1. Auguste Comte, Cours de Philosophie positive, 6 vols. (Paris: Bachelier, 1830–1842).
2. Most noted among those who embraced as well as questioned many aspects of Comtian thought was John Stuart Mill. Even Thomas Huxley, in a blistering attack on positivism, allowed relative to Comte’s ideas that “[n]othing could be more interesting to a student of biology than to see the study of the biological sciences laid down as an essential part of the prolegomena of a new view of social phenomena. Nothing could be more satisfactory to a worshipper of the severe truthfulness of science than the attempt to dispense with all beliefs save such as could brave the light, and seek, rather than fear, criticism.” See Thomas Henry Huxley, “The Scientific Aspects of Positivism, ” Fortnightly Review 11 (1869): 653-670, on p. 653.
3. Joseph Henry to James Joseph Sylvester, 26 February, 1846, (Henry’s emphasis) in The Papers of Joseph Henry, ed. Nathan Reingold, Marc Rothenberg, et al., (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1972-1992), 6: 380-381. The manuscript retained copy of this letter is held in the Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives.
4. James Joseph Sylvester to Joseph Henry, 12 April, 1846, in ibid., 6: 407-410. The original of this letter is also held in the Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives.
5. James Joseph Sylvester, “Presidential Address: Mathematics and Physics Section, ” Report of the Thirty-ninth Meeting of the BAAS Held at Exeter in August, 1869 (London: John Murray, 1870); revised and reprinted as “A Plea for the Mathematician, ” Nature 1 (1869-1870): 237-239, 260-263. See, also, James Joseph Sylvester, The Laws of Verse or Principles of Versification Exemplified in Metrical Translations: Together with an Annotated Reprint of the Inaugural Presidential Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association at Exeter (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1870); and “Presidential Address to Section ‘A’ of the British Association, ” The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester, ed. H. F. Baker, 4 vols. (Cambridge: University Press, 1904, 1908, 1909, 1912; reprint ed., New York: Chelsea Publishing Co., 1973), 2: 650-661 (hereinafter abbreviated Math. Papers JJS). All specific page citations for Sylvester’s papers will refer to the latter, most accessible, source.