Victoria, Lady Welby 1837–1912
Biography
Born in 1837, Victoria, Lady Welby (née Stuart-Wortley) was a member of the English nobility. Although never formally educated, she had a broad range of scholarly interests from the philosophy of language to semiotics, biology, astronomy, theology, education, and mysticism. Her early writing focused on Biblical interpretation, but as her intellectual network broadened so too did her ambitions, culminating in her most philosophically profound work, a series of articles and two books investigating the nature of meaning. She developed a tripartite theory that distinguished between sense, meaning, and significance. Welby argued that beyond the conventional sense our words have and the meaning we intend to convey by using them in particular circumstances is their broader significance—how and why they matter—to our audience. Bemoaning the ambiguities that arose when intellectuals believed that figurative associations could be expunged from language, or when they conflated the distinct levels of meaning, Welby called for the development of “significs,” a new science that would systematically study meaning. She hoped that this science would result in fundamental educational reform, and that future generations taught significs at school would be empowered to better express themselves and understand one another. She pursued a wide correspondence with more than four hundred and fifty internationally leading scientists, writers, politicians, and philosophers, including Bertrand Russell and C. S. Peirce. Through her friendship with the author Frederik van Eeden, Welby’s ideas were taken up and developed by the Dutch Significs group. In the last year of her life, Welby also influenced C. K. Ogden, who—despite failing to give her credit—incorporated many of her ideas in The Meaning of Meaning (co-written with I.A. Richards). Welby died aged 75, in 1912.
Selected Bibliography
(1881). Links and Clues. MacMillan and Co.
(1893). Meaning and Metaphor. The Monist, 3(4), 510–525.
(1896a). Sense, meaning and interpretation (I). Mind, 5(17), 24–37.
(1896b). Sense, meaning and interpretation (II). Mind, 5(18), 186–202.
(1897). Grains of Sense. J. M. Dent.
(1903). What is Meaning? London: MacMillan and Co.
(1911). Significs and Language. MacMillan and Co.
Abstract
Although the significs movement that Victoria, Lady Welby (1837–1912) inspired was dedicated to better understanding meaning, she has largely been forgotten by analytic philosophers of language. Significs was to educate “the great world of hearers and the growing world of readers” to better interpret science and philosophy, evincing a focus on the audience for intellectual activity that it remains vital for academics to consider. Her arguments that the metaphorical associations of terminology are part of their significance for others also pertain to contemporary programs of conceptual engineering which seek to craft and stipulate the meaning of terms. Welby would prefer, I contend, P. F. Strawson’s connective model of analysis, in which the aim is neither to replace nor reduce our concepts, but rather to carefully describe their interrelations. Connective analysis, she would argue, encourages us to keep others, rather than ourselves, firmly in view. I close by turning the lens afforded by Welby’s suggestions for educational reform upon the way we might best communicate philosophical ideas throughout society.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
For more on Dutch significs and logical positivism, see Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen (2009).
- 2.
Where Russell’s book could “hardly be called literature,” Peirce found Welby’s to be “rich in illustrations,” and to establish that its title question has “vital and far-reaching significance” (1903, 49–50).
- 3.
See McElvenny (2019). In addition to numerous useful essays and a monograph on Welby, in 2009 Petrilli edited a 1000-page volume of Welby’s letters, notes, and influence on the early significs movement.
- 4.
After briefly calling her program “sensifics,” Welby settles on the still rather awkward neologism “significs” as a way of picking up “significance.”
- 5.
This was a point of contention between her and C. K. Ogden. See H. Walter Schmitz (1985, lxxiv).
- 6.
By uttering “You worked hard on that paper,” which has the sense (sentence meaning) that the addressee put a lot of effort into a particular assignment, a professor may mean (speaker mean) to praise, motivate, or mollify.
- 7.
- 8.
Welby’s point is not that students may fail to detect when an author is employing a metaphor, but that they are entitled to take metaphorical imagery “as relevant, as fitting, as descriptive, as conveying an actual resemblance or correspondence” (1903, 272), features which may all be lacking if the metaphor is inappropriate.
- 9.
