Changing the Perspective: Whether Mary Somerville Was a Scientist

Mary Somerville’s status as a scientist is almost universally accepted by the broader public of the present, her work being recognised as equal value as that of her contemporaries. However, Somerville’s status as a scientist falls under scrutiny when considered in her own historical context, with neither her peers nor Somerville herself ever using the term to describe her. Under this historical framework, Somerville cannot be considered a scientist, but this analysis is not only too rigid, but unhelpful. Instead, when Somerville and her body of work is considered in the broader context of her period, the boundary work that was undergone at the time, and beyond the borders of Britain, it can be argued that Somerville was as much a scientist as any of her peers.

Before Somerville’s status is questioned, it is crucial to define the parameters through which her work will be examined. Both a historical and sociological framework will be used, and the question will be interpreted in two ways. First, ‘was Mary Somerville a scientist?’ as in, would she be considered a “scientist” and second, ‘did Mary Somerville practice science?” and, through that lens, does that make her a “scientist”. Furthermore, it will not just be Somerville’s work, but her position in the scientific community and society at large that will be considered too in order to provide the necessary context to answer this question from both perspectives.

Somerville’s status as a scientist, historically speaking, can only truly be considered from 1834 onwards, when William Whewell first coined the term in print. Given that Whewell was the first to use the term, it is through his own words that we must first analyse Somerville’s position. In his review, he primarily argued that since science was becoming increasingly fractured, a common term was needed to refer to its practitioners. Thus, physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and others could be united by a common term: scientist. However, Whewell did not include Somerville in the ranks of the scientists, pointedly isolating her as a natural philosopher, referring to her interdisciplinarity and ability to write on the sciences as the reason for this—for him, calling her a natural philosopher was a greater honour.

Using Whewell’s assertion, the conclusion that Somerville was not a scientist (by the creator of the term’s own admission) seems straightforward. In his short, biographical article about Somerville, James Secord defers to Whewell’s authority when making his own judgement on Somerville’s status. He states ‘by [Whewell’s own] criteria, Somerville was not a scientist, but instead possessed the superior “talents of a philosopher and a writer”’. His assessment therefore concludes that Somerville was not a scientist, on account of Whewell’s opinion of Somerville’s position. It can be argued that this is a reductive historical analysis, placing too much emphasis on Whewell’s authority and stripping Somerville of her broader presence in the scientific community.

While Whewell’s authority and ideas should be considered, given that he did coin the term, his own assessments cannot be what defines someone’s classification as a scientist. Whewell’s omission of Somerville in his later works relating to the history of science was a glaring one and even challenged by some of his contemporaries, like David Brewster. He attributed his decision to Somerville’s lack of original work. Somerville did not make any major original breakthroughs, but she did conduct original research, though it was mostly disproven later in her own lifetime. If Whewell was willing to narrate the history of the sciences as a series of major original discoveries, it stands to reason that Somerville would be excluded, however, that does not give reason to eliminate her position as a scientist in its entirety. Even if only for a brief period of her life, she did publish original work and so, under Whewell’s own criteria, conducted science.

Given this, Secord’s stance is weak on two accounts. Not only is it reductive to give one man the ruling authority over who gets to be classified a scientist, but by deconstructing Whewell’s criteria it can be argued that Somerville should not have been so hastily classified a philosopher, at least not exclusively.

It is crucial to note that Whewell excluded Somerville from the term “scientist” but also science at large. On both accounts, Whewell believes Somerville to be a natural philosopher, her lack of practical and original work meaning that she could not be given a space of her own in science’s history. Whewell’s term was ignored or mocked by British natural philosophers, both when he introduced it in jest in his review of Connexion, and when he later tried to reintroduce the term more seriously in Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. Though the term saw almost instant popularity in the United States, even upon reimportation at the end of the 19th century it faced considerable opposition from academics.

With such rejection of the term, is it worthwhile to question whether Somerville specifically was a scientist when, by all accounts, none of her British contemporaries even wanted to consider the word? It can certainly be argued that, within the confines of Britain and the period, Somerville was not a scientist, irrespective of what Whewell believed simply because his term was not widely accepted. A strict, etymological analysis would thus mean that Somerville was not a scientist, but an adoption of this critical framework would mean that several others could not be called scientists either. To exclude Isaac Newton or Robert Boyle from the ranks of “scientists” seems arbitrary and pedantic in this way. However, it does allow for a rather clear answer to the question of whether Mary Somerville was a “scientist” in the strictest sense of the word—she was not. She didn’t live in a period where the word would be used to describe anyone at all in Britain. Though an American of the period may have described her as a scientist, restricting the scope to Britain would mean that Somerville could not have been considered one.

Thus, it becomes necessary to expand the horizons of the question. If it as assumed that a scientist is someone who practices science, then it must be determined whether Somerville’s work qualifies as this.

Whewell’s choice to limit science to original work only is also one that can be contested. Somerville’s most widely acclaimed works were not related to her original research, but to imply that that is the only significant way to contribute to science is dismissive. Somerville’s works were influential in changing the course of science in Britain. Her translation, analysis and speculation of Laplace’s book allowed for a new wave of British men of science to explore astronomy with the added context and theories from a French scientist. The interdisciplinarity for which Whewell so highly praised her itself can be argued to stimulate new, original scientific ideas by connecting seemingly unrelated phenomena together. The lack of major original discoveries may have been too significant a failure for Whewell to consider including Somerville in his history of the sciences, and indeed one of Somerville’s own deepest regrets, but that is not the primary way in which she influenced and shaped the course of science. In that regard, if the sole metric of contributing to science is major original discovery, then Somerville’s observations were too short-lived to warrant her inclusion. By contrast, if the broader scope and impact of her works is taken into account, it would seem she is more than worthy of a spot in the history of scientific development and, by extension, the title of “scientist”.

A more convincing interpretation of Somerville’s status comes from Kathryn Neeley in her biography of Somerville. In it, she argues that Somerville benefitted, to a degree, from the period that she worked in, her wealth and the support she received. In a period where science was struggling to find its footing in society, the rigid institutions that would exclude women in the near future had not yet been fully realised. The lack of professionalisation in science during the early 19th century, allowed Somerville to exist within the scientific community, barred only from certain official institutions due to her gender. Since science was not yet considered a “profession” it was, paradoxically, not restricted too severely from women and allowed them at to entertain at least a superficial interest. Neeley’s argument can be further explored by analysing circumstances that were almost entirely unique to Somerville. The support of her husband, William Somerville, helped her overcome institutional hurdles other women could not. This was particularly evident when he, as a Fellow of the Royal Society, could read out the original research she had published even though she was denied entry. Some women which we know of, several which we do not, were not given the public prestige and resources to publish research and works to be legitimately recognised. Her husband’s help in circumventing institutional barriers put Somerville in a unique position among other women in the scientific community.

Neeley thus argues that since Somerville wrote scientific texts, published original research, and even became the first woman—alongside Caroline Herschel—to become honorary members of the Royal Astronomical Society that Somerville practised science throughout her career. By Neeley’s assessment, Somerville had too much in common with her peers, many of whom could not be considered anything but scientists by present-day criteria and, by extension, that Somerville should be considered as much a scientist, as her contemporaries.

Perhaps of equal importance as Somerville’s own scientific endeavours, was her familiarity with other important figures in the scientific community. She was friends with Charles Babbage, William and Caroline Herschel and others, which gave her a prominence in science that was not afforded to many other women. This allowed her to fit neatly into the space that ‘men of science’ had carved out for themselves in early Victorian society, further legitimising Neeley’s claim that Somerville had too much in common with several other individuals we call scientists to exclude her from this category. Even in her own historical context, Somerville was involved in the scientific community.

Furthermore, Somerville fits in seamlessly with Tyndall’s own scientific boundaries, as highlighted by Gieryn. Gieryn argues that boundary-work defines what science is depending on the period and the scientific controversies at hand, using Tyndall as an analysis of how this operated in mid-to-late Victorian Britain. Tyndall worked to define a space for science between religion and engineering. He rejected the dogmatism of religion, believing that the use of religion to explain natural phenomena could only hurt progress. In this respect, it’s simple to let Somerville fall into the category of science that Tyndall was pursuing; she used scientific explanations in her works, particularly emphasising mathematics. In differentiating science from the purely practical efforts of engineering, Tyndall advocated for the value of theory. Engineers applied the laws and axioms that scientists had uncovered prior. Here too, Sommerville’s work fits into this definition. She explained theoretical concepts and, more broadly, only received income from her literature, not any practical applications of science like Tyndall believed of engineers.

With this sociological framework, Somerville undoubtedly occupies the space in academia that Tyndall was describing. Gieryn supports that this niche of science existing in practical contrast to religion but in theoretical contrast to engineering, was what Victorian men of science believed and that they are the ones who ultimately decide what science is. Science fluctuates, its definitions change and reflect the context of the period. Somerville existed in that niche for her whole career and thus it follows that, if Somerville was doing science as defined by the boundaries set in that period, then this sociological framework would conclude that she can be called a scientist.

Finally, it is worthwhile to consider Somerville’s current status in the modern public sphere. Secord had concluded that, given Whewell’s authority over the term, Somerville could not be called a scientist, but he does provide a caveat. He claimed that Somerville could “certainly be called a scientist” under our current understanding of the term. Stripping her of her historical context, the opinion that she was a scientist is practically universal. On the one hand, part of this belief seems to stem from misconceptions about who the term “scientist” was coined for. A biographical article on allthatsinteresting.com claims that Whewell coined the term for Somerville, as does Wikipedia. On the other hand, these articles only misconstrue the origins of the word, not the aptness of its description of Somerville. The pervasiveness of the belief that Somerville was a scientist would seem to further illustrate her influence and the similarity between some of her work and that of her peers. By extrapolating our own understanding of the term “scientist” in the present day and applying it to Somerville, it would seem to fit her. Though this necessarily rids the question of its contextual nuance, it can be argued that, under the current sociological understanding of science, Mary Somerville qualifies.

Naturally, this can be contested, and newer descriptions of scientific writing could apply to Somerville, most notably science communicator. The importance of original research in science is still prevalent today, and thus Whewell’s arguments could still be used to separate Somerville from science in the present. However, such backwards extrapolation is not without precedent and demonstrated in the aforementioned examples of Newton and Boyle. While this can be interpreted as colloquial shorthand for the proper terminology, in the eyes of the general public and the current sociological context, Somerville is a scientist, and that’s not necessarily void of meaning.

The question of whether Somerville was a scientist is a multifaceted one. In the strictest etymological sense, Somerville was not a scientist, and, in some respects, she wasn’t in her own historical period either. Whewell’s reliance on original findings compounded with his desire to separate Somerville’s interdisciplinarity from more specialised science, would also mean that this once again strips her of that label. However, if Whewell’s authority is minimised and the scope of the question is broadened, focussing less on whether Somerville was a “scientist” and more so on whether Somerville performed science, then the answer changes. Sociologically, she fits comfortably into the boundaries Tyndall defined, and considering the impact of her works on scientific development, as well as her well-regarded spot within the community, then Somerville was a scientist. Even void of greater context, Somerville has rooted herself as a scientist in the modern public conscience, even if only in the present day.