Science and the Public 341THE GENTLEMEN OF SCIENCE AND NATURAL THEOLOGY
In the fi rst half of the nineteenth century, the scientifi c scene was domi-
nated by such fi gures as geologists Charles Lyell (1797–1875) and Adam
Sedgwick (1785–1873), mathematicians Charles Babbage (1791–1871)
and Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871), biologist Richard Owen (1804–
1892), chemist Humphry Davy (1778–1829), and astronomer John Her-
schel (1792–1871), in addition to Whewell. These men were devoted to
the serious pursuit of knowledge as a vocation, but not for pay. Though
relatively few of them were noble by birth, they adhered to an ideal of
gentlemanly science based on a conception of a hierarchical society, mas-
culine authority, and government by an Anglican, aristocratic elite.^7 The
British Association for the Advancement of Science symbolized a scientifi c
alliance between the metropolitan gentlemen and the ancient Anglican
universities (Cambridge and Oxford) and embedded the ideals of gentle-
manly scientifi c practice in its presidential addresses, discussions of pa-
pers, and after- dinner toasts.^8 Founded in 1831, the British Association was
the very fi rst society devoted to natural science to use the term “science”
in its title. The allegiance of the gentlemen of science to the Anglican-
aristocratic establishment was refl ected in the way they grounded their
science on the theological and political principles formulated by Angli-
can divine William Paley (1743–1805), author of Natural Theology (1802).
Herschel, Whewell, and other gentlemen of science made their contri-
butions to the eleven volumes of the Bridgewater Treatises (1833–1836),
which all set as a goal the analysis of the wisdom, goodness, and benevo-
lence of God as manifested in the works of creation. The design in the
natural world was paralleled by a design in the social world. Writing in
the shadow of the French Revolution, Paley urged the British workers to
be content with their lot in life. It was impious to complain about “the
necessity to which human affairs are subjected” since it was God who had
“contrived, that, whilst fortunes are only for a few, the rest of mankind
may be happy without them.”^9
The gentlemen of science argued that natural theology could shore
up the political and social status quo and they integrated it into their
popular scientifi c lectures and writings. From his headquarters in the fash-
ionable Royal Institution, Sir Humphry Davy introduced natural theol-
ogy into chemistry in his spectacular public lectures. Davy pioneered a
rhetoric that presented experimental science as an activity, which was
genteel, theologically safe, and socially conservative. In his “Discourse
Introductory to a Course of Lectures on Chemistry,” fi rst read in the Royal