Lady Mary Shepherd: a snapshot
In an letter, poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning recounted the following tale about Lady Mary Shepherd:
“Lady Mary (so her daughter told me) used to waltz until she was tired, and then sit down to write about algebra …. She used to keep Miss Shepherd up to three or four in the morning after a conclave of waltzers, to hear … vocal dissertations upon spirit & matter & such high arguments.”
Waltzing on the one hand, and mathematics and metaphysics on the other: this captures Mary Shepherd’s dual life. Born in in a castle outside Edinburgh, she was the daughter of the 3rd Earl of Rosebery and was educated by private tutors at home. In she married London barrister Henry John Shepherd, and the couple joined the active intellectual and social scene of the London elite. Her many friends included mathematician Charles Babbage, poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, economist David Ricardo, and Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. Shepherd’s name appears frequently in British newspapers from the s until her death in , as she attended and hosted parties, balls, and concerts in London and Brighton, and spent time in spa towns such as Cheltenham, B
Lady Mary Shepherd ()
Lady Mary Shepherd () was born and raised at Barnbougle Castle, near Edinburgh. She settled in London in after marrying the English barrister Henry John Shepherd (McRobert 19, 47), and subsequently published two books and three essays. According to a memoir written much later by one of her daughters, Shepherd had earlier written some 'metaphysical disquisitions' about Hume and Priestley, although these have since been lost (Brandreth ).
Shepherd's daughter reports that Shepherd was involved with "both the scientific and the literary sides of the learned world" and that her social circle included Sir Charles Lyell, Charles Babbage, Mary Somerville, William Whewell, Sydney Smith, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo (Brandreth ).
Shepherd's first book was An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, published in Her primary target in this book is Hume's view that necessary connections between causes and effects are properly understood in terms of constant conjunctions of precedent and subsequent events and causal inferences from one to the other. Instead, Shepherd defends the view that causal principles can be known by reason to be necessary truths. "In
Mary Shepherd
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Mary Shepherd was a Scottish philosopher who was highly critical of the Scottish School of David Hume. Against the idea of a justified believe through empirical observation, she argued for a metaphysics of existential beliefs held for good reasons. Main works include the Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect and the Essay on the Academical or Skeptical Philosophy. Some of her main philosophical interests were in the origin of the belief in the continued existence of the mind and self, as well as in external objects, inferred from causal arguments. Her wide ranging social circle included personalities such as Mary Somerville, Charles Lyell, Thomas Malthus, Charles Babbage, and David Ricardo.
- Primary Sources
Shepherd, Mary (): An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect. controverting the Doctrine of Mr. Hume, concerning the Nature of the Relation; with Observations upon the Opinions of Dr. Brown and Mr. Lawrence, connected with the same subject. London: T. Hookam. Online verfügbar unter ?ref=ol&view=theater.
Shepherd, Mary (): Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of
Mary Shepherd
1. Biography
In addition to a short biographical entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Perkins ), the main source of information about Shepherd’s life is a family memoire written by her daughter and published for private use (Brandreath ). Shepherd was born in Barnbougle Castle on the Primrose family estate overlooking the Firth of Forth. She lived mainly there until her marriage in While her brothers were sent to university, she and her sisters were educated at home by private tutor. Her daughter reports that in addition to teaching them Latin, geography, mathematics, and history, he discussed many works on the foundation of the truth of things. His pupils were encouraged to pursue whatever subjects interested them. Mary is said to have written volumes of metaphysical essays many of them critical of Hume and the Unitarian doctrines of Joseph Priestly (Brandreath 28–9). In a letter to Charles Babbage, she recalls having had an interest in the reasoning used in proofs of mathematical theorems and exposing errors of reasoning in a wide range of authors (quoted in McRobert vi). Her published essays were written sometime later.
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