Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet
Encyclopedia
Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet (8 March 1788 – 6 May 1856) was a Scottish
metaphysician
.
. He was from an academic family, including Robert Hamilton, the economist. His father, Dr William Hamilton, had in 1781, on the strong recommendation of William Hunter
, been appointed to succeed his own father, Dr Thomas Hamilton, as Regius Professor of Anatomy, Glasgow
; and when he died in 1790, in his thirty-second year, he had already gained a great reputation. William Hamilton and a younger brother, Thomas Hamilton
, were brought up by their mother. William received his early education in Scotland, except for two years which he spent in a private school near London
, and in 1807 went as a Snell Exhibitioner
, to Balliol College, Oxford
. He obtained a first class in lit ens humanioribus and took his B.A. in 1811 (M.A. 1814). He had been intended for the medical profession, but soon after leaving Oxford he gave up this idea, and in 1813 became a member of the Scottish bar. His life continued to be that of a student; and the years that followed were filled by researches of all kinds, while at the same time he was gradually forming his philosophic system. Investigation enabled him to make good his claim to represent the ancient family of Hamilton of Preston, and in 1816 he took up the baronetcy, which had been in abeyance since the death of Sir Robert Hamilton of Preston (1650–1701), well known in his day as a Covenanting leader.
in 1817 and 1820 led to William's taking up the study of German
and later on that of contemporary German philosophy, which was almost entirely neglected in British universities. In 1820 he was a candidate for the chair of moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, which had fallen vacant on the death of Thomas Brown, colleague of Dugald Stewart
, and Stewart's consequent resignation, but was defeated on political grounds by John Wilson
, (1785–1854), the "Christopher North" of Blackwood's Magazine
. Soon afterwards (1821) he was appointed professor of civil history, and as such delivered several courses of lectures on the history of modern Europe and the history of literature. The salary was £100 a year, derived from a local beer tax, and was discontinued after a time. No pupils were compelled to attend, the class dwindled, and Hamilton gave it up when the salary ceased. In January 1827 his mother, to whom he had been devoted, died. In March 1828 he married his cousin, Janet Marshall.
's Cours de philosophie)--the first of a series of articles contributed by him to the Edinburgh Review
. He was elected in 1836 to the Edinburgh chair of logic and metaphysics, and from this time dates the influence which, during the next twenty years, he exerted over the thought of the younger generation in Scotland. Much about the same time he began the preparation of an annotated edition of Thomas Reid
's works, intending to annex to it a number of dissertations. Before, however, this design had been carried out, he was struck (1844) with paralysis of the right side, which seriously crippled his bodily powers, though it left his mind wholly unimpaired.
The edition of Reid appeared in 1846, but with only seven of the intended dissertations, one unfinished. At his death he had still not completed the work; notes on the subjects to be discussed were found among his manuscripts. Considerably earlier, he had formed his theory of logic
, the leading principles of which were indicated in the prospectus of "an essay on a new analytic of logical form
s" prefixed to his edition of Reid. But the elaboration of the scheme in its details and applications continued during the next few years to occupy much of his leisure. Out of this arose a sharp controversy with Augustus de Morgan
. The essay did not appear, but the results of the labour gone through are contained in the appendices to his Lectures on Logic.
Hamilton also prepared extensive materials for a publication which he designed on the personal history, influence and opinions of Martin Luther
. Here he advanced so far as to have planned and partly carried out the arrangement of the work; but it did not go further, and still remains in manuscript. In 1852-1853 appeared the first and second editions of his Discussions in Philosophy, Literature and Education, a reprint, with large additions, of his contributions to the Edinburgh Review
. Soon after, his general health began to fail. Assisted by his devoted wife, he persevered in literary labour; and during 1854-1855 he brought out nine volumes of a new edition of Stewart's works. The only remaining volume was to have contained a memoir of Stewart, but this he did not live to write. He taught his class for the last time in the winter of 1855-1856. Shortly after the close of the session he was taken ill, and died in Edinburgh.
as opposed to the older metaphysical method, and by his recognition of the importance of German philosophy, especially that of Immanuel Kant
. By far his most important work was "Philosophy of the Unconditioned," the development of the principle that for the human finite mind there can be no knowledge of the Infinite. The basis of his argument is the thesis, "To think is to condition." Deeply impressed with Kant's antithesis between subject and object, the knowing and the known, Hamilton laid down the principle that every object is known only in virtue of its relations to other objects. From this it follows limitless time, space, power and so forth are humanly speaking inconceivable. The fact, however, that all thought seems to demand the idea of the infinite or absolute provides a sphere for faith, which is thus the specific faculty of theology. It is a weakness characteristic of the human mind that it cannot conceive any phenomenon without a beginning: hence the conception of the causal relation, according to which every phenomenon has its cause in preceding phenomena, and its effect in subsequent phenomena. The causal concept is, therefore, only one of the ordinary necessary forms of the cognitive consciousness limited, as we have seen, by being confined to that which is relative or conditioned.
