The Metaphysical Society (1869-1880)

Catherine Marshall is Professor of British Studies at the Université de Cergy-Pontoise in France. Her research focuses mainly on the history of ideas in the second-half of the nineteenth century. She also works on the development of political ideas in Victorian Britain and on their legacy in the twentieth century. She is the co-editor, with Bernard Lightman and Richard England, of a 3-volume critical edition of The papers of The Metaphysical Society (1869-1880) (2015).Bernard Lightman is Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities Department at York University, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and President (2018-2019) of the History of Science Society. Lightman's research focuses on the cultural history of Victorian science. Among his most recent publications are the edited collections Global Spencerism, A Companion to the History of Science, and Science Museums in Transition (co-edited with Carin Berkowitz). He is one of the general editors of the John Tyndall Correspondence Project, an international collaborative effort to obtain, digitalize, transcribe, and publish all surviving letters to and from Tyndall. Richard England is a historian of science and religion and Honors College administrator who has published on the history of evolutionary thought and controversy, with a particular interest in Victorian religious responses to Darwinism. In teaching Honors classes at Salisbury University (Maryland) and Eastern Illinois University he has sought to use his research to illuminate the epistemological and philosophical foundations of contemporary scientific controversies.

This volume acts as both an excellent companion book to the three-volume critical edition of The Papers of the Metaphysical Society, as well as a stand-alone introduction to the historical context and ideas discussed in the society. This book comes highly recommended for those invested in the academic study of nineteenth-century British intelligentsia, from whatever methodological angle, be it historical, philosophical, theological, or even sociological.

• List of figures The Contributors Catherine Marshall, Bernard Lightman, and Richard England: Introduction Part I: Society and the Politics of Engagement 1: Bruce Kinzer: The Personalization of Intellectual Combat: James Fitzjames Stephen and the Metaphysical Society 2: Catherine Marshall: The Editors of the Metaphysical Society or, Disseminating the Ideas of the Metaphysicians 3: Andrew Vincent: Liberalism and the Metaphysical Society Part II: Miracles, Unseen Universes, and Natural Causes 4: Gowan Dawson: The Cross-Examination of the Physiologist : T. H. Huxley and the Resurrection 5: Richard England: Cause, Nature, and the limits of language: Martineau and Maurice on the philosophical necessity of Theism 6: Anne DeWitt: Expertise in the Miracles Debate 7: W. J. Mander: Hodgson, Clifford, and the unseen universe Part III: Intuitionism and Empiricism: Mapping the Boundaries 8: Ian Hesketh: Evolution, Ethics, and the Metaphysical Society, 1869 1875 9: Piers J. Hale: Between intuition and empiricism: William Benjamin Carpenter on man, mind and moral 10: William Sweet: Intuitionism, Religious Belief, and Proof in Papers of the Metaphysical Society 11: Bernard Lightman: Catholics and the Metaphysical Basis of Science 12: Richard England, Bernard Lightman, and Catherine Marshall: Postscript Index