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Lyell’s Mock Epic

Adelene Buckland

in Novel Science: Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology

In November 1817, Charles Lyell wrote a poem “Lines on Staffa” to show his father that he had learned, at Oxford, a gentlemanly sensitivity to the natural world, and attained the poetic ... More

In November 1817, Charles Lyell wrote a poem “Lines on Staffa” to show his father that he had learned, at Oxford, a gentlemanly sensitivity to the natural world, and attained the poetic accomplishment to compose stanzas that were emergent in the works of his contemporaries. Besides showing this undergraduate's gentlemanly panache, the poem also expresses his growing interest in his newly found pursuit: geology. Lyell would move on to publish one of the most important geological works of the nineteenth century, Principles of Geology, which would sell fifteen thousand copies before his death in 1875. This chapter explores the trappings of Lyell's piece and body of work, and his later influence on the field of geology. Lyell's framing of a scientific speculation in fashionable Spenserian stanza within a Romantic “fairy scene” may have been the outlet through which he would silently vocalize his ambitions in science.Less

Geology's Guiding Principles (1830)

in Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform

This chapter discusses the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology. Lyell's long introductory chapters gave readers a foretaste of the massively elaborate “system” that the rest of his ... More

This chapter discusses the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology. Lyell's long introductory chapters gave readers a foretaste of the massively elaborate “system” that the rest of his work would try to substantiate. Despite his renunciation of any speculation about the primal origin of the earth, or “cosmogony,” the ambitious scope of Lyell's work left his contemporaries in no doubt about the genre to which the Principles belonged. What he himself described repeatedly as a “system” was indeed what that word by long tradition denoted: a “theory of the earth” or geotheory.Less

Challenges to lyell's geotheory (1832–35)

in Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform

The full publication of Charles Lyell's Principles, while causing no scientific revolution, provoked intense argument among geologists. This chapter focuses on the reactions to Lyell's geotheory. In ... More

The full publication of Charles Lyell's Principles, while causing no scientific revolution, provoked intense argument among geologists. This chapter focuses on the reactions to Lyell's geotheory. In general, fellow geologists welcomed his enlarged repertoire of actual causes as capable of explaining more than had hitherto been supposed; but they rejected his claim that there had never been any events more sudden or violent than those witnessed in human history, and even more his claim that there had been no overall directionality in geohistory. Above all, they unpicked Lyell's unitary concept of “absolute uniformity” into its component meanings, some of them more plausible than others.Less

Lyell Claims Darwin as a Student

Alistair Sponsel

in Darwin's Evolving Identity: Adventure, Ambition, and the Sin of Speculation

This initial chapter of part 2, “Training in Theory,” analyzes Darwin’s late-voyage scientific ambitions and his return to seek a place in the British geological community. It also introduces part ... More

This initial chapter of part 2, “Training in Theory,” analyzes Darwin’s late-voyage scientific ambitions and his return to seek a place in the British geological community. It also introduces part 2’s major themes, particularly those of mentorship, collaboration, authorial credit, and the cultivation of audiences for scientific work. Sponsel argues that the well-known affinities between Darwin’s theories and those of the geologist Charles Lyell were more a product of their close working relationship than Darwin’s earlier reading of Lyell’s books. This master-and-student collaboration offered distinct benefits to both men while creating obligations on both sides. The chapter examines Lyell’s reputation as an eager generalizer or theorist who had been criticized and even parodied by contemporaries such as Henry De la Beche. Just as Darwin distributed zoological, paleontological, and botanical specimens from the voyage to relevant experts, so he shared his geological theories with Lyell, who helped craft them for publication in ways that would be mutually beneficial even when the two men disagreed, as they initially did on the formation of coral reefs. Not only did Darwin continue to develop his reef theory after the voyage, he did so in ways that emphasized his allegiance to Lyell’s geological principles.Less

The Life of a Tormented Geologist (and Enthusiastic Evolutionist)

Alistair Sponsel

in Darwin's Evolving Identity: Adventure, Ambition, and the Sin of Speculation

This chapter opens part 3, “A Different Approach to Authorship,” by arguing that Darwin’s increasing anxiety was driven by the challenge of fulfilling his obligations as a geological author. With ... More

This chapter opens part 3, “A Different Approach to Authorship,” by arguing that Darwin’s increasing anxiety was driven by the challenge of fulfilling his obligations as a geological author. With this argument, Sponsel pushes back against the notion that Darwin felt sickened by his private investigations into species. Darwin’s references to being ill while researching species indicate that this activity was far less susceptible to interruption by illness than his geological writing. He described his inability to make headway on geological projects in almost pathological terms while referring to occasions when he worked on his species notes as “idle” time that had been “frittered away.” Having decided to limit his first geology book to the topic of coral reefs, he used libraries in London to research every known reef in the world in an attempt to bolster his “theory” with “hard unbending facts.” Meanwhile, reviews of his Journal of Researches, which had finally been released two years after the pages were printed, criticized Darwin’s earlier speculative style. Adding to Darwin’s strain, Lyell grew impatient for Darwin to publish the coral reef book and proceeded to publish a new chapter on reefs that expanded on work Darwin had yet to release.Less

