## TL;DR
The paper explores the history of the peer review syste...
In 2022, Alexander Blum published a [paper](https://link.springer.c...
Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen’s ended up publishing a revised so...
William Whewell was a prominent figure in 19th-century science and ...
There are already multiple examples of groundbreaking discoveries t...
FEBRUARY 2017
|
PHYSICS TODAY 45
Melinda Baldwin is PHYSICS TODAY’s Books editor
and the author of Making “Nature”: The History of a
Scientific Journal (University of Chicago Press, 2015).
So far, this story will sound familiar to most PHYSICS TODAY
readers. Modern scientists expect that their submissions to
journals will be read and criticized and will require revision
before they are admi!ed into the corpus of published scientific
literature. Einstein, however, did not share those expectations.
In fact, he was surprised and offended by the idea that his
paper had been sent out for external review. (See the article by
Daniel Kennefick, P
HYSICS TODAY, September 2005, page 43.) In
his riposte to Tate, Einstein said that he and Rosen
had sent you our manuscript for publication and
had not authorized you to show it to specialists
before it is printed. I see no reason to address the—
in any case erroneous—comments of your anony-
mous expert. On the basis of this incident I prefer
to publish the paper elsewhere.
Einstein kept his word. He would never again submit a re-
search article for publication in Physical Review.
It might be tempting to view Einstein’s reaction as a show
of ego by a senior physicist who thought his fame would allow
him to skip the peer review process. However, digging deeper
into the history of peer review uncovers a more complicated
picture. In 1936 refereeing was not a universal practice at the
world’s top scientific journals. It was not even a universal prac-
tice at Physical Review. Einstein’s previous submission to that
journal, the famous 1936 Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paper,
was not sent out for referee reports despite its provocative anti -
quantum conclusions.
So Einstein’s bafflement at receiving an anonymous report
criticizing his paper was hardly inexplicable. But 80 years later,
peer review is an expected and established part of publishing
for scientists and scholars in almost every academic discipline.
How did this process become so ingrained
in scientific life?
The origins of journal refereeing
Many academic and popular articles
about peer review assign it the same ori-
gin story. In 1665 the Royal Society gave
its secretary Henry Oldenburg permis-
sion to compile Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society of London, generally re-
garded as the world’s first scientific jour-
nal. Oldenburg immediately thought it
wise to gather expert opinions on the pa-
pers he wanted to publish. Thus peer review was born and was
ever a$er a consistent part of scientific publishing.
Or was it?
That origin story appears to have its roots in a famous 1971
sociology article—Harriet Zuckerman and Robert Merton’s
“Pa!erns of evaluation in science: Institutionalization, structure
and functions of the referee system.”
1
Zuckerman and Merton’s
article, based on an analysis of referee decisions at Physical Re-
view, remains a foundational study of the sociology of peer re-
view. It was so groundbreaking that P
HYSICS TODAY printed a
condensed version in its July 1971 issue (page 28). In crediting
Oldenburg with the invention of peer review, Zuckerman and
Merton implied that peer review’s form and function had
changed li!le since the 17th century.
More recent historical work, however, has called Zucker-
man and Merton’s history into question. In reality, Oldenburg
rarely consulted outside opinions on what should be published
in Philosophical Transactions, and he held such close control over
the journal’s contents that he occasionally referred to himself
as its “author.” There was not even a formal submission process.
Oldenburg would simply print what interested him and what
he thought might be of value to his readers, including not only
experimental papers but secondhand accounts of others’ exper-
iments, discussions of recent books, and even his own personal
correspondence.
2
Although Oldenburg was indeed a pivotal figure in the his-
tory of science publishing, he was not peer review’s inventor.
That honor arguably belongs to William Whewell, a Cambridge
University polymath who also coined the terms “physicist”
and “scientist.” In 1831 Whewell suggested that the Royal So-
ciety should commission wri!en reports on papers submi!ed
for publication in Philosophical Transactions. He thought those
I
n the early summer of 1936, Albert Einstein and
his assistant Nathan Rosen submitted a paper on
gravitational waves to Physical Review. In it they
argued that gravitational waves did not exist—a
controversial claim that went against the prevailing
scientific consensus. Six weeks after the paper’s submission, Physical
Review editor-in-chief John Torrence Tate wrote back to Einstein with
a copy of a critical referee report and asked for a response to the
reviewer’s comments.