Welby’s moralizing was not always well received. I suspect her earnestness may explain why Russell confessed in a letter to Philip Jourdain, “I have in the past been very nearly rude to [Welby]…because I have found it impossible to be sincere if I saw her. I think it is very wrong of all these philosophers to encourage her as they do, and I don’t want to be a party to it” (Russell to Jourdain, between March and October, 1908). According to F. C. S. Schiller, he was also irritated by Peirce’s review of their books (Schiller to Welby, November 26, 1903).
- 10.
Once our misuse of a metaphor has been pointed out, Welby complains, “we either insist upon its replacement by another which probably, if examined, would turn out worse still; or, ‘mirabile dictu’ we clamour through the newspapers for the abandonment of all metaphor; we would have the figurative outlawed, or at least excluded from public life! And, be it noted, we almost always make this demand itself through metaphor; often, indeed, in its least defensible forms” (1903, 43).
- 11.
Adapted from Welby (1903, 19–20).
- 12.
She intends translation broadly to include “transformation, transmutation, and transfiguration, [anything] making translucent and transparent” (ibid., 153).
- 13.
Aspiring for the unity of science was an important point of contact between the Signific and Vienna circles. Welby hoped significs would yield “more specialists in the good sense: men who are real masters of one subject—of two or three if they are great enough—and the intelligent discerners of significance in all others. Thus they can place their own subject, and compare it with others; they can enrich it by realising alike its relations and its uniqueness” (ibid., 228).
- 14.
Quine judges language acquisition to rely upon the empathic ability of the teacher to imagine how the learner is experiencing their shared reality (1992, 42–43). But to Welby’s insistence that we presuppose analogy in each act of communication, since we take our words to generate beliefs in our hearer that approximate our own (1903, 24), Quine’s naturalist retort would be that no such presupposition is required if we adopt a behaviorist account of communication, under which success is measured solely by our ability to pursue projects together.
- 15.
It is also worth noting that Strawson’s criticism of Russell’s theory of definite descriptions was anticipated by Welby, who uses her signific triad to object that since a person using a sentence containing an empty definite description would intend to convey something, his expression cannot be simply classified as false, but should rather be judged meaningful, even though senseless. (Welby to Russell, November 14, 1905. Cf. Strawson 1950).
- 16.
For an exploration of the links between Welby and Wittgenstein, see Rita Nolan (1990).
- 17.
Strawson does concede that conceptual mastery in some area may presuppose conceptual mastery in another, which allows for a sense of “basic” concepts to be recovered. “A concept or concept-type is basic in the relevant sense if it is one of a set of general, pervasive, and ultimately irreducible concepts or concept types which together form a structure—a structure which constitutes the framework of our ordinary thought and talk and which is presupposed by the various specialist or advanced disciplines that contribute, in their diverse ways, to our total picture of the world” (ibid., 24).
- 18.
Even if the strong transcendental argument underwriting descriptive metaphysics cannot be maintained, Strawson insists there is value to connective analysis: “to arrive at a clear understanding of the most general features of our conceptual structure, as it exists in fact—whether or not it is possible to demonstrate the necessity of those features—is a sufficient task for any philosopher, however ambitious” (1992, 27).
- 19.
- 20.
“We cannot cancel the automatic process of translative thinking. Everything suggests or reminds us of something else…we cannot, even if we would, dispense with metaphor, and abjure or avoid analogy” (1903, 34–35).
- 21.
Welby’s approach to meaning provides an illuminating contextualization for the objection that E. W. Beth—one-time member of the Dutch Signific circle—presses against Carnap’s Syntax project. Beth argues that Carnap’s approach illicitly assumes a reader operating with a standard interpretation of mathematics (1963, 481). Carnap is bewildered, replying that he “always presupposed…that a fixed interpretation of ML [the metalanguage], which is shared by all participants, is given. This interpretation is usually not formulated explicitly; but since ML uses English words, it is assumed that these words are understood in their ordinary senses. The necessity of this presupposition of a common interpreted metalanguage seems to me obvious” (1963a, 929–930). Yet under significs, this “obvious presupposition” is exactly what must be abandoned!
- 22.
