The Philosophical Breakfast Club

by Laura J. Snyder

  Whewell saw in the study of tides the opportunity to apply his Baconian view of science, especially its emphasis on knowledge as power: a detailed theory of the tides that could predict particular times of high tide would provide British ships (and, indeed, ships all around the world) with the means to travel safely from port to port. The science of the tides could also be the arena for application of another Baconian idea, that facts and theory are equally important, that the natural philosopher should be like the scientific bee: not merely coming up with theories unrelated to the facts, as the proponents of the equilibrium theory did, nor merely collecting observations at a particular port, like the harbormasters, but rather collecting tidal facts in order to construct a comprehensive tidal theory. As Whewell told Lyell, “A combination of theory and experiment” is needed to make any progress in tidal science.65

  THE EMPIRICAL STUDY of the tides was resurrected in England, after a century of neglect, by one of Whewell’s former students, John Lubbock, in 1830. Nearly two decades earlier, Thomas Young, who would later be appointed head of the Nautical Almanac, wrote several papers on the tides, asserting in one that the government should fund the making of “minutely accurate observations of the tides.”66 Young’s suggestion was ignored until Lubbock came on the scene. Lubbock was now a banker who had invested money in the port of London. Because of his financial stake in the St. Katherine Docks, opened in 1829, Lubbock decided to study the empirical data that existed for the ports on the Thames River. He discovered that detailed records of the tides, night and day, had been kept since the opening of the London docks in 1805, but that no one had ever used that data to construct detailed and accurate tide tables. Lubbock realized that with twenty-five years of observational data he could calculate the corrected “establishment” of the port: that is, the time of high water on the day of the new or full moon, from which the times of high tide on other days could then be extrapolated. Lubbock found a computer, Joseph Foss Dessiou, who worked in the Hydrographic Office, and he had Dessiou perform the tedious and difficult calculations relating the action of the tides with the positions, motions, and phases of the moon. Lubbock published his results in the Transactions of the Royal Society in 1831 and 1832, and was awarded the Royal Society’s gold medal for that work in 1834.67

  As he worked, Lubbock began to correspond with his former tutor about his results. In one letter to Lubbock, Whewell coined the name tidology for this science, referring back, with his typical encyclopedic knowledge, to a little-known 1810 book called Tydology (“I suppose [the author] thought the y made the word look Greek,” Whewell remarked dryly).68 He would later suggest the term cotidal lines for the lines connecting places where high tide occurred at the same time, a name still used in the science of the tides today. Whewell was in something of naming mode these days. The day after his letter to Lubbock, Whewell suggested “Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene” to the geologist Charles Lyell as names for historical epochs, and in a few years he would give Michael Faraday the terms “ion, cathode, and anode” for his electricity research.69

  Through his correspondence with Lubbock, Whewell was drawn into the study of the tides. Always the gentleman of science, Whewell first asked Lubbock if he would mind Whewell publishing on “his” topic of the tides. Once Lubbock gave his consent, Whewell was off and running.70 Soon he would be acknowledged as the master of tidology. Over the next two decades Whewell would publish fourteen papers on the tides in the Transactions of the Royal Society, along the way winning the society’s gold medal for his tidology work in 1837. (Herschel and Whewell’s friend Wilkinson quipped that instead of a medal, Whewell should have received “a crown of sea-weed, with the motto Mari devicto”—the seas conquered. Whewell preferred the medal, and could not resist calculating its monetary value, telling Quetelet that “it is a very pretty plaything … being a piece of gold worth 50 guineas.”)71

  Whewell saw that it was not enough to gather facts about tides in just one place, such as the docks of London. This was useful for constructing accurate tide tables for those particular ports, but not for developing a comprehensive tidal theory. That was the work of the scientific ant, not the bee, and he was content to leave that job to Lubbock. Whewell believed that in order to discover how the tides truly moved, and how exactly that motion was caused, it was necessary to track the action of the tides all over the world. Not only would he need data from all over the world, but it would need to be in the form of frequent, and simultaneous, observations. This prospect might have been daunting to someone other than Whewell, but he did not give up. Soon Whewell would have his chance.

  In the meantime Whewell knew that the more local data about the tides, the better. Whewell took up Bacon’s suggestion that teams of observers be gathered from among the general public. Whewell encouraged people living near the coasts to make observations of the tides, whether they were men of science or not. To facilitate this mass gathering of tidal data, Whewell printed up a two-page circular titled “Suggestions for persons who have opportunities to collect observations of the tides,” reminiscent of Babbage’s “skeleton forms” for aiding in the gathering of data about factories. In his popular lectures at the British Association meetings, starting with the Cambridge meeting in 1833, Whewell gave instructions for making accurate observations, so that anyone living near a coast could go home from the meeting and start observing the tides straightaway. Whewell explained the ways that local observers could record the times of high water, and even how to correlate the times with the transits of the moon to achieve an empirical law.72 He also inserted queries aimed at sailors and dockmasters in the pages of the Nautical Magazine. Later he published a chapter on making observations in the Manual of Scientific Inquiry, edited for the British Admiralty by Herschel in 1849.73

  Whewell also reached out to his sister Ann. Although he rarely visited Lancaster any longer, he stayed in frequent contact with her, especially after their sister Elizabeth died. His letters describing his life among the dons in Cambridge, and his travels all over the world, provided Ann with more excitement than she was likely to find in Lancaster, and her replies helped Whewell feel connected to the family he had left behind in his leap into the elite realms of scientific and university society.

