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| Parker, Christopher. “English Historians and
the Opposition to Positivism,” History and Theory Vol. XXII, No.
2 (May 1983): 120-145.
Parker discusses Kingsley’s views on the philosophy of history, especially as set out in his 1860 inaugural lecture as Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, “The Limits of Exact Science as Applied to History”. Though Kingsley supported the increased use of scientific methods in historical research in order to seek more order, a natural instinct, he nevertheless represented “a potent fear of order and prediction, a fear of the future and therefore, of knowledge of the future and of a predetermined future” (128). Kingsley, according to Parker, considered it almost blasphemy to seek complete understanding of God’s laws. Still, Kingsley recognized the role of the individual, and that of the genius who could reshape man’s destinies. Though his views on the role of the genius are unclear, perhaps deliberately, they, declares Parker, “anticipated Nietzsche” (129). History;
“The Limits
of Exact Science as Applied to History”.
Rothblatt, Sheldon. The Revolution of the
Dons: Cambridge and Society in Victorian England (New York: Basic Books,
1968).
History;
Comte;
“The
Limits of Exact Science as Applied to History”.
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