Victoria Welby-Gregory, Lady Welby
Encyclopedia
Victoria, Lady Welby more correctly Lady Welby-Gregory, was a self-educated English
philosopher of language, musician and water-colour artist.
and Lady Emmeline Stuart-Wortley, and christened Victoria Alexandrina Maria Louisa Stuart-Wortley. Following the death of her father in 1844 she travelled widely with her mother, events she recorded in her diary. Following the death of her mother in Syria in 1855 she returned to England and stayed with her grandfather the Duke of Rutland
at Belvoir Castle. In 1858 she moved to Frogmore to live with the Duchess of Kent, who had been a friend of her mother. On the death of the Duchess she was appointed a Maid of Honour to her godmother
, Queen Victoria
.
In 1863 she married Sir William Earle Welby-Gregory, 4th baronet (1829–1898), who was active in British politics, and by whom she had three children. (Their daughter Nina married Edwardian rake and publisher Harry Cust.) She and Sir William lived together at Denton Manor in Lincolnshire
.
Once her children were out of the house, Welby, who had had little formal education, began a fairly intense self-education that included mixing, corresponding, and conversing with some of the leading British thinkers of her day, some of whom she invited to the Manor. It was not unusual for Victorian Englishmen of means to become thinkers and writers (e.g., Darwin
, Herbert Spencer
, Lord Acton, J.S. Mill, Babbage). Welby is one of the few women of her place and time to do the same.
Her first publications were on Christian
theology
, especially the interpretation of the Christian scriptures, and this was the subject of her first book, Links and Clues (1881). Her early publications were little read and noticed, and her wondering why this was so led her to language, rhetoric
, persuasion, and philosophy
. By the late 19th century, she was publishing articles in the leading English language academic journals of the day, Mind
and The Monist
. She published her first philosophical book, What Is Meaning? Studies in the Development of Significance in 1903, following it with Significs and Language: The Articulate Form of Our Expressive and Interpretive Resources in 1911. In the same year she contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica a long article titled "Significs
", the name she gave to her theory of meaning. Her writings on the reality of time
culminated in her book Time As Derivative (1907).
What Is Meaning? was sympathetically reviewed for The Nation by the founder of American pragmatism
, Charles Sanders Peirce, and this led to an eight year correspondence between them, one that has been published three times, most recently as Hardwick (2001). Welby and Peirce were both academic outsiders, and their approaches to language and meaning had some things in common. But most of the correspondence consists of Peirce elaborating his related theory of semiotics
. Welby's replies did not conceal that she found Peirce hard to follow, but by circulating copies of some of Peirce's letters to her, she did much to introduce Peirce to British thinkers. Contemporary Peircians have since returned the favour by being sympathetic students of Welby's ideas.
C. K. Ogden began corresponding with Welby in 1910, and his subsequent writings were very much influenced by her theories, although he tried to minimise this fact in his best-known book, The Meaning of Meaning
(1923). She also corresponded with William James
, F. C. S. Schiller, the Italian pragmatists Giovanni Vailati
and Mario Calderoni, Bertrand Russell
, and J. Cook Wilson.
Welby's varied activities included founding the Sociological Society of Great Britain and the Decorative Needlework Society, and writing poetry and plays.
Welby's concern with the problem of meaning included (perhaps especially) the everyday use of language, and she coined the word significs for her approach (replacing her first choice of "sensifics"). She preferred "significs" to semiotics
and semantics
, because the latter were theory-laden, and because "significs" pointed to her specific area of interest, which other approaches to language had tended to ignore.
She distinguished between different kinds of sense, and developed the various relations between them and ethical
, aesthetic
, pragmatic, and social values. She posited three main kinds of sense: sense, meaning, and significance. In turn, these corresponded to three levels of consciousness, which she called "planetary," "solar," and "cosmic," and explained in terms of a sort of Darwinian theory of evolution. The triadic structure of her thinking was a feature she shared with Peirce.
Welby's theories on signification in general were one of a number of approaches to the theory of language that emerged in the late 19th century and anticipated contemporary semantics
, semiotics
, and semiology. Welby had a direct effect on the Significs group, most of whose members were Dutch, including Gerrit Mannoury
and Frederik van Eeden
. Hence she indirectly influenced L. E. J. Brouwer, the founder of intuitionistic logic
.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
philosopher of language, musician and water-colour artist.