The Uniformity of Life (1831–32)

in Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform

This chapter describes the second volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology and its reception. Lamarckian transformism was forcefully rejected in this volume. Instead Lyell argued that organic ... More

This chapter describes the second volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology and its reception. Lamarckian transformism was forcefully rejected in this volume. Instead Lyell argued that organic species were real natural units, stable in form and habit throughout their span of existence; and that both their “births” or points of origin and their “deaths” or points of extinction were events which were scattered piecemeal across space and time, rather than being concentrated in sudden episodes of mass origins and mass extinctions. But his adoption of Giovanni Battista Brocchi's analogy between species and individuals was modified, in that he now attributed extinctions not to anything analogous to old age but to purely environmental factors consequent upon the ceaseless changes in climate and physical geography which he had outlined in his first volume. Roderick Impey Murchison was the first to welcome Lyell's second volume in public, but William Whewell's was a more penetrating review.Less

Completing Lyell's Principles (1832–33)

in Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform

This chapter describes the third volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology. Lyell's lectures at King's College gave him a valuable opportunity to reach an influential audience drawn from the ... More

This chapter describes the third volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology. Lyell's lectures at King's College gave him a valuable opportunity to reach an influential audience drawn from the scientific and social elites in the capital. He used the occasion to outline some of the contents of the still-unpublished final volume of his Principles, making geology palatable in the College's Anglican environment by stressing its contribution to traditional natural theology. The third volume of the Principles showed that a full appreciation of the power of observable actual causes would demonstrate their total adequacy—at no more than their present intensity—to account for everything in the deep past. Lyell criticized the catastrophists more trenchantly than ever. The Tertiary era would be the test-bed for his concept of geohistory as essentially uniform and steady-state. Now, with all his geohistorical procedures set out in full, Lyell could bring his argument to its climax with a detailed reconstruction of geohistory, focused on the Tertiary era.Less

“The Huttonian theory rediviva” (1830–31)

in Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform

This chapter summarizes the next phase of Charles Lyell's exposition of his geotheory and describes how the first volume of Principles of Geology was received by fellow geologists and other savants. ... More

This chapter summarizes the next phase of Charles Lyell's exposition of his geotheory and describes how the first volume of Principles of Geology was received by fellow geologists and other savants. Among the earliest reactions to Lyell's volume, George Poulett Scrope's is particularly revealing, because in many ways he was closest to Lyell in his emphasis on the explanatory power of actual causes and in his ardent desire to free their science from the ignorant “scriptural geology” that hampered its wider acceptance in Britain. But while Scrope welcomed Lyell's treatment of actual causes, he also criticized his friend's rejection of the cumulative evidence that the earth had not been in a Huttonian steady state throughout geohistory, but on the contrary had undergone broadly directional change from a probably hot origin. Henry Thomas de la Beche, who was about to summarize the same almost consensual view of geohistory in his own book on geology, was equally critical of Lyell's geotheoretical ambitions.Less

Mr. Darwin’s Religion

Keith Thomson

in Private Doubt, Public Dilemma: Religion and Science since Jefferson and Darwin

This chapter deals with how Charles Darwin suffered from chronic anxiety while working on his evolution theory, which can largely be attributed to the conflict between religion and evolution. His On ... More

This chapter deals with how Charles Darwin suffered from chronic anxiety while working on his evolution theory, which can largely be attributed to the conflict between religion and evolution. His On the Origin of Species was more than just an exposition of a new theory, Darwin had to rebut the conventional views of nature, including natural theology and prevailing Creationist views. However, not once did he deny the existence of a Creator, only that the Creator was a mere instigator of the laws of matter. Darwin's Beagle voyage led him to dig deep into geology, and with Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology at hand, began questioning his previous learnings from the clerical teachers at Cambridge. The chapter also cites Reverend Edward Pusey's negative critique on Darwin's concept, which stressed two points: the divine and miraculous initial creation of life and the exceptionalism of human origins.Less

Promoting Lyell's Principles (1830–31)

in Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform

This chapter continues the discussion of early criticisms of the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles, taking it beyond England. Critics continued to praise Lyell for his analysis of actual ... More

This chapter continues the discussion of early criticisms of the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles, taking it beyond England. Critics continued to praise Lyell for his analysis of actual causes while criticizing him for claiming that the application of such known processes to the deep past necessarily led to a Huttonian steady-state geohistory. They claimed that Lyell, in arguing for the “uniformity” of nature, had confused the highly complex processes of geological agency with the basic physico-chemical “laws of nature” on which they were founded. The latter, they agreed, must indeed be assumed to be stable from and to eternity; but the former might have varied greatly in power and intensity in the course of geohistory, and only a close empirical study of the surviving traces of their action could or should settle the question one way or the other. All of Lyell's critics agreed in rejecting the claims of “scriptural geology,” and often did so with great vehemence.Less