Cambridge Before Darwin: The Ideal of a Liberal Education, 1800–1860

Martha McMackin Garland

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511896279

In this major contribution to the intellectual history of Cambridge University, Dr Garland takes as her main theme the rise of a specific educational ideal in early Victorian Cambridge, how it enjoyed a moment of triumph, and then how it fell under the impact of a new set of challenges. The story revolves around the careers of a group of 'conservative reformers', led by the Trinity dons Whewell and Sedgwick. They were the self-designated providers of a refurbished version of traditional Cambridge values in the new environment of a rapidly industrializing England, and took as their ideal a general unified core of knowledge based upon mathematics, classics and moral philosophy. They wished to retain this general structure because they believed it corresponded to the structure of the human mind and its mental faculties. For them, belief in the harmony of science and religion was part and parcel of their basically Broad Church religious views.

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Cambridge Before Darwin

The Ideal of a Liberal Education, 1800–1860

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-iv

Contents
pp v-vi

Preface
pp vii-x

1 - An academic ancien regime
pp 1-12

2 - Reform from within
pp 13-27

3 - Mathematics – the core of ‘permanent studies’
pp 28-51

4 - Reaction against Paley and the Benthamites
pp 52-69

5 - Religion and literature: toward the Broad Church
pp 70-89

6 - The challenge of Darwin
pp 90-112

7 - The disintegration of an ideal
pp 113-135

Notes
pp 136-183

Bibliography
pp 184-192

Index
pp 193-196

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Cambridge Before Darwin

The Ideal of a Liberal Education, 1800–1860

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