Matilde Carrera

This paper recovers and refines the method of residues—a historical and philosophical framework for anomaly-driven inquiry—through an examination of its origins and enduring role in the geosciences. We first reconstruct how John Herschel and William Whewell formulated this method in the early nineteenth century as a strategy for investigating complex systems with multiple interacting causes. While the method has been primarily associated with astronomy, we highlight its equally significant roots in the geosciences, especially in paleoclimatology and tidal research. We then trace its continued application in twentieth-century studies of the Earth’s solid-body tides, where researchers iteratively used residual discrepancies between theoretical models and precise measurements to uncover new physical causes and refine models of the Earth’s elasticity, internal structure, and oceanic loading. Drawing on this history, we develop a taxonomy of residues—distinguishing between discrepancies between theory and observation and those between alternative measurements—and argue that both constitute productive, quantitative anomalies. We conclude that the method of residues exemplifies a distinctive, iterative role for anomalies in scientific practice, one that advances research without crisis or theory change, and offers insights into the epistemic strategies by which the geosciences progressively disentangle the many causes shaping our planet.