Baden Powell (mathematician)

Infobox Scientist
name = Baden Powell
box_width =

---

image_width =
caption =
birth_date = birth date|1796|08|22
birth_place =
death_date = death date and age|1860|06|11|1796|08|22
death_place = Kensington, London, England
residence =
citizenship =
nationality =
ethnicity =
field =
work_institutions =
alma_mater =
doctoral_advisor =
doctoral_students =
known_for =
author_abbrev_bot =
author_abbrev_zoo =
influences =
influenced =
prizes =
religion =
footnotes =

Rev. Baden Powell, MA, FRS, FRGS (22 August 1796–11 June 1860 Kensington, London) [GRO Register of Deaths: JUN 1860 1a 38 KENSINGTON - Baden Powell, age unknown] was an English mathematician and Church of England priest. He was also prominent as a liberal theologian who put forward advanced ideas about evolution. He held the Savilian Chair of Geometry at the University of Oxford from 1827 to 1860. After his death his family changed their surname to Baden-Powell in his memory.

His son, Sir George Baden-Powell was a politician, and served in the Colonial Service. Another son, Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, was the founder of the world Scouting movement. A third son, Major Baden Baden-Powell was an aviation pioneer and travelled the world extensively. His daughter Agnes Baden-Powell was, with her brother Robert, the founder of the Girl Guide movement.

Family

Professor Baden Powell's first marriage on 21 July 1821 to Eliza Rivaz (died 13 March 1836) was childless.

His second marriage on 27 September 1837 to Charlotte Pope (died 14 October 1844) produced one son and three daughters
* Charlotte Elizabeth Powell (14 September 1838–20 October 1917)
* Baden Henry Powell (23 August 1841–2 January 1901)
* Louisa Ann Powell (18 March 1843–1 August 1896)
* Laetitia Mary Powell (4 June 1844–2 September 1865)

His third marriage on 10 March 1846 (at St Luke's Church, Chelsea) with Henrietta Grace Smyth (3 September 1824–13 October 1914), produced seven sons and three daughters, three of whom died in infancy:
* Henry Warington Smyth Powell (later Baden-Powell), KC (3 February 1847–24 April 1921)
* (Sir) George Smyth Powell (later Baden-Powell), KCMG, MP (24 December 1847–20 November 1898)
* Augustus Smyth Powell (1849–1863),
* Francis Smyth Powell (later Baden-Powell) (29 July 1850–1931)
* Henrietta Smyth Powell (28 October 1851–9 March 1854),
* John Penrose Smyth Powell (21 December 1852–14 December 1855),
* Jessie Smyth Powell (25 November 1855–24 July 1856),
* Robert Stephenson Smyth Powell (later Baden-Powell), 1st Baron Baden-Powell (22 February 1857–8 January 1941)
* Agnes Smyth Powell (later Baden-Powell), (16 December 1858–2 June 1945)
* (Major) Baden Fletcher Smyth Powell (later Baden-Powell), FS, FRAS, FRMetS (22 May 1860–3 October 1937)

Shortly after the professor's death, the remaining children of his third marriage became 'Baden-Powell'.

Evolution

Powell was an outspoken advocate of the constant uniformity of the laws of the material world. His views were liberal, and he was sympathetic to evolutionary theory long before Charles Darwin had revealed his ideas. He argued that science should not be placed next to scripture or the two approaches would conflict, and in his own version of Francis Bacon's dictum, contended that the book of God's works was separate from the book of God's word, claiming that moral and physical phenomena were completely independent.cite web |url=http://www.human-nature.com/dm/chap1.html |title=The impact of Darwin on conventional thought|accessdate=2007-08-29 |author=Robert M. Young |authorlink=Robert M. Young (academic)|Robert M. Young |date=1985 |format= |work=Darwin's Metaphor: Nature's Place in Victorian Culture |publisher= |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote=]

His faith in the uniformity of nature (except man's mind) was set out in a theological argument; if God is a lawgiver, then a "miracle" would break the lawful edicts that had been issued at Creation. Therefore, a belief in miracles would be entirely atheistic. [harvnb|Desmond|Moore|1991|p=500] Powell's most significant works defended, in succession, the uniformitarian geology set out by Charles Lyell and the evolutionary ideas in "Vestiges of Creation" published anonymously by Robert Chambers which applied uniform laws to the history of life in contrast to more respectable ideas such as catastrophism involving a series of divine creations. "He insisted that no tortured interpretation of Genesis would ever suffice; we had to let go of the Days of Creation and base Christianity on the moral laws of the New Testament." [Desmond, Adrian 1982. "Archetypes and ancestors". Muller, London. p45]