As regards the problem of the nature of objectivity, Hamilton simply accepts the evidence of consciousness as to the separate existence of the object: "the root of our nature cannot be a lie." In virtue of this assumption Hamilton's philosophy becomes a "natural realism." In fact his whole position is a strange compound of Kant and Reid. Its chief practical corollary is the denial of philosophy as a method of attaining absolute knowledge and its relegation to the academic sphere of mental training. The transition from philosophy to theology, i.e. to the sphere of faith, is presented by Hamilton under the analogous relation between the mind and the body. As the mind is to the body, so is the unconditioned Absolute or God
to the world of the conditioned. Consciousness
, itself a conditioned phenomenon, must derive from or depend on some different thing prior to or behind material phenomena. Curiously enough, however, Hamilton does not explain how it comes about that God, who in the terms of the analogy bears to the conditioned mind the relation which the conditioned mind bears to its objects, can Himself be unconditioned. He can be regarded only as related to consciousness, and insofar is, therefore, not absolute or unconditioned. Thus the very principles of Hamilton's philosophy are apparently violated in his theological
argument.
Hamilton regarded logic as a purely formal science; it seemed to him an unscientific mixing together of heterogeneous elements to treat as parts of the same science the formal and the material conditions of knowledge. He was quite ready to allow that on this view logic cannot be used as a means of discovering or guaranteeing facts, even the most general, and expressly asserted that it has to do, not with the objective validity, but only with the mutual relations, of judgments. He further held that induction and deduction are correlative processes of formal logic, each resting on the necessities of thought and deriving thence its several laws. The only logical laws which he recognized were the three axioms of identity, noncontradiction, and excluded middle, which he regarded as severally phases of one general condition of the possibility of existence and, therefore, of thought. The law of reason and consequent he considered not as different, but merely as expressing metaphysically what these express logically. He added as a postulate—which in his theory was of importance--"that logic be allowed to state explicitly what is thought implicitly." in logic, Hamilton is known chiefly as the inventor of the doctrine of the "quantification of the predicate," i.e. that the judgment "All A is B " should really mean "All A is all B," whereas the ordinary universal proposition should be stated "All A is some B." This view, which was supported by Stanley Jevons
, is fundamentally at fault since it implies that the predicate is thought of in its extension; in point of fact when a judgment is made, e.g. about men, that they are mortal ("All men are mortal"), the intention is to attribute a quality (i.e. the predicate is used in connotation). In other words, we are not considering the question "what kind are men among the various things which must die?" (as is implied in the form "all men are some mortals") but "what is the fact about men?" We are not stating a mere identity (see further, e.g., H. W. B. Joseph, Introduction to Logic, 1906, pp. 198 foll.).
The philosopher to whom above all others Hamilton professed allegiance was Aristotle. His works were the object of his profound and constant study, and supplied in fact the mould in which his whole philosophy was cast. With the commentators on the Aristotelian
writings, ancient, medieval and modern, he was also familiar; and the scholastic philosophy he studied with care and appreciation at a time when it had hardly yet begun to attract attention in his country. His wide reading enabled him to trace many a doctrine to the writings of forgotten thinkers; and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to draw forth such from their obscurity, and to give due acknowledgment, even if it chanced to be of the prior possession of a view or argument that he had thought out for himself. Of modern German philosophy he was a diligent, if not always a sympathetic, student. How profoundly his thinking was modified by that of Kant is evident from the tenor of his speculations; nor was this less the case because, on fundamental points, he came to widely different conclusions.
Hamilton was more than a philosopher; his knowledge and interests embraced all subjects related to that of the human mind. He studied anatomy and physiology. He was also well-read in ancient and modern literature, being particularly interested in the 16th and 17th centuries. Among his literary projects were editions of the works of George Buchanan
and Julius Caesar Scaliger
. His general scholarship found expression in his library, which became part of the library of the University of Glasgow.
He also may have had influence upon subsequent philosophy as the inspiration for a critique by John Stuart Mill
which resulted in perhaps the clearest statements ever of the idea of matter
as the permanent possibility of sensation.
, Oxford, and John Veitch (Metaphysics; Logic); and Additional Notes to Reid's Works, from Sir W. Hamilton's Manuscripts., under the editorship of HL Mansel, D.D. (1862). A Memoir of Sir W. Hamilton, by Veitch, appeared in 1869.