46 PHYSICS TODAY
|
FEBRUARY 2017
reports should then be pub-
lished in the Society’s new jour-
nal, Proceedings of the Royal So-
ciety of London, thereby fulfilling
the dual purpose of fostering
rich scientific discussions and
providing material for the new
publication.
3
The Royal Society adopted
Whewell’s suggestion of solic-
iting reports but shi!ed quickly
away from his vision of print-
ing them for public discussion.
A handful of reports did ap-
pear in Proceedings, but by the
mid 1830s that practice had
ceased. Instead, the society
decided that referee opinions
were mainly useful for help-
ing it avoid printing anything
embarrassing in its publica-
tions. By the mid 19th cen-
tury, refereeing for Philosoph-
ical Transactions was almost
entirely run by two secretaries,
one in the physical sciences and
one in the biological sciences.
The secretaries were eminent members of the so-
ciety, and they each worked with an assistant sec-
retary to arrange refereeing for the papers sub-
mi"ed to Philosophical Transactions.The referee
reports came to be seen as confidential documents
for the internal use of the society. For many years,
they were not made available to the authors of
accepted or rejected papers.
Because authors did not see the reports, there
was no real equivalent to today’s common “revise and resub-
mit” decision. Submissions to Philosophical Transactions were ei-
ther accepted or rejected. However, the secretaries did occa-
sionally encourage authors of Philosophical Transactions papers
to revise their articles before they went to print. Physicist George
Gabriel Stokes, who served as the society’s physical sciences
secretary for more than 30 years, o!en suggested changes to
authors via personal correspondence. Stokes would paraphrase
useful comments from the Philosophical Transactions referees,
and if Stokes himself had refereed the paper, he would o!en
send the author a copy of his full, signed report.
4
Refereeing in the early 20th century
At the end of the 19th century, an important shi! began to take
place in the scientific community’s view of referees. With con-
cerns growing about the overall quality of the scientific litera-
ture, the referee was no longer simply helping protect the rep-
utation of a scientific society or journal. Instead, the referee was
increasingly seen as someone whose work was to protect the
reputation and trustworthiness of the entire scientific litera-
ture, to staunch a flood of “veritable sewage thrown into the
pure stream of science,” as physiologist and Member of Parlia-
ment Michael Foster put it.
3
By the early 20th century, refereeing procedures had spread
to most scientific societies in
the English-speaking world.
In theory the procedures were
wide-ranging, but in practice
the referees themselves tended
to belong to small networks
of elite scientists.
5
Early-20th-
century refereeing procedures
were less formal than the ones
we now associate with scien-
tific journals, and authors usu-
ally did not see referee reports.
At Physical Review, for ex-
ample, referees knew that the
editor would paraphrase their
comments for authors and
o!en submi"ed brief, casual,
and occasionally sarcastic re-
ports. Frequent referee Howard
P. R o b e r t s o n ( 1 9 0 3 – 6 1 ) o n c e
suggested that a paper could
be improved “if it were writ-
ten in invisible ink.” It was not
until 1935 that Physical Review
offered referees a standard
questionnaire about papers.
And not until the 1960s did
systematic refereeing for all papers become an
official policy.
6
Commercial journals printed by for-profit
publishers were even less likely to employ sys-
tematic refereeing before the Cold War. Indeed,
publications like the Philosophical Magazine or
Nature would continue to keep editorial deliber-
ations in-house well into the 20th century. Those
periodicals placed a high value on printing is-
sues quickly, and many were run by ambitious editors who saw
li"le reason to consult anyone outside a small circle of trusted
advisers to decide whether or not a paper was good.
Likewise, many prominent journals outside the English-
speaking world relied heavily on the judgment of their editors
to select content. Such journals o!en counted some of the coun-
try’s most respected scientists among their editorial staff. For
instance, Max Planck was a longtime member of the editorial
board at the revered physics journal Annalen der Physik. Few
physicists would have questioned Planck’s ability to decide,
with or without any outside opinions, which papers belonged
in Annalen.
The story of external refereeing at grant organizations is
similar to the story for journal refereeing. Private grant organ-
izations such as the Rockefeller Foundation generally le! fund-
ing decisions in the hands of trusted middle managers long
a!er World War I.
