recollections of a fallen sky - Velikovsky and cultural amnesia by E.R. MILTON (editor)

Author:E.R. MILTON (editor)
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2019-12-10T23:00:00+00:00

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RECOLLECTIONS OF A FALLEN SKY

VELIKOVSKY AND CULTURAL AMNESIA

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CHAPTER SIX

CATASTROPHISM AND UNIFORMITY

A Probe Into The Origin of the 1832 Gestalt Shift in Geology*

George Grinnell

History Department

McMaster University

[* This article has been subsequently published in Kronos: A Joumal of Interdisciplinary Synthesis (Kronos Press, Glassboro, N. J.) 1( 4): 68-76 (Winter 1976).]

"I think any argument from such a reported radical as myself," Charles Babbage wrote to the geologist Charles Lyell on May 3,1832, "would only injure the cause, and I therefore willingly leave it in better hands."

Charles Babbage (1792-1871) was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics (1828-1839) at the time, a dabbler in geology, theology and manufacturing, who had recently made an unsuccessful bid for a seat in Parliament. In 1837 he was to publish his The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, an attack on the theology of the Anglican establishment, and in 1851 he was to carry the attack into the Tory camp in his Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, the purpose of which was to argue that wealthy Tory amateurs had a stranglehold on science policy and were discriminating against socially less well positioned scientists, who were more deserving of support.

Charles Lyell (1797-1875) , to whom he was writing, had just published the second volume of his Principles of Geology (Volume 1, 1830; Volume 11, 1832; and Volume 111, 1833), a work written in support of political liberalism although ostensibly it was an objective work in science free from any political implications. In his letter of May 3rd to Lyell, Babbage was explaining why he would not write a favorable review of the book. Quite wisely, the Whig scientists, like Babbage, Lyell, Scrope, Darwin and Mantell, did not want the public to know that what was being promoted as objective truth was little more than thinly disguised political propaganda.

The purpose of this paper is to explicate what Babbage means by the word "radical," and the word "cause," when he writes, as quoted above: "I think any argument from such a reported radical as myself would only injure the cause, and I therefore leave it in better hands." The first part of this paper investigates the political implications of early 19th Century Geology. The second probes the nature of Babbage's and Lyell's "cause," and the last part of the paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this investigation for Velikovsky's theory of collective amnesia.

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