Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T13:05:14.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Distortion of Werner in Lyell's Principles of Geology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Alexander M. Ospovat
Alexander M. Ospovat
Affiliation:
Department of History, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74074, U.S.A.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Lyell's performance as a historian was both fruitful and remarkable. He wrote well; his style was lucid; and he wrote with conviction and authority. In his history of geology we find none of the usual historians’ dodges. No ‘one of the first’, no ‘probablies’, no ‘it would seem that way’. Lyell did not have to resort to such ruses, because he wrote about the truth—the truth, that is, as he saw it. Most of his statements of fact are not incorrect. But in selecting his facts, he left out anything that did not suit his purpose. Other historians of the geological sciences have pointed out the polemical nature of Lyell's history in general. My investigation is limited to a single chapter of his history, Chapter IV of the Principles, and to his treatment of Werner.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , July 1976 , pp. 190 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1976

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

1Lyell, Charles, Principles of geology, being an attempt to explain the former changes of the earth's surface by reference to causes now in operation (3 vols., London, 1830–1833), i. 56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2Lyell, Charles, i. 61.Google Scholar
3Lyell, Charles, i. 61.Google Scholar
4Lyell, Charles, i. 57.Google Scholar
5 Unpaginated manuscript, ‘Sir Humphry Davy, “Geology”, lecture 5’ (1808), Royal Institution, London. The Royal Institution has manuscripts of ten lectures on geology delivered by Sir Humphry Davy. Only four of these—lectures five, eight, nine, and ten—are in Davy's own hand; the others are in the hand of a copyist. The originals of lectures three, four, six, and seven are in the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, in Truro. To my knowledge, there are no original manuscripts of lectures one and two.Google Scholar
6Wilson, Leonard G., Charles Lyell. The years to 1841: the revolution in geology (New Haven and London, 1972), p. 280.Google Scholar
7Lyell, , op. cit. (1), i. 57.Google Scholar
8Rappaport, Rhoda, ‘Problems and sources in the history of geology, 1749–1810’, History of science, iii (1969), 67.Google Scholar
9Grabau, Amadeus W., A textbook of geology. Part I: general geology (2 vols., Boston, 1920–1921), i. 25.Google Scholar
10Gilluly, James, Waters, Aaron C., and Woodford, A., Principles of geology (San Francisco, 1968), p. 26.Google Scholar
11Navarra, John Gabriel, Weisberg, Joseph S., and Mele, Frank Michael, Earth science (New York, 1971) P. 10.Google Scholar
12Navarra, John Gabriel, Weisberg, Joseph S., and Mele, Frank MichaelGoogle Scholar
13Singer, Charles, A short history of science to the nineteenth century (Oxford, 1941), p. 279.Google Scholar
14McKenzie, A. E. E., The major achievements of science (2 vols., Cambridge, 1960), i. 109–111.Google Scholar
15Gillispie, Charles Coulston, The edge of objectivity. An essay in the history of scientific ideas (Princeton, N.J., 1960), p. