Scientist of the Day - Benjamin Jowett and Baden Powell

Title page of Essays and Reviews, by seven contributors, including Benjamin Jowett and Baden Powell, 1860, Internet Archive (archive.org)

Benjamin Jowett, an English classical scholar and Anglican priest, was born Apr. 15, 1817. In 1860, Jowett and six other scholars published a collection of essays titled, very plainly, Essays and Reviews (first image). These seven scholars were attempting to introduce into England the fruits of a half-century of German biblical scholarship. From their different backgrounds, they tried to argue that the Bible is a book much like any other ancient book, and open to the same methods of analysis that scholars used on the works of Homer or Herodotus. Jowett's contribution was called "On the interpretation of Scripture" (fourth image), in which he maintained that Scripture was never intended to be a literal guide to the story of creation, and that the Bible has a much more powerful meaning when you place it in its proper historical context.

Portrait of Benjamin Jowett, stipple engraving by Francis Holl, after George Richmond, ca 1855, National Portrait Gallery, London (www.npg.org.uk)

It was no coincidence that Essays and Reviews appeared just four months after Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, and no surprise that it was widely read, and fiercely condemned by the Anglican orthodoxy. Jowett's career suffered for years, as he was denied his salary and the appointment he coveted as Master of Balliol College, Oxford. Jowett rode out the bad times by translating the complete works of Plato into English. The “Jowett” Plato was authoritative for the next century, and one can still find paperback copies of various Platonic dialogues in the Jowett translation. Jowett did finally get his salary restored, and was promoted to Master of Balliol – in 1870!

Caricature of Benjamin Jowett, chromolithograph, by Leslie Ward (“Spy”), Vanity Fair, Feb. 26, 1876, National Portrait Gallery, London (www.npg.org.uk)

The National Portrait Gallery in London has 12 portraits of Jowett. We chose two: a conventional stipple engraving of 1855, when he was young (second image), and a caricature from 21 years later that appeared in Vanity Fair and was drawn by Leslie Ward, under the pen name “Spy” (third image).  Note that, in the caricature, Jowett clutches his edition of Plato.  Because he caricatured so many scientists, we have published a post on Leslie Ward.

First page of “On the interpretation of Scripture,” by Benjamin Jowett, Essays and Reviews 1860, Internet Archive (archive.org)

Another contributor to Essays and Reviews was Baden Powell, an English mathematician. Well before the Origin of Species, Powell was attracted to the idea of evolution, when he read the anonymous Vestiges of Creation in 1844, with its proposal that there is a law of development in the universe that is the organic analog of the law of gravity (see our post on Robert Chambers).  When Darwin proposed his more sophisticated theory in 1859, Powell was an instant convert, now thoroughly convinced that God is, above all, a law giver. He also praised Darwin's idea that the laws of nature are self-evolving.

Portrait of Baden Powell, undocumented (Wikimedia commons)

Powell’s piece in Essays and Reviews, called “On the study of the evidences of Christianity,” was about miracles; Powell argued that miracles no longer occur, because miracles break the laws of nature. Had Powell lived, he would almost certainly have lost his position as professor of geometry at Oxford as a result of his essay. But he died within two months of the book’s publication. His family stood by him after he passed away, changing their surname from Powell to Baden-Powell in his honor.  If the name sounds familiar to you, it is because one of his sons, Robert Baden-Powell, founded the international Scouting Movement, which gave rise, in 1910 in the United States, to the Boy Scouts of America.

First page of “On the study of the evidences of Christianity,” by Baden Powell, Essays and Reviews, 1860, Internet Archive (archive.org)

We do not have a copy of Essays and Reviews in our collections.  We have used images from a copy at St. Mary’s College of California, digitized by the Internet Archive.

William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.