7
Grant organizations associated with gov-
ernments or scientific societies were more likely to use external
refereeing, although the practice was by no means universal.
When the US government formed the National Institutes of
Health in 1948, NIH’s division of research grants initially eval-
uated grant applications with li"le or no consultation with out-
side referees. Instead, small “study sections” composed of NIH-
affiliated scientific experts were the first to review proposals.
FIGURE 1. THE ENGLISH
POLYMATH WILLIAM
WHEWELL (1794–1866)
proposed in 1831 that the
Royal Society should collect
and publish reports on
Philosophical Transactions
papers.
REFEREES
FEBRUARY 2017
|
PHYSICS TODAY 47
Final authority over funding decisions
rested with institute directors—the heads
of NIH’s constituent institutions, such as
the National Cancer Institute.
The National Science Foundation, es-
tablished by federal law in 1950, was more
reliant than NIH was on outside experts
for opinions on proposals. Some propos-
als were sent out ad hoc for mail review:
Copies of the proposal were mailed to sci-
entists who submi!ed their comments by
return mail. Other proposals were evalu-
ated by special panels of experts assem-
bled in Washington, DC.
As was the case with NIH, however,
decisions about funding at NSF were
largely in the hands of NSF employees.
Directors were responsible for deciding
which proposals to fund, and referee opin-
ions were seen as only one piece of their
decision—an important piece, but not the
determining factor for whether NSF would
award or withhold funding. Furthermore,
at both NSF and NIH, referee reports were
not shared with grant applicants. Scientists who
submi!ed proposals would receive only a short
summary prepared by a government employee
that stated the major reasons for acceptance or
rejection.
Before the Cold War, journals or grant or-
ganizations that eschewed refereeing or placed
significant power in the hands of editors and di-
rectors were not seen as less reliable or less scientific than ones
that depended on referees. And the story of Einstein’s clash
with Physical Review shows that researchers who were accus-
tomed to editors or foundation directors making decisions did
not necessarily see external refereeing as a superior system.
Why, a"er all, should an author trust the word of an anony-
mous referee rather than a respected editor or program director
who was willing to sign his name to his remarks?
Public trust and peer review
The term “peer review” first began to appear in the scientific
press in the 1960s. Interestingly, the term does not seem to have
originated at journals. Instead, “peer review” was originally
used to describe review commi!ees at grant organizations—
most o"en NIH—and in the medical community.
“Peer review means different things to different people,”
physician and researcher Irvine H. Page explained in a 1973
editorial for the Journal of the American Medical Association. He
continued:
To most American physicians it means PSRO [the
Professional Standards Review Organization, which
reviewed compliance with American Medicare
laws], to the British House of Lords it means Peers
examining other Peers for moral turpitude, and to
the scientific community, it means Study Sections
and Councils that determine a grantee’s financial
and possibly research future.
8
Significantly, journal refereeing was not one of
the definitions Page offered, although scientists
and editors slowly adopted the term for that
purpose over the course of the 1970s.
One episode that brought the term into
more common use was a 1975 controversy
about funding at NSF—a controversy that
would both highlight and solidify peer re-
view’s increasing importance to the research community. Sci-
entists in the US, particularly physicists, entered the Cold War
riding on the success of the Manha!an Project. By 1953 US gov-
ernment spending on science had increased by a factor of 25
from its prewar numbers—and science’s public profile only in-
creased a"er the Soviet Union beat the US into space with the
launch of Sputnik in 1957.
9
The US enthusiasm for science funding proved finite, how-
ever. As early as 1966, a study by the Department of Defense
concluded that DoD spending on basic research had not yielded
significant progress on the department’s goals, such as new
weapons. The study was published in a document called the
Project Hindsight report, whose findings caused some legisla-
tors and commentators to begin questioning scientific spend-
ing more broadly. Project Hindsight was an early hint that the
social and financial status scientists had acquired in the early
Cold War might be at risk.
By 1975 the Cold War had entered a relatively calm period
of official détente between the two superpowers. The goal of
keeping up with the USSR seemed less crucial. Furthermore,
the US was suffering from an economic crisis. Oil and gas sup-
plies shrank when several major oil-producing countries re-
fused to sell oil to the US in retaliation for the country’s support
for Israel in the 1973 Arab–Israeli war. Economic growth stalled.