Life
Welby was born to the Hon. Charles Stuart-Wortley-MackenzieCharles Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie
Charles James Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie was a British politician, the second son of James Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, 1st Baron Wharncliffe.He was an observer at the French siege of Antwerp in 1832, and wrote an account of the affair....
and Lady Emmeline Stuart-Wortley, and christened Victoria Alexandrina Maria Louisa Stuart-Wortley. Following the death of her father in 1844 she travelled widely with her mother, events she recorded in her diary. Following the death of her mother in Syria in 1855 she returned to England and stayed with her grandfather the Duke of Rutland
John Manners, 5th Duke of Rutland
John Henry Manners, 5th Duke of Rutland, KG , styled Lord Roos from 1778 until 1779 and Marquess of Granby from 1779 until 1787, was a British peer....
at Belvoir Castle. In 1858 she moved to Frogmore to live with the Duchess of Kent, who had been a friend of her mother. On the death of the Duchess she was appointed a Maid of Honour to her godmother
Godparent
A godparent, in many denominations of Christianity, is someone who sponsors a child's baptism. A male godparent is a godfather, and a female godparent is a godmother...
, Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
.
In 1863 she married Sir William Earle Welby-Gregory, 4th baronet (1829–1898), who was active in British politics, and by whom she had three children. (Their daughter Nina married Edwardian rake and publisher Harry Cust.) She and Sir William lived together at Denton Manor in Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
.
Once her children were out of the house, Welby, who had had little formal education, began a fairly intense self-education that included mixing, corresponding, and conversing with some of the leading British thinkers of her day, some of whom she invited to the Manor. It was not unusual for Victorian Englishmen of means to become thinkers and writers (e.g., Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
, Lord Acton, J.S. Mill, Babbage). Welby is one of the few women of her place and time to do the same.
Her first publications were on Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
theology
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...
, especially the interpretation of the Christian scriptures, and this was the subject of her first book, Links and Clues (1881). Her early publications were little read and noticed, and her wondering why this was so led her to language, rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
, persuasion, and philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. By the late 19th century, she was publishing articles in the leading English language academic journals of the day, Mind
Mind (journal)
Mind is a British journal, currently published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association, which deals with philosophy in the analytic tradition...
and The Monist
The Monist
The Monist: An International Quarterly Journal of General Philosophical Inquiry is an American academic journal in the field of philosophy. It was founded in October 1890 by Edward C. Hegeler, making it one of the longest-established journals in philosophy...
. She published her first philosophical book, What Is Meaning? Studies in the Development of Significance in 1903, following it with Significs and Language: The Articulate Form of Our Expressive and Interpretive Resources in 1911. In the same year she contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica a long article titled "Significs
Significs
Significs is a linguistic and philosophical term introduced by Victoria, Lady Welby in the 1890s. It was later adopted by the Dutch Significs Group of thinkers around Frederik van Eeden, which included L. E. J...
", the name she gave to her theory of meaning. Her writings on the reality of time
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
culminated in her book Time As Derivative (1907).
What Is Meaning? was sympathetically reviewed for The Nation by the founder of American pragmatism
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...
, Charles Sanders Peirce, and this led to an eight year correspondence between them, one that has been published three times, most recently as Hardwick (2001). Welby and Peirce were both academic outsiders, and their approaches to language and meaning had some things in common. But most of the correspondence consists of Peirce elaborating his related theory of semiotics
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
. Welby's replies did not conceal that she found Peirce hard to follow, but by circulating copies of some of Peirce's letters to her, she did much to introduce Peirce to British thinkers. Contemporary Peircians have since returned the favour by being sympathetic students of Welby's ideas.
C. K. Ogden began corresponding with Welby in 1910, and his subsequent writings were very much influenced by her theories, although he tried to minimise this fact in his best-known book, The Meaning of Meaning
The Meaning of Meaning
Although the original text was published in 1923 it has been used as a textbook in many fields including linguistics, philosophy, language, cognitive science and most recently semantics. The book has been in print continuously since 1923. The most recent edition is the critical edition prepared...
(1923). She also corresponded with William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
, F. C. S. Schiller, the Italian pragmatists Giovanni Vailati
Giovanni Vailati
Giovanni Vailati was an Italian proto-analytic philosopher, historian of science, and mathematician.- Life :Vailati was born in Crema, Lombardy, and studied engineering at the University of Turin. He went on to lecture in the history of mechanics there from 1896 to 1899, after working as assistant...
and Mario Calderoni, Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, and J. Cook Wilson.
Welby's varied activities included founding the Sociological Society of Great Britain and the Decorative Needlework Society, and writing poetry and plays.
