BADEN POWELL (MATHEMATICIAN)

'Baden Powell', MA, FRS, FRGS (22 August 1796 – 11 June 1860) was an English mathematician, prominent as a liberal theologians 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 Guides movement.

Contents

Family

Evolution

''Essays and Reviews''

Notes and references

External links

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:

★ Henry Warrington Smyth Baden-Powell, KC (3 February 1847 — 24 April 1921)

★ Sir George Smyth Baden-Powell, KCMG, MP (24 December 1847 — 20 November 1898)

★ Augustus Baden-Powell (1849 — 1863), premature death

★ Francis Smyth Baden-Powell (29 July 1850 — 1931)

★ Henrietta Smith Baden-Powell (28 October 1851 — 9 March 1854), premature death

★ John Penrose Smyth Baden-Powell (21 December 1852 — 14 December 1855), premature death

★ Jessie Smyth Baden-Powell (25 November 1855 — 24 July 1856), premature death

★ Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell (22 February 1857 — 8 January 1941)

★ Agnes Smyth Baden-Powell, (16 December 1858? — 2 June 1945)

★ Major Baden Fletcher Smyth Baden-Powell, FS, FRAS, FRMetS (22 May 1860 — 3 October 1937)

Evolution

Powell's views were very 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. THE IMPACT OF DARWIN ON CONVENTIONAL THOUGHT Robert M. Young
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.^[1] 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.
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"''.^[1]

''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 ''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. ^[1]
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 British Association for the Advancement of Science debate that was a highlight of the reaction to Darwin's theory, but died of a heart attack a fortnight before the meeting.^[1]

Notes and references

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External links

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★ Collection of obituary notices