FRANCIS

See also:

• BOWEN, CHARLES SYNGE CHRISTOPHER BOWEN, BARON (1835—1894)
• FRANCIS BOWEN (1811—1890)
• BOWEN, SIR GEORGE FERGUSON (1821—1849)

BOWEN (1811—1890)  , American philosophical writer and educationalist, was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the 8th of September 1811 . He graduated at Harvard in 1833, taught for two years at Phillips Exeter Academy, and then from 1835 to 1839 was a tutor and instructor at Harvard . After several years of study in Europe, he settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was editor and proprietor of the North American Review from 1843 to 1854 . In 185o he was appointed professor of history at Harvard; but his appointment was disapproved by the board of overseers on account of reactionary political opinions he had expressed in a controversy with Robert Carter (1819—1879) concerning the Hungarian revolution . In 1853 his appointment as Alford professor of natural religion, moral philosophy and civil polity was approved, and he occupied the chair until 1889 . In 1876 he was a member of the Federal commission appointed to consider currency reform, and wrote (1877) the minority report, in which he opposed the restoration of the double standard and the re-monetization of silver . He died in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 22nd of January 189o . His writings include lives of Sir William Phipps, Baron von Steuben, James Otis and Benjamin Lincoln in Jared Sparks' " Library of American Biography "; Critical Essays on the History and Present Condition of Speculative Philosophy (1842); Lowell Lectures on the Application of Meta-physical and Ethical Science to the Evidences of Religion (1849) ; The Principles of Political Economy applied to the Condition, Resources and Institutions of the American People (1856) ; . A Treatise on Logic (1864); American Political Economy (187o); Modern Philosophy from Descartes to Schopenhauer and Hartmann (1877); and Gleanings from a Literary Life, x838—188o (188o) .