William Whewell - 1860

In the ‘Plurality of Worlds,” Whewell referred to Owen’s work and his claim that seemingly useless organs were the by-products of a “general claim that seemingly useless organs were the by-products of a “general plan,” or “archetypes” of creation. ….. Whewell now argued, the existence of unpopulated planets was no evidence against it. The planets and stars were “brought into being by a vast and general laws” – laws particularly aimed at creating earth as a seat of life, but that also resulted in the lifeless stars and planets. As Whewell put it rather picturesquely, “The planets and the stars are the lumps which have flown from the potter’s wheel of the Great Worker.” ~ Page 308

Whewell argued further that the existence of intelligent life on only one planet was not a “waste,” because man is a creation worthy of the whole universe. Not man as he is, surely but man as he may be – with all of his moral and intellectual potential unfolded into actuality. “The elevation of millions of intellectual, moral, religious, spiritual creatures, to a destiny so prepared, consummated, and developed, in no unworthy occupation of all the capacities of space, time, and matter.

Whewell elaborated on this point in his final chapter of the ‘Plurality’ book, which contained his speculation on he future history of man on earth. Here in suggested that the search for life on other worlds might blind us to the importance of working to make life better for those beings here on earth. He called for a “universal and perpetual peace” on earth, in which the full capabilities of men and women could be nurtured by moral and intellectual education. While finishing the book he wrote to his brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle, admitting, I believe, notwithstanding all the deeds of violence which we have seen committed, , that a ‘project of perpetual peace’ is by no means a mere dream, if it be based on received International Law.” A few years earlier, Whewell had translated a classic work of Hugo Grotius, the Dutch jurist who laid the a foundation for international law based on a theory of natural law. At the end of his life, Whewell would bequeath Pounds 100,000 for the first professorship in International Law and scholarships for eight students in the subject. The “Whewell Professorship in International Law,” established for the purpose of devising “such measures as may tend to…extinguish war between nations,” still exists at Cambridge today.

Unfortunately, few people paid attention to the political program Whewell was endorsing. Instead, he was mocked; is argument for the special nature of man, and his worth as the sole end of Creation, invited the famous sneer that his book tried to prove that “through all infinity, there was nothing as great as the Master of Trinity.” ~ Page 209

What we have lost, in a sense, is the romantic image of the man of science, the sense that nature should be grasped by men and women who are artists as well as scientists. Whewell captured this image so well in a letter to Jones about his upcoming trip to the Lake District in 1821: “You have no idea of the variety of different uses to which I shall turn a mountain. After perhaps sketching it from the bottom I shall climb to the top and measure its height by the barometer, knock off a piece of rock with a geological hammer to see what it is made of, and then evolve some quotation from Wordsworth into the still air above it. ~ Page 368