The New International Encyclopædia/Bowen, Francis
BOWEN, bō′en, Francis (1811-90). An American author, born in Charlestown, Mass. He graduated at Harvard in 1833, and became instructor there in intellectual philosophy and political economy. He was proprietor and editor of the North American Review from 1843 to 1854, when he was appointed to the Alford professorship of natural religion, moral philosophy, and civil polity at Harvard. In philosophy and metaphysics he opposed the views of Cousin, Comte, Fichte, Kant, and Mill, and upheld those of Locke and Berkeley. Among his publications are: Lectures on the “Application of Metaphysical and Ethical Science to the Evidences of Religion” (1849); Lectures on Political Economy (1850); Critical Essays on the History and Present Condition of Speculative Philosophy (1842); Documents of the Constitution of England and America, from Magna Charta to the Federal Constitution of 1789 (1854); Principles of Political Economy (1856); Gleanings from a Literary Life, 1838-80 (1880); A Layman's Study of the English Bible (1886), and many essays and reviews.