Inflation and unemployment soared. With Congress under pres-
sure to trim expenditures from dwindling tax revenues, a hand-
ful of lawmakers set their sights on NSF.
The most prominent NSF opponent was Senator William
FIGURE 2. DEMOCRATIC
SENATOR WILLIAM PROXMIRE
(1915–2005) was a vocal critic of
NSF in the 1970s and a master of
the acerbic press release. (Image
reproduced by permission of the
Wisconsin Historical Society.)
48 PHYSICS TODAY
|
FEBRUARY 2017
REFEREES
Proxmire, a colorful Wisconsin Democrat with a knack
for publicity. In March 1975 Proxmire began issuing
his famous Golden Fleece Award, which he gave to
the government project that he deemed the month’s
worst use of taxpayer money. The first two Golden
Fleece Awards went to NSF projects: a University of
Wisconsin sociological study about interpersonal at-
traction and psychologist Ronald Hutchinson’s work
on why humans, rats, and monkeys clench their jaws
in moments of stress. Proxmire called on NSF to “get
out of the love racket” and declared that Hutchinson’s
“nonsense” had “made a monkey out of the Ameri-
can taxpayer.”
Meanwhile, an ambitious Republican congressman
named John Conlan began criticizing NSF’s spending
on its education programs, particularly Man: A
Course of Study (MACOS) and the Individualized
Science Instructional System (ISIS). MACOS was a
social sciences curriculum that had been controver-
sial since the early 1970s in Conlan’s home state of
Arizona, where critics claimed that it promoted moral
relativism. ISIS, a program aimed at fourth-graders,
was accused of being too explicit about reproductive
education.
In his quest to discover why MACOS and ISIS had received
government funding, Conlan came into conflict with NSF lead-
ership, including the foundation’s director, H. Guyford Stever.
Conlan requested full copies of NSF’s referee reports, along
with the names of the reviewers. Stever replied that referees
submi!ed their reports under an “implied promise of confi-
dentiality” and that releasing the text of the reports or the
names of the reviewers would violate NSF policy. Conlan, how-
ever, was not persuaded.
I would again remind you that I am a Member of
Congress on a Commi!ee charged with the over-
sight of the National Science Foundation. . . .
Consequently, I do again demand that you make
available the peer reviewer comments originally
demanded by me—in their original and complete
form, not paraphrased.
10
The public debate and private exchanges over NSF grants
led to the National Science Foundation Peer Review Special
Oversight Hearings, held before the House subcommi!ee on
science, research, and technology in July 1975. Over the course
of six days, Congressional questioners and witnesses discussed
NSF’s peer review process at length.
In his testimony, Conlan argued that NSF’s system placed
too much decision-making power in the hands of NSF directors,
and did not give enough weight to referee reports. He claimed
that the only way to hold the foundation accountable was to make
referee reports public, along with the names of the referees.
The NSF team came to the hearing prepared to make changes
in response to the criticisms. Director Stever announced that as
of 1 January 1976, applicants would be given full copies of their
referee reports instead of just the summaries. However, Stever
insisted that referees must remain anonymous to ensure their
candor. NSF leaders also indicated that in the future, a new
audit office would ensure that directors were placing appro-
priate weight on positive and negative referee reports—in
other words, placing more decision-making power in the hands
of referees.
Following the hearings, NSF’s education programs were
significantly downsized, and funding for MACOS and ISIS was
almost entirely eliminated. However, NSF’s peer review re-
forms quieted the fiercest criticisms, at least temporarily, and
the controversy soon faded from public view. Proxmire, mean-
while, became embroiled in a lawsuit when Golden Fleece
FIGURE 3. SEVERAL SHORT, HANDWRITTEN REFEREE REPORTS
submitted to the Royal Society in 1873. It was common for referees
to simply recommend publication or rejection with only a few
explanatory comments. These reports would not have been seen by
the paper’s author. (Image reproduced by permission of the Royal
Society Library and Archives, item RR_7_176.)
FEBRUARY 2017
|
PHYSICS TODAY 49
awardee Hutchinson sued him for libel. Proxmire eventually
made a public apology to the psychologist and omi!ed indi-
vidual names from future Golden Fleece press releases.