  Whewell asked Ann to see if she could arrange for tidal observations to be made near Lancaster. He then made another request. Ann was an avid reader of missionary magazines, which published proceedings of the missionary societies, tales of missionary experiences abroad (especially cases of remarkable conversions), accounts of religious revival meetings, theological discussions, and biographies of saints and famous missionaries. Her brother instructed her to take note of names and contact information of missionaries serving in the Pacific. Using her information, Whewell contacted one missionary, William Jowett, who provided Whewell with some valuable tidal data for the Pacific Ocean.74 Whewell reassured his sister, who he suspected might not share his view about the importance of mapping the tides, “Do not be shocked at my wanting to make such a use of missionaries; for, if it does not interfere with their more important duties, I dare say they will like very much to be so employed.”

  WHEWELL AND LUBBOCK enlisted a powerful ally in the study of the tides: Francis Beaufort, the head of the Hydrographic Office, the government’s outpost for mapping and describing the physical characteristics of the earth’s oceans, seas, rivers, and channels. Beaufort had begun his naval career at age fourteen. Early on, he was struck by difficulties caused by the lack of a standard method of assessing the force of the wind on ships. Sailors spoke of “light airs,” “stiff breezes,” and “half-gales” as if these were rigid designations, but in fact there was no way of accurately measuring the wind’s strength: one man’s “light air” might be another’s “stiff breeze.” In 1806 Beaufort devised the “wind scale” that still bears his name; by 1838 it had become the standard measure of the wind’s force, used on all British navy ships. The Beaufort wind scale, with its thirteen classes, related wind
conditions to their effects on the sails of a man-of-war (then the main vessel of the Royal Navy), from “just sufficient to give steerage” to “that which no canvas sails can withstand.”75 With some modifications, the Beaufort scale is still used today to describe the force of wind at sea.

  Beaufort was known to Whewell and the other members of the Philosophical Breakfast Club through his connections to their friend Maria Edgeworth. His sister Fanny was the fourth wife of Maria’s much-widowed father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Beaufort later married Maria’s half sister Honora, thus becoming both brother-in-law and step-uncle to Maria. Beaufort was responsible for organizing scientific expeditions on the oceans, specifically for staffing and equipping them. In this capacity he was the government official who approved Charles Darwin for the position of naturalist on the voyage of the HMS Beagle when it sailed from Plymouth at the end of December 1831. Beaufort would prove to be most useful in organizing mass tidal observations both within the British naval outposts and beyond.

  In June of 1834, on Whewell’s suggestion, Beaufort ordered the coast guard to make observations of the tides from all of its stations—over four hundred in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales—every fifteen minutes for two weeks. Beaufort proudly reported to Herschel in July that he had obtained a fortnight’s worth of tides for Whewell.76 Whewell had drafted directions for the observers, which Beaufort had distributed, and these were followed so well that Whewell, who had gone to Suffolk to check up on the proceedings, decided that, as he told Jones, “I could not do better than come back and write philosophy.”77

  As Whewell reduced and graphed the data, he and Beaufort realized that the success of this tidal project could be extended throughout the globe. Beaufort wrote to foreign hydrographers, and had the Admiralty send off letters to foreign heads of state, requesting that observations be made. The Duke of Wellington lent his diplomatic assistance to the effort.78 Whewell wrote Quetelet, requesting his assistance in persuading the Belgian government to make the observations at Nieuwport and Ostend.79 Whewell would later happily refer to this worldwide observation effort as a “large experiment”—the oceans of the world, it seemed, were his laboratory.80

  Miraculously, in those days before the electric telegraph allowed lightning-fast communication over long distances, the simultaneous observations were carried out without a hitch. For twenty days in June 1835, thousands of seamen, surveyors, dockhands, local savants, and amateur observers measured the tides every fifteen minutes, day and night. Nine countries, with close to seven hundred tidal stations, were involved: the United States, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Great Britain and Ireland. Herschel himself made the observations for the coast of the Cape of Good Hope, and was washed off the pier during one particularly violent high tide for his troubles.81 The tides were observed at the same time and under the same astronomical conditions in all places, generating vast amounts of data that had never been compiled before. Whewell later referred to this as the “crowning achievement in Tidology.”82 As he boasted to Herschel, “I had observations all the way from the mouth of the Mississippi to the North Cape of Norway!!”83

