Weber, Wöhler, and Waitz: Virtue Language in Late Nineteenth-Century Physics, Chemistry, and History

Abstract

This paper compares the occurrence and use of virtue language among physicists, chemists, and historians in late nineteenth-century Germany, with a special focus on obituaries written for the Göttingen professors Wilhelm Weber, Friedrich Wöhler, and Georg Waitz. Although virtue language was far more prevalent in Waitz’s necrologies than in those commemorating Wöhler and Weber, historians, chemists, and physicists resembled each other in that they invoked epistemic virtues if and only if they felt that defining features of what it took to be a scholar were at stake. For all of them, epistemic virtues were shorthand for scholarly personae that they invoked at moments when they perceived those personae as being under pressure. More concretely, categories of virtue and vice served as means for taking sides in debates about such fundamental issues as the proper relation between academy and industry or the relative importance of source criticism in relation to writing – aspects of scientific work that made different demands on scientists in terms of the virtues or dispositions they required.