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
metaphysician
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
.
Early life
He was born in GlasgowGlasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
. He was from an academic family, including Robert Hamilton, the economist. His father, Dr William Hamilton, had in 1781, on the strong recommendation of William Hunter
William Hunter (anatomist)
William Hunter FRS was a Scottish anatomist and physician. He was a leading teacher of anatomy, and the outstanding obstetrician of his day...
, been appointed to succeed his own father, Dr Thomas Hamilton, as Regius Professor of Anatomy, Glasgow
Regius Professor of Anatomy, Glasgow
The Regius Chair of Anatomy is a Regius professorship at the University of Glasgow.Founded in 1718 as the Regius Chair of Anatomy and Botany the province of the chair was restricted to anatomy in 1818 when the Regius Chair of Botany was founded....
; and when he died in 1790, in his thirty-second year, he had already gained a great reputation. William Hamilton and a younger brother, Thomas Hamilton
Thomas Hamilton (writer)
Thomas Hamilton , Scottish writer, was the younger brother of the philosopher, William Hamilton.He was educated at Glasgow University, where he made a close friend of Michael Scott, the author of Tom Cringle's Log. He entered the army in 1810, and served throughout the Peninsular and American...
, were brought up by their mother. William received his early education in Scotland, except for two years which he spent in a private school near London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, and in 1807 went as a Snell Exhibitioner
Snell exhibitioner
The Snell Exhibition is an annual scholarship awarded to a student of the University of Glasgow to allow him or her to undertake postgraduate study at Balliol College, Oxford. The award was founded by the bequest of Sir John Snell in a will made in 1677, although the original stipulation referred...
, to Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....
. He obtained a first class in lit ens humanioribus and took his B.A. in 1811 (M.A. 1814). He had been intended for the medical profession, but soon after leaving Oxford he gave up this idea, and in 1813 became a member of the Scottish bar. His life continued to be that of a student; and the years that followed were filled by researches of all kinds, while at the same time he was gradually forming his philosophic system. Investigation enabled him to make good his claim to represent the ancient family of Hamilton of Preston, and in 1816 he took up the baronetcy, which had been in abeyance since the death of Sir Robert Hamilton of Preston (1650–1701), well known in his day as a Covenanting leader.
His early time as philosopher
Two visits to GermanyGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in 1817 and 1820 led to William's taking up the study of German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and later on that of contemporary German philosophy, which was almost entirely neglected in British universities. In 1820 he was a candidate for the chair of moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, which had fallen vacant on the death of Thomas Brown, colleague of Dugald Stewart
Dugald Stewart
Dugald Stewart was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher and mathematician. His father, Matthew Stewart , was professor of mathematics in the University of Edinburgh .-Life and works:...
, and Stewart's consequent resignation, but was defeated on political grounds by John Wilson
John Wilson (Scottish writer)
John Wilson of Ellerey FRSE was a Scottish advocate, literary critic and author, the writer most frequently identified with the pseudonym Christopher North of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine....
, (1785–1854), the "Christopher North" of Blackwood's Magazine
Blackwood's Magazine
Blackwood's Magazine was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. The first number appeared in April 1817 under the editorship of Thomas Pringle and James Cleghorn...
. Soon afterwards (1821) he was appointed professor of civil history, and as such delivered several courses of lectures on the history of modern Europe and the history of literature. The salary was £100 a year, derived from a local beer tax, and was discontinued after a time. No pupils were compelled to attend, the class dwindled, and Hamilton gave it up when the salary ceased. In January 1827 his mother, to whom he had been devoted, died. In March 1828 he married his cousin, Janet Marshall.
Publications
In 1829 his career of authorship began with the appearance of the well-known essay on the "Philosophy of the Unconditioned" (a critique of Victor CousinVictor Cousin
Victor Cousin was a French philosopher. He was a proponent of Scottish Common Sense Realism and had an important influence on French educational policy.-Early life:...
's Cours de philosophie)--the first of a series of articles contributed by him to the Edinburgh Review
Edinburgh Review
The Edinburgh Review, founded in 1802, was one of the most influential British magazines of the 19th century. It ceased publication in 1929. The magazine took its Latin motto judex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur from Publilius Syrus.In 1984, the Scottish cultural magazine New Edinburgh Review,...
. He was elected in 1836 to the Edinburgh chair of logic and metaphysics, and from this time dates the influence which, during the next twenty years, he exerted over the thought of the younger generation in Scotland. Much about the same time he began the preparation of an annotated edition of Thomas Reid
Thomas Reid
The Reverend Thomas Reid FRSE , was a religiously trained Scottish philosopher, and a contemporary of David Hume, was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment...