Significs
"...every one of us is in one sense a born explorer: our only choice is what world we will explore, our only doubt whether our exploration will be worth the trouble. [...] And the idlest of us wonders: the stupidest of us stares: the most ignorant of us feels curiosity: while the thief actively explores his neighbour's pocket or breaks into the "world" of his neighbour's house and plate-closet". ("Sense, meaning, and interpretation (I)" Mind N.S. V; 1898)
Welby's concern with the problem of meaning included (perhaps especially) the everyday use of language, and she coined the word significs for her approach (replacing her first choice of "sensifics"). She preferred "significs" to semiotics
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
and semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
, because the latter were theory-laden, and because "significs" pointed to her specific area of interest, which other approaches to language had tended to ignore.
She distinguished between different kinds of sense, and developed the various relations between them and ethical
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
, aesthetic
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, pragmatic, and social values. She posited three main kinds of sense: sense, meaning, and significance. In turn, these corresponded to three levels of consciousness, which she called "planetary," "solar," and "cosmic," and explained in terms of a sort of Darwinian theory of evolution. The triadic structure of her thinking was a feature she shared with Peirce.
Welby's theories on signification in general were one of a number of approaches to the theory of language that emerged in the late 19th century and anticipated contemporary semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
, semiotics
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
, and semiology. Welby had a direct effect on the Significs group, most of whose members were Dutch, including Gerrit Mannoury
Gerrit Mannoury
Gerrit Mannoury was a Dutch philosopher and mathematician, professor at the University of Amsterdam and communist, known as the central figure in the signific circle, a Dutch counterpart of the Vienna circle.- Biography :...
and Frederik van Eeden
Frederik van Eeden
Frederik Willem van Eeden was a late 19th century and early 20th century Dutch writer and psychiatrist...
. Hence she indirectly influenced L. E. J. Brouwer, the founder of intuitionistic logic
Intuitionistic logic
Intuitionistic logic, or constructive logic, is a symbolic logic system differing from classical logic in its definition of the meaning of a statement being true. In classical logic, all well-formed statements are assumed to be either true or false, even if we do not have a proof of either...
.
Primary texts
- 1893, "Meaning and metaphor," Monist 3: 510–525. Reprinted in Welby (1985).
- 1896, "Sense, meaning, and interpretation I" Mind 5: 24–37. Reprinted in Welby (1985). Extract in M. Warnock, ed., 1996. Women Philosophers. J.M. Dent. ISBN 0-460-87721-6.
- 1896, "Sense, meaning, and interpretation II" Mind 5: 186–202. Reprinted in Welby (1985).
- 1901, "Notes on the ‘Welby Prize Essay," Mind 10: 188–209.
- 1931. Other Dimensions: A Selection from the Later Correspondence of Victoria, Lady Welby. Mrs Henry Cust, ed. Jonathan Cape.
- 1983 (1903). What Is Meaning? Studies in the Development of Significance. John Benjamins.
- 1985 (1911). Significs and Language: The Articulate Form of Our Expressive and Interpretive Resources. Schmitz, H. Walter, ed., John Benjamins.
- 2001 (1977). Semiotic and Significs: Correspondence between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby. Edited by Charles S. Hardwick, with the assistance of James Cook. Texas Tech University Press.
Secondary texts
- Deledalle, Gerard, 1990. "Victoria Lady Welby and Charles Sanders Peirce: meaning and signification" (in A. Eschbach [ed.] Essays on Significs John Benjamins, 1990)
- King, Peter J., 2004. One Hundred Philosophers. Apple Press,. ISBN 1-84092-462-4
- Myers, William Andrew, 1995. "Victoria, Lady Welby (1837–1912)" in M.E. Waithe, ed., A History of Women Philosophers vol. 4, Kluwer.
- Petrilli, Susan, 1999, "The biological basis of Victoria Welby's significs," Semiotica: Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies 127: nn-nn.
- Schmitz, H. Walter, 1985, "Victoria Lady Welby's significs: the origin of the signific movement." In Welby (1985).
- Schmitz, H. Walter, ed., 1990. Essays on Significs: Papers Presented on the Occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Victoria Lady Welby (1837–1912). John Benjamins.
- Toennies, FerdinandFerdinand TönniesFerdinand Tönnies was a German sociologist. He was a major contributor to sociological theory and field studies, best known for his distinction between two types of social groups, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft...
, 1901, "Note in response to Welby," Mind 10: 204–209.
External links
- Philosophers: The Hon. Victoria, Lady Welby-Gregory — short introduction
- Nubiola, Jaime, 1996, "Scholarship on the relations between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Charles S. Peirce" in I. Angelelli & M. Cerezo, eds, Proceedings of the III Symposium on History of Logic. Gruyter. See the section titled "Peirce's reception in British philosophy: Lady Welby, Ogden and Russell."
- Lady Welby Library — a collection in Senate House Library, University of London.