an honor she geology. She introduced the English-speaking world controversially won against such candidates as to Pierre Simon Laplace’s celestial mechanics, wrote physicist James Clerk Maxwell. an outstanding survey of physical geography, and Yet Somerville remains an enigmatic figure. In elucidated the common bonds between the sciences contrast with her friend Ada Lovelace, celebrated at a time when they were being carved up into through her association with Charles Babbage’s distinct disciplines. More recently she featured in Mike calculating engines, Somerville seems to have had Leigh’s 2014 feature film Mr. Turner, which depicts an implausibly placid life, without crises or ten- Somerville (brilliantly played by Lesley Manville) sions. This is undoubtedly because of the continuing JANUARY 2018 | PHYSICS TODAY 47 MARY SOMERVILLE influence of her autobiography, which eschewed any reference and he sent her to a boarding school for a year. She also took to private feelings. But when viewed critically, Somerville’s re- further lessons in dancing, painting, cookery, music, needle- strained stories of early struggles and eventual success can be work, and elementary geography—all the accomplishments used to open up questions about her life and work. To begin deemed suitable for a young lady of her station. with, how did the opportunities available to a gentleman’s In determined hands—and Mary Fairfax was determined— daughter in Scotland during the final decades of the 18th cen- those activities held the possibility of substantial opportunities tury contain the possibility of becoming a celebrated mathe- for learning. For example, she first learned of the existence of matician and author? algebra by seeing a problem in a fashion magazine. Once she wanted to learn more, teachers and tutors were available to en- The divine spark courage her and provide books, even though study beyond the Somerville believed in family and belonged to a well-con- basics had to be carried out independently and in secret. Al- nected one. She was born Mary Fairfax on 26 December 1780 though her mother feared she would go mad or become a blue- in Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders. Her mother, Martha Char- stocking, others in her life saw her as lively, intelligent, and ters Fairfax, was descended from the most distinguished fam- eager to excel. ilies in the country. Her father, William George Fairfax, received In 1804, at age 23, Mary Fairfax married her cousin, naval national recognition for his commanding role in the pivotal commissioner Samuel Greig, and the couple set up house in naval battle of Camperdown but none of the usual financial re- London. Her later recollections of the marriage were unhappy; wards associated with such a victory. The family thus had con- lonely, with few opportunities to meet friends, Mary Greig re- siderable social status but no income other than a military salary.2 ceived no encouragement in following mathematics, languages, Young Mary grew up in the seaport town of Burntisland in and other studies. Scotland, where she was allowed to run wild for the first 10 When Greig unexpectedly died in 1807, Mrs. Greig was in years of her life. Her father, returning from a long voyage, was a very different position from the one that Miss Fairfax had alarmed that she had failed to master the skills of reading, writ- been in three years before. When she returned to Scotland, she ing, and account-keeping that would make her a suitable wife, settled into a determined program of mathematical studies and Was Mary Somerville a scientist? Mary Somerville’s iconic status is often because of the increasing au- ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND summed up by stating that William thority for the role, as has always Whewell, in his review of her book On the been assumed, but as a way of Connexion of the Physical Sciences, hailed maintaining the higher claims her as the first “scientist.” But almost ex- of philosophy, which Whewell, actly the opposite was the case. Nowhere like Coleridge, saw as his own did Whewell or anyone else in her lifetime true vocation. In publicizing his ever call Somerville a scientist, nor is it a coinage, he could not resist word, so far as we know, that she ever making analogies with “journal- used herself. By our current understand- ist,” “atheist,” and “tobacconist,” ing of the term, Somerville can certainly roles scarcely to be emulated in class- concern for grubby industrial utility but be called a scientist, but for her contem- conscious Victorian Britain. with lucid metaphysical clarity. Female poraries she belonged to a higher and Although its utilitarian associations authorship offered the possibility of more profound category entirely. and character as a putdown meant that direct insight into the laws of nature. His To understand that, we need to see “scientist” did not catch on in Britain, the review of Connexion quoted from poet why Whewell invented the word in the word gradually became popular in the John Milton: first place. At the meeting of the British As- more practical climate of the US. The In regions mild, of calm and sociation for the Advancement of Science word was reimported in the final decades serene air, in Cambridge in 1833, poet Samuel Taylor of the 19th century, although consider- Above the smoke and stir of Coleridge had argued that men of science, able opposition remained: Thomas Henry this dim spot concerned with mechanical invention Huxley quipped that “‘scientist’ must be Which men call earth. and laboratory experiments, were un- about as pleasing a word as ‘electrocu- justly claiming a higher calling by referring tion.’” 18 The word remained controversial In Whewell’s view, the precision of lan- to themselves as “natural philosophers.” in Britain well into the 20th century. guage and structure in Somerville’s works Whewell agreed. He replied at the Whewell did put the term “scientist” had everything to do with their authorship meeting by proposing “scientist,” a word into print for the first time in his review of by a woman. If men were active, prone to formed on the same basis as “artist.” The Connexion, but he did not apply the word confusing practice and theory, women word “scientist,” as Whewell well knew, to Somerville herself. In his view, she be- were above the fray, giving their reason- was an unconventional coinage with longed to a more praiseworthy category. ing clarity and transparency. By those cri- Greek and Latin roots, a combination po- Whewell believed that in the rare circum- teria, Somerville was not a scientist, but tentially offensive to those with a classi- stance when a woman wrote from deep instead possessed the superior “talents of cal education. The term was invented not knowledge, she could do so not with a a philosopher and a writer.”1 48 PHYSICS TODAY | JANUARY 2018 became acquainted with the leading intellectual lights of Edin- burgh, particularly astronomer John Playfair, who is today best known as the expositor of James Hutton’s pioneering geologi- cal theories.
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