The Abyss of Time by Claude C. Jr. Albritton

Author:Claude C. , Jr. Albritton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780486151168
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A Question of Tempo

The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.

THORSTEIN VEBLEN

In the early years of the nineteenth century, geology emerged as a science in its own right, a subject taught in leading universities, widely publicized in journals, and increasingly pursued by organized groups. The opposing views of the Huttonian plutonists and the Wernerian neptunists were championed by two members of the faculty at the University of Edinburgh. In 1802 John Playfair published his lucid Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, and seven years later his colleague, Robert Jameson, responded with his Elements of Geognosy (which has recently been reprinted under the more informative title, The Wernerian Theory of the Neptunian Origin of Rocks). Evidently some readers found Jameson’s Elements a little over their heads. In any case Robert Bakewell seized the opportunity to write a textbook for readers unskilled in the classification of rocks and minerals. His Introduction to Geology, first published in 1813, explains that geognosy is no more than a fancy name for geology, and goes on to define a geognost as “a perfect disciple of Werner who has lost the use of his own eyes by constantly looking through the eyes of his master” (1).

Scientific societies specializing in geology arose in Britain alongside the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh. The Geological Society of London was organized in 1807, and in the following year the Wernerian Natural History Society split from the Royal Society of Edinburgh under the leadership of Jameson. In 1810 geology was at last cited as a separate topic of reference in the fourth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The two societies at Edinburgh and London, though both organized for the advancement of knowledge about the earth, followed different paths to that end. The Wernerians at Edinburgh were mainly bent on marshalling evidence only in support of the neptunian theory. The Londoners, by contrast, professed to be in search of hard facts. In the first volume of the Geological Society’s Transactions, published in 1811, there was printed a motto taken from Bacon’s Novum Organum which advised natural philosophers to cultivate “clear and demonstrable knowledge instead of attractive and probable theory” (2). The contents of this volume adhere to the spirit of the motto, consisting as they do of factual accounts of local structural geology, rocks, minerals, and a chalybeate spring on the Isle of Wight. Whewell aptly characterized these bare-fact communications as long and dreary. But, as a modern philosopher of science has observed, “facts” often turn out to be small theories. Inevitably the collection of hard facts by the rapidly expanding membership of the Geological Society of London led to a clash of minds concerning how these fit together in broader frameworks. The result: a debate between the uniformitarians and the catastrophists, started around 1830 and not yet entirely ended.

Members of both sides agreed that the surface of the earth has undergone repeated changes in configuration in the course of time.

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