Similarly, when the idea of natural selection was mooted by Darwin and Wallace in their 1868 papers to the Linnaean Society, both Powell and his young friend William Henry Flower thought that natural selection made creation rational. [Desmond, Adrian 1982. "Archetypes and ancestors". Muller, London. p51 et seq 'The Christian commitment'.]

This led Joseph Dalton Hooker to comment "These parsons are so in the habit of dealing with the abstraction of doctrines as if there was no difficulty about them whatever... that they gallop over the [science] course... as if we were in the pews and they in the pulpit. Witness the self confident style of...Baden Powell". [harvnb|Desmond|Moore|1991|p=412]

Essays and Reviews

He was one of seven liberal theologians who produced a manifesto titled "Essays and Reviews" around February 1860, which amongst other things joined in the debate over "On the Origin of Species". These Anglicans included Oxford professors, country clergymen, the headmaster of Rugby school and a layman. Their declaration that miracles were irrational stirred up unprecedented anger, drawing much of the fire away from Charles Darwin. "Essays" sold 22,000 copies in two years, more than the "Origin" sold in twenty years, and sparked five years of increasingly polarised debate with books and pamphlets furiously contesting the issues. [harvnb|Desmond|Moore|1991|p=500]

Referring to "Mr Darwin's masterly volume" and restating his argument that belief in miracles is atheistic, Baden Powell wrote that the book "must soon bring about an entire revolution in opinion in favour of the grand principle of the self-evolving powers of nature.":

He would have been on the platform at the legendary BA 1860 Oxford evolution debate that was a highlight of the reaction to Darwin's theory. That would indeed have been interesting, for Huxley's antagonist Wilberforce was also the foremost critic of "Essays and Reviews". Sadly, Powell died of a heart attack a fortnight before the meeting. [harvnb|Desmond|Moore|1991|p=500]

Works

* [http://books.google.com/books?id=xbYEAAAAYAAJ "History of Natural Philosophy from the Earliest Periods to the Present Time"] Published by Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1837, 396 pages

* [http://books.google.com/books?id=37tlmy-ImoYC "The Connexion of Natural and Divine Truth Or the Study of the Inductive Philosophy Considered as Subservient to Theology: Or, The Study of the Inductive Philosophy, Considered as Subservient to Theology"] , Published by J.W. Parker, 1838, 313 pages

* [http://books.google.com/books?id=BdYEAAAAYAAJ "A General and Elementary View of the Undulatory Theory, as Applied to the Dispersion of Light, and Some Other Subjects: Including the Substance of Several Papers, Printed in the Philosophical Transactions, and Other Journals"] , Published by J.W. Parker, 1841, 131 pages

* [http://books.google.com/books?id=w8cKAAAAIAAJ Lectures on Polarized Light: Together with a Lecture on the Microscope, Delivered Before the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, and at the Medical School of the London Hospital] , co-authored with Jonathan Pereira, Published by Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1854, 311 pages

* [http://books.google.com/books?id=3_IRAAAAYAAJ The Order of Nature: Considered in Reference to the Claims of Revelation : a Third Series of Essays] , Published by Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1859, 495 pages

Notes and references

*Citation
last = Darwin
first = Charles
author-link =Charles Darwin
year = 1861
title =On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
edition =3rd
publication-place = London
publisher =John Murray
url =
accessdate =
*Citation
last = Desmond
first = Adrian
last2 = Moore
first2 = James
author2-link =James Moore (biographer)
year = 1991
title = Darwin
publication-place = London
publisher =Michael Joseph, Penguin Group
isbn =0-7181-3430-3

Further reading

* Corsi, Pietro (1988). [http://books.google.com/books?id=Rnuha8Y33ZoC "Science and Religion: Baden Powell and the Anglican Debate, 1800-1860"] , Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-5212-4245-2, 346 pages

External links

*
* [http://www.pinetreeweb.com/bp-family-reverend-powell-notices.htm Collection of obituary notices]