Cf. James Pearson (2017), in which I argue that naturalists who champion Quine’s version of explication must confront their responsibility to others if they claim to belong to (and serve) the scientific community.
- 23.
Welby herself allows that definition has a role to play in science (1896b, 194). Even here, though, she is cautious: “We take for granted that among competent writers [ambiguity] is rare; and in doing this we assume, not the competence of authors, but what, in fact, is far rarer, the self-evidence of expression in words” (1903, 75).
- 24.
Welby (1911, 59); cf. Frege “I admit that there is a quite peculiar obstacle in the way of an understanding with my reader. By a kind of necessity of language, my expressions, taken literally, sometimes miss my thought” (1892, 192), and Wittgenstein “My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical” (1921, 6.54).
- 25.
Welby decries “the arid wastes of the conventional London dinner-party, where it used to be a point of honour to be as dull as platitudes could make you, and any suspicion either of scholarship or irony would have caused the table to freeze with horror under your plates” (quoted in Schmitz 1985, xxvii).
- 26.
So far as I have been able to determine, this is the earliest use of “informal logic” to describe analogical reasoning—here portrayed as the only type of logic women can manage.
- 27.
For discussion, see Petrilli (2009, 342).
- 28.
Welby contributed responses to Francis Galton’s papers on Eugenics at the 1904 and 1905 Sociological Society meetings, calling for eugenicists to acknowledge and articulate the role women should play in improving future generations (see Petrilli 2009, 726–730).
- 29.
This rebuke was precipitated by Schiller’s recommendation, having read a draft of Welby’s paper examining what she calls our “mother sense,” our instinctive capacity for interpretation, that, although “beneath the surface of [women’s] frivolities and follies” there may be a closer connection to intuition, Welby should rebrand “mother sense” as “common sense” so as to make her work “more intelligible…to the mere male!” (Schiller to Welby, October 2, 1907). For more on mother sense, see Petrilli (2017).
- 30.
- 31.
For “himpathy,” the widespread cultural tendency to disproportionately sympathize with men, see Kate Manne (2018, 197). Manne notes that she earlier suggested “androphilia” for the same phenomenon, the “often overlooked mirror image of misogyny.” Androphilia clearly mirrors misogyny etymologically, but I think that Welby would approve of Manne’s new term because it avoids the positive associations her readers might have to “love.” Being himpathetic more clearly warrants judgment than being androphilic. “Mansplain” is another interesting case, for its original meaning (condescendingly explaining something to someone whom one presumes to be unqualified or uninformed, as is often done by men to women) is in danger of being diluted. In popular discourse it is common to hear the word being applied to any man who explains, yet where explaining is not blameworthy, mansplaining is. Welby would charge us with ensuring that the boundaries of useful terms like these are not eroded.
- 32.
Sheldon Ungar (2000) is a good example of related work that Welby would value. In this article, Ungar assesses the role that imagery plays in explaining the widespread public enthusiasm for “plugging” the “hole” in our ozone layer as opposed to our relative apathy regarding the less comprehensible problem of climate change.
References
Advertisement of Welby Prize. (1896). Mind, 5(20), 583.
Beth, E.W. (1963). Carnap on constructed systems. In Schilpp (pp. 469–502).
Cappelen, H. (2018). Conceptual engineering: The master argument. In A. Burgess, H. Cappelen, & D. Plunket (Eds.), Conceptual Ethics and Conceptual Engineering. Oxford UP.
Carnap, R. (1963a). E.W. Beth on constructed languages. In: Schilpp (pp. 927–933).
Carnap, R. (1963b). Strawson on linguistic naturalism. In: Schilpp (pp. 933–940).
Dutilh Novaes, C. (2018). Carnapian explication and ameliorative analysis: A systematic comparison. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1732-9.
Frege, G. (1997). On concept and object. In M. Beaney (Ed.), The Frege Reader (P. Geach, Trans.) (pp. 181–193). Blackwell. Originally published as ‘Über Begriff und Gegenstand’. Vierteljahresschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 16, 192–205 (1892).
Hudson, R., & Walmsley, J. (2005). The English Patient: English grammar and teaching in the twentieth century. Journal of Linguistics, 41(3), 593–622.