's works, intending to annex to it a number of dissertations. Before, however, this design had been carried out, he was struck (1844) with paralysis of the right side, which seriously crippled his bodily powers, though it left his mind wholly unimpaired.
The edition of Reid appeared in 1846, but with only seven of the intended dissertations, one unfinished. At his death he had still not completed the work; notes on the subjects to be discussed were found among his manuscripts. Considerably earlier, he had formed his theory of logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
, the leading principles of which were indicated in the prospectus of "an essay on a new analytic of logical form
Logical form
In logic, the logical form of a sentence or set of sentences is the form obtained by abstracting from the subject matter of its content terms or by regarding the content terms as mere placeholders or blanks on a form...
s" prefixed to his edition of Reid. But the elaboration of the scheme in its details and applications continued during the next few years to occupy much of his leisure. Out of this arose a sharp controversy with Augustus de Morgan
Augustus De Morgan
Augustus De Morgan was a British mathematician and logician. He formulated De Morgan's laws and introduced the term mathematical induction, making its idea rigorous. The crater De Morgan on the Moon is named after him....
. The essay did not appear, but the results of the labour gone through are contained in the appendices to his Lectures on Logic.
Hamilton also prepared extensive materials for a publication which he designed on the personal history, influence and opinions of Martin Luther
Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
. Here he advanced so far as to have planned and partly carried out the arrangement of the work; but it did not go further, and still remains in manuscript. In 1852-1853 appeared the first and second editions of his Discussions in Philosophy, Literature and Education, a reprint, with large additions, of his contributions to the Edinburgh Review
Edinburgh Review
The Edinburgh Review, founded in 1802, was one of the most influential British magazines of the 19th century. It ceased publication in 1929. The magazine took its Latin motto judex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur from Publilius Syrus.In 1984, the Scottish cultural magazine New Edinburgh Review,...
. Soon after, his general health began to fail. Assisted by his devoted wife, he persevered in literary labour; and during 1854-1855 he brought out nine volumes of a new edition of Stewart's works. The only remaining volume was to have contained a memoir of Stewart, but this he did not live to write. He taught his class for the last time in the winter of 1855-1856. Shortly after the close of the session he was taken ill, and died in Edinburgh.
Place in thought
Hamilton's positive contribution to the progress of thought is comparatively slight, but he stimulated a spirit of criticism in his pupils, by insisting on the great importance of psychologyPsychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
as opposed to the older metaphysical method, and by his recognition of the importance of German philosophy, especially that of Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
. By far his most important work was "Philosophy of the Unconditioned," the development of the principle that for the human finite mind there can be no knowledge of the Infinite. The basis of his argument is the thesis, "To think is to condition." Deeply impressed with Kant's antithesis between subject and object, the knowing and the known, Hamilton laid down the principle that every object is known only in virtue of its relations to other objects. From this it follows limitless time, space, power and so forth are humanly speaking inconceivable. The fact, however, that all thought seems to demand the idea of the infinite or absolute provides a sphere for faith, which is thus the specific faculty of theology. It is a weakness characteristic of the human mind that it cannot conceive any phenomenon without a beginning: hence the conception of the causal relation, according to which every phenomenon has its cause in preceding phenomena, and its effect in subsequent phenomena. The causal concept is, therefore, only one of the ordinary necessary forms of the cognitive consciousness limited, as we have seen, by being confined to that which is relative or conditioned.
As regards the problem of the nature of objectivity, Hamilton simply accepts the evidence of consciousness as to the separate existence of the object: "the root of our nature cannot be a lie." In virtue of this assumption Hamilton's philosophy becomes a "natural realism." In fact his whole position is a strange compound of Kant and Reid. Its chief practical corollary is the denial of philosophy as a method of attaining absolute knowledge and its relegation to the academic sphere of mental training. The transition from philosophy to theology, i.e. to the sphere of faith, is presented by Hamilton under the analogous relation between the mind and the body. As the mind is to the body, so is the unconditioned Absolute or God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
to the world of the conditioned. Consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
, itself a conditioned phenomenon, must derive from or depend on some different thing prior to or behind material phenomena. Curiously enough, however, Hamilton does not explain how it comes about that God, who in the terms of the analogy bears to the conditioned mind the relation which the conditioned mind bears to its objects, can Himself be unconditioned. He can be regarded only as related to consciousness, and insofar is, therefore, not absolute or unconditioned. Thus the very principles of Hamilton's philosophy are apparently violated in his theological
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
argument.