  At the end of the two weeks, Whewell was confronted with a frighteningly vast amount of data. But he stood at the ready; as he had resolutely told Lubbock earlier, at the start of his tidal work, “This is the way in which science generally begins.”84 Whewell took these reams of numbers—over forty thousand data points for high tide alone—reduced the data (with the help of human computers, whom he called “subordinate laborers”—Thomas Bywater in Liverpool, Thomas Bunt in Bristol, Daniel Ries in London), and arranged the data into tables showing how the tides correlated with wind, weather, and their position on the globe. In reducing the data, Whewell availed himself of what he called Herschel’s “method of graphical interpolation,” which his friend had already demonstrated in a paper on the orbits of double stars a few years earlier.85 Whewell used those tables to create a map showing how the tides progress through the Atlantic and onto the shores, into ports, inlets, estuaries, and rivers of all the major maritime nations and their colonial possessions. His “cotidal map” was composed of lines connecting places that experience high tides at the same time—for example, all places that have high tide at noon, one o’clock, two o’clock, and so on, showing how the tide progresses from the deep water of the ocean to the shores of Europe and the Americas.

  Whewell himself was disappointed in the end result, because he was not able to chart the cotidal lines for the entire world’s oceans.86 Indeed, in a lecture to the Royal Society in 1848, Whewell expressed doubts that such an accomplishment was even possible, because it depended on the assumption of a progressive wave over the oceans, which the new reams of data had shown to be incorrect.87 Yet his map was still an incredible achievement. The parts Whewell was able to map are quite similar to modern-day computer-generated cotidal charts. Even G. B. Airy, who was publicly skeptical of some of Whewell’s conclusions, had nothing but praise for his methods of calculating from the empirical data, and mapping the results. Whewell’s map was “one of the best specimens of the arrangement of numbers given by observation under a mathematical form,” he enthused.88 What impressed Airy so much was the visual form of the mathematical results: just by glancing at the cotidal map, a ship’s captain could perceive the times of high tide at many points in the ocean. Beaufort promptly sent copies of Whewell’s cotidal map to all the commanding officers of the coast guard and to his surveyors stationed all over the world. The British Admiralty soon began to publish tide tables for the use of British ships. By 1850 these official tide tables covered over one hundred ports, including most of Britain and numerous ports in Europe and overseas.89 Thanks to the work of Lubbock, Whewell, and Beaufort, it suddenly became much safer to sail the seas.

  Whewell’s work on the tides inspired future work that would finally solve one of the problems Whewell had set for himself: to make accurate predictions of the motions of the tides in particular spots along all the coastlines of the world. Whewell had realized that the exact determination of the tides in a given place “depends upon the depth of the ocean, the form of the shores, and other causes,” all of which are impossible to know a priori, without observation and measurement.90 In the 1870s, two former Cambridge students—influenced not only by Whewell, but also by Babbage—would carry this realization further, and devise a method for predicting coastal tides throughout the world.

  William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) and Charles Darwin’s son George Howard Darwin invented a method for tidal predictions known as “harmonic analysis,” which is still used today to predict the tides. In this method, the tide curve for a given port (a graphical representation of the times and heights of high water) is represented as an average height and a sum of certain “constituents.” The number of constituents that need to be factored in vary from port to port—in the case of Long Island Sound, for example, the number is twenty-three—but always include the inclination of the earth’s equatorial plane with respect to the plane of the moon’s orbit (generally, the moon’s orbit spends two weeks above the earth’s equator, and two weeks below), and the distance of the moon to the earth (as the moon’s orbit is elliptical rather than perfectly circular, the moon is closer to the earth during certain points in its orbit).91

  These calculations are extremely complex, involving many trigonometric functions. Like every other man of science in England at the time, Thomson knew about Babbage’s work creating a mechanical computer. Thomson began to wonder whether a similar kind of machine could be put to work calculating the tidal predictions using harmonic analysis. Deciding in the affirmative, Thomson invented—and arranged to have built—a “tide predicting machine” in 1873. Using a complex arrangement of wheels and pulleys, the machine could be input with the constituents of the equation and would output a graph of the expected tide heights. Worked with a crank handle, the machine could run a year’s worth of tides for any port in about four hours.
92

  Besides influencing the later work in harmonic analysis, Whewell’s research on the tides more generally brought about a particular vision of what a modern scientist does. Whewell created in his own person the model of a modern-day professional research scientist, who realizes the need for data, arranges the international effort to find the required data, assigns computers to calculate the data, and—important—seeks funding for the whole endeavor. The first grant of the British Association, in 1833, was to Whewell, Lubbock, and others for work on the tides; much of it went to pay Dessiou for computing. In the end, Whewell received over £1,000 for making calculations from the tidal observations, the most any single man of science received in the early years of the British Association.93 This is a standard professional model today, but Whewell was perhaps the first real instantiation of it.

  Whewell’s research on the tides not only transformed the image of the scientist, but helped transform science itself—into an international undertaking that relied upon governmental participation and support. Today’s examples of such efforts include the International Space Station and CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory. Later, Whewell and Herschel would be the major force behind the government-financed international expedition to determine the magnetic structure of the earth. International “big” science was born in the tides of Britain and around the world.