Kolln, M., & Hancock, C. (2005). The story of English grammar in United States schools. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 4(3), 11–31.
Manne, K. (2018). Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny. Oxford UP.
McElvenny, J. (2019). Language and Meaning in the Age of Modernism: C. K. Ogden and his Contemporaries. Edinburgh University Press.
Nolan, R. (1990). Anticipatory themes in the writings of Lady Welby. In Schmitz (pp. 83–104).
Petrilli, S. (2009). Signifying and Understanding. De Gruyter Mouton.
Petrilli, S. (2010). Three women in semiotics: Welby, Boone, Langer. Semiotica, 182, 327–374.
Petrilli, S. (2017). Mother sense, language, and logic. Chinese Semiotic Studies, 13(1), 47–71.
Pearson, J. (2017). Caring for Quine’s don’t-cares. The Monist, 100(2), 266–287.
Peirce, C. S. (1903). Review of What is Meaning? and The Principles of Mathematics. The Nation, 77(1998), 49–50.
Pietarinen, A.-V. (2009). Significs and the origins of analytic philosophy. Journal of the History of Ideas, 70(3), 467–490.
Quine, W. V. (1978). A postscript on metaphor. In S. Sacks (Ed.), On Metaphor (pp. 159–160). University of Chicago Press.
Quine, W. V. (1992). Pursuit of Truth. (Revised ed.). Harvard UP.
Russell, B. (1908, March and October) Letter to Phillip Jourdain.
Schilpp, P. (Ed.). (1963). The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. Open Court Press.
Schiller, F. C. S. (1901). Mind! A Unique Review of Ancient and Modern Philosophy. Williams and Norgate.
Schiller, F. C. S. (1903, November 26) Letter to Victoria, Lady Welby.
Schiller, F. C. S. (1907, October 2). Letter to Victoria, Lady Welby.
Schmitz, H. W. (1985). Victoria Lady Welby’s significs: The origin of the signific movement. In: H. W. Schmitz (Ed.), Significs and Language (pp. ix–cclxiv). John Benjamins.
Schmitz, H. W. (Ed.). (1990). Essays on Significs. John Benjamins.
Strawson, P. F. (1950). On referring. Mind, 59(235), 320–344.
Strawson, P. F. (1963). Carnap’s views on constructed systems versus natural languages in analytic philosophy. In Schilpp (pp. 503–518).
Strawson, P. F. (1967). Analysis, science, and metaphysics. In R. Rorty (Ed.), The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method (pp. 312–321). University of Chicago Press.
Strawson, P. F. (1992). Analysis and Metaphysics. Oxford University Press.
Strawson, P. F. (2011). Philosophical Writings. Oxford University Press.
Ungar, S. (2000). Knowledge, ignorance, and the popular culture: Climate change versus the Ozone Hole. Public Understanding of Science, 9(3), 297–312.
Welby, V. (1892). Witnesses to Ambiguity: A Collection. W. Clarke.
Welby, V. (1893). Meaning and metaphor. The Monist, 3(4), 510–525.
Welby, V. (1896a). Sense, meaning and interpretation (I). Mind, 5(17), 24–37.
Welby, V. (1896b). Sense, meaning and interpretation (II). Mind, 5(18), 186–202.
Welby, V. (1898). The Witness of Science to Linguistic Anarchy. W. Clarke.
Welby, V. (1901). Notes on the ‘Welby prize essay.’ Mind, 10(8), 188–209.
Welby, V. (1903). What is Meaning? MacMillan and Co.
Welby, V. (1903, December 22). Letter to C. S. Peirce.
Welby, V. (1905, November 14). Letter to Bertrand Russell.
Welby, V. (1907, October 20). Letter to F. C. S. Schiller.
Welby, V. (1911). Significs and Language. MacMillan and Co.
Wittgenstein, L. (1961). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuiness, Trans.). Routledge and Kegan Paul. Originally published as Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung. Annalen der Naturphilosophie, 14 (1921).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pearson, J. (2022). What Welby Wanted. In: Peijnenburg, J., Verhaegh, S. (eds) Women in the History of Analytic Philosophy. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 15. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08593-2_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08593-2_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-08592-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-08593-2
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)