Hamilton regarded logic as a purely formal science; it seemed to him an unscientific mixing together of heterogeneous elements to treat as parts of the same science the formal and the material conditions of knowledge. He was quite ready to allow that on this view logic cannot be used as a means of discovering or guaranteeing facts, even the most general, and expressly asserted that it has to do, not with the objective validity, but only with the mutual relations, of judgments. He further held that induction and deduction are correlative processes of formal logic, each resting on the necessities of thought and deriving thence its several laws. The only logical laws which he recognized were the three axioms of identity, noncontradiction, and excluded middle, which he regarded as severally phases of one general condition of the possibility of existence and, therefore, of thought. The law of reason and consequent he considered not as different, but merely as expressing metaphysically what these express logically. He added as a postulate—which in his theory was of importance--"that logic be allowed to state explicitly what is thought implicitly." in logic, Hamilton is known chiefly as the inventor of the doctrine of the "quantification of the predicate," i.e. that the judgment "All A is B " should really mean "All A is all B," whereas the ordinary universal proposition should be stated "All A is some B." This view, which was supported by Stanley Jevons
William Stanley Jevons
William Stanley Jevons was a British economist and logician.Irving Fisher described his book The Theory of Political Economy as beginning the mathematical method in economics. It made the case that economics as a science concerned with quantities is necessarily mathematical...
, is fundamentally at fault since it implies that the predicate is thought of in its extension; in point of fact when a judgment is made, e.g. about men, that they are mortal ("All men are mortal"), the intention is to attribute a quality (i.e. the predicate is used in connotation). In other words, we are not considering the question "what kind are men among the various things which must die?" (as is implied in the form "all men are some mortals") but "what is the fact about men?" We are not stating a mere identity (see further, e.g., H. W. B. Joseph, Introduction to Logic, 1906, pp. 198 foll.).
The philosopher to whom above all others Hamilton professed allegiance was Aristotle. His works were the object of his profound and constant study, and supplied in fact the mould in which his whole philosophy was cast. With the commentators on the Aristotelian
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
writings, ancient, medieval and modern, he was also familiar; and the scholastic philosophy he studied with care and appreciation at a time when it had hardly yet begun to attract attention in his country. His wide reading enabled him to trace many a doctrine to the writings of forgotten thinkers; and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to draw forth such from their obscurity, and to give due acknowledgment, even if it chanced to be of the prior possession of a view or argument that he had thought out for himself. Of modern German philosophy he was a diligent, if not always a sympathetic, student. How profoundly his thinking was modified by that of Kant is evident from the tenor of his speculations; nor was this less the case because, on fundamental points, he came to widely different conclusions.
Hamilton was more than a philosopher; his knowledge and interests embraced all subjects related to that of the human mind. He studied anatomy and physiology. He was also well-read in ancient and modern literature, being particularly interested in the 16th and 17th centuries. Among his literary projects were editions of the works of George Buchanan
George Buchanan (humanist)
George Buchanan was a Scottish historian and humanist scholar. He was part of the Monarchomach movement.-Early life:...
and Julius Caesar Scaliger
Julius Caesar Scaliger
Julius Caesar Scaliger was an Italian scholar and physician who spent a major part of his career in France. He employed the techniques and discoveries of Renaissance humanism to defend Aristotelianism against the new learning...
. His general scholarship found expression in his library, which became part of the library of the University of Glasgow.
He also may have had influence upon subsequent philosophy as the inspiration for a critique by John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
which resulted in perhaps the clearest statements ever of the idea of matter
Matter
Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles which have mass. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and occupies volume...
as the permanent possibility of sensation.
Education
His chief practical interest was in education—an interest which he manifested alike as a teacher and as a writer, and which had led him long before he was either to a study of the subject both theoretical and historical. He thence adopted views as to the ends and methods of education that, when afterwards carried out or advocated by him, met with general recognition; but he also expressed in one of his articles an unfavourable view of the study of mathematics as a mental gymnastic, which excited much opposition, but which he never saw reason to alter. As a teacher, he was zealous and successful, and his writings on university organization and reform had, at the time of their appearance, a decisive practical effect, and contain much that is of permanent value.Last works
His posthumous works are his Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, 4 vols., edited by HL ManselHenry Longueville Mansel
The Very Reverend Henry Longueville Mansel, D.D. was an English philosopher and ecclesiastic.He was born at Cosgrove, Northamptonshire .He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, London and St John's College, Oxford...
, Oxford, and John Veitch (Metaphysics; Logic); and Additional Notes to Reid's Works, from Sir W. Hamilton's Manuscripts., under the editorship of HL Mansel, D.D. (1862). A Memoir of Sir W. Hamilton, by Veitch, appeared in 1869.