Although most of the criticisms were leveled at the social
sciences, scientists from across disciplines followed the contro-
versy. P
HYSICS TODAY reported closely on the hearings and on
NSF’s policy changes. Editor-in-chief Harold Davis argued in
an editorial that the hearings demonstrated “that peer review
is by far the best means we have for deciding how funding
should be distributed in a given area.” (See P
HYSICS TODAY, Sep-
tember 1975, page 96.) In the same editorial, Davis went on to
announce that P
HYSICS TODAY would be sending complimen-
tary issues to every member of Congress to illuminate the inner
workings of the scientific community. As Davis put it, “In an
age in which the issues of society cannot avoid being ever more
closely involved with science and technology we are going to
need more peer review, not less.”
The 1960s and 1970s seem to have been a crucial period of
transition for ideas about peer review. In the mid 20th century,
external refereeing was simply one of several methods a jour-
nal or grant-issuing organization could use to choose which
submissions to accept or reject. By the end of the Cold War,
peer review was a prerequisite for scientific respectability.
The NSF controversy strongly suggests that one reason for
the increased emphasis on peer review, at least in the US, was
a shi"ing relationship between scientists and the public during
the Cold War. Spending on both basic and applied research
had increased dramatically in the 1950s and 1960s—but when
doubts began to creep in about the public value of the work
that money had funded, scientists were faced with the prospect
of losing both public trust and access to research funding.
Legislators wanted publicly funded science to be accountable;
scientists wanted decisions about science to be le" in expert
hands. Trusting peer review to ensure that only the best and
most essential science received funding seemed a way to split
the difference.
Peer review in crisis?
Today peer review is an expected part of publishing any sci-
entific article or obtaining grants. However, few would argue
that it is a perfect process. Many observers have lamented
that fraudulent or flawed results still reach the pages of peer-
reviewed journals. Others complain that the peer review system
favors established ideas and institutions and stifles scientific
innovation.
In 2014 Michael Eisen, a cofounder of the publisher Public
Library of Science (PLOS), told the Wall Street Journal that sci-
entists and nonscientists need to discard the notion “that peer
review of any kind at any journal means that a work of science
is correct. What it means is that a few (1–4) people read it over
and didn’t see any major problems.”
11
Another drawback with the current peer review system is
that the work reviewers put in generally does not count toward
tenure or promotion. Overburdened scientists face li!le incen-
tive to write long, careful, and detailed reports that go beyond
discharging their minimum duty as good scientific citizens.
The shi" to online publication and reading seems to suggest
alternative methods for ve!ing articles, such as allowing scien-
tists to post comments about those they read. Physicists have
long relied on the non-peer-reviewed arXiv.org to find the lat-
est publications in their field, although readers may regard a
paper posted to the arXiv but never published in a journal as
somewhat questionable.
Other journals have been experimenting with slightly al-
tered peer review systems. PLOS One, a well-known open ac-
cess journal, instructs its referees to judge only the quality of the
science in the paper, not the work’s perceived importance or
impact. The reasoning behind PLOS One’s policy is that work-
ing scientists will determine which papers are most important
a"er publication. Another journal, eLife, puts referees and edi-
tors in communication with each other to arrive at a single joint
decision on a paper’s future, rather than sending authors mul-
tiple reports that might disagree wildly with one another.
As the scientific community considers peer review’s future,
it may be instructive to consider its past. We o"en speak of ref-
ereeing as something that has been a stable and unchanging
part of science ever since the age of Isaac Newton, but peer re-
view’s story is both shorter and more complex than we o"en
assume. It is also li!ered with criticism. As early as 1845, the
scientific referee was described as “full of envy, hatred, malice,
and all uncharitableness.”
3
Complaints about reviewer useless-
ness and bias, in other words, are hardly new.
It also seems significant that refereeing procedures were not
initially developed to detect fraud or to ensure the accuracy of
scientific claims. Whewell thought referee reports would spur
scientific discussion, and scientific societies adopted refereeing
to ensure that nothing obviously embarrassing reached print.
Authors, not referees, were responsible for the contents of their
papers. It was not until the 20th century that anyone thought
a referee should be responsible for the quality of the scientific
literature, and not until the Cold War that something had to be
peer-reviewed to be seen as scientifically legitimate.
Peer review’s role in the scientific community has never
been static. Its form and purpose have been shaped and re-
shaped according to what scientists needed from the practice—
whether it was credibility for a scientific society, improvements
in the scientific literature, or assurances to public funders that
their money was being spent responsibly. If scientists are to
tranform peer review’s future, they must consider what pur-
pose they want it to serve—and whether that purpose can in-
deed be fulfilled by reports from two or more referees.
REFERENCES
1. H. Zuckerman, R. Merton, Minerva 9, 66 (1971).
2. A. Fyfe, J. McDougall-Waters, N. Moxham, Notes Rec.: R. Soc. J.
Hist. Sci. 69, 227 (2015).
3. A. Csiszar, Nature 532, 306 (2016).
4. M. Baldwin, in The Age of Scientific Naturalism: Tyndall and His
Contemporaries, B. Lightman, M. Reidy, eds., Pickering and Chatto
(2014), p. 171.
5. I. Clarke, Isis 106, 70 (2015).
6. R. Lalli, Notes Rec.: R. Soc. J. Hist. Sci. 70, 151 (2016).
7. R. Kohler, Partners in Science: Foundations and Natural Scientists,
1900–1945, U. Chicago Press (1991), p. 68.
8. I. H. Page, J. Am. Med. Assoc. 225, 1240 (1973).
9. D. Kaiser, Nature 505, 153 (2014).
10. J. Conlan to H. G. Stever, 15 May 1975, in National Science Foun-
dation Peer Review, Special Oversight Hearings, US House of
Representatives, p. 21.
11. M. Eisen, quoted in H. Campbell, Wall Street Journal, 13 July 2014,
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hank-campbell-the-corruption-of
-peer-review-is-harming-scientific-credibility-1405290747.
PT
In 2022, Alexander Blum published a [paper](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00407-022-00295-6#:~:text=In%20a%201936%20manuscript%20submitted,error%20underlying%20this%20fallacious%20claim.) with a detailed study of the extant referee report, and concluded that Einstein's claim was probably only the result of a calculational error, the accidental use of a pathological coordinate transformation!
Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen’s ended up publishing a revised solution for gravitational waves in the Journal of the Franklin Institute.
## TL;DR
The paper explores the history of the peer review system in scientific publishing. It highlights the evolution of peer review, challenging the common belief that it has always been a fundamental part of scientific communication.
The paper explores the origins of peer review, its adoption and transformation over time, and how it has become a cornerstone of modern scientific research, despite not always being a standard practice in the past. Baldwin's analysis also covers the debates and controversies surrounding peer review, including its role in ensuring the credibility and quality of scientific literature.
There are already multiple examples of groundbreaking discoveries that were never published in peer-reviewed journals.
The publication of the proof of the Poincaré Conjecture on arXiv was a significant moment in the history of mathematics. The Poincaré Conjecture, one of the most famous and long-standing problems in topology, was solved by the Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman, who published his proof in a series of papers on arXiv in the early 2000s.
Perelman's decision to bypass traditional peer-reviewed journals and instead opt for arXiv because he despised the idea of paying for the distribution of scientific journals.
William Whewell was a prominent figure in 19th-century science and philosophy, best known for his wide-ranging contributions across various disciplines. Educated at Cambridge University, Whewell distinguished himself not only in the natural sciences but also in philosophy, history, and even theology. His diverse interests and expertise led him to be recognized as a polymath, a person with knowledge in multiple fields.
One of Whewell's most notable contributions to the world of science and academia was his development of new scientific terminology. He is credited with coining several terms that are now fundamental to scientific discourse. Among these are "physicist" and "scientist," words he created to describe practitioners of physical science and general scientific inquiry, respectively. Before Whewell's introduction of these terms, there was no concise way to refer to a person engaged in scientific pursuits; individuals were often referred to by more specific terms related to their particular field of study, such as "natural philosopher" or "chemist."
Whewell's impact extended beyond terminology. He made significant contributions to the fields of mineralogy, geology, and astronomy. In mineralogy, he conducted research that led to the identification of new mineral species. In geology, he contributed to the understanding of the Earth's crust and the processes that shape it. In astronomy, he worked on understanding the tides and contributed to the study of lunar motions.
Moreover, Whewell was an influential figure in the philosophy of science. He engaged deeply with the methodologies and epistemological underpinnings of scientific inquiry. He argued for the synergy between inductive and deductive reasoning in the advancement of scientific knowledge. This perspective was influential in shaping the scientific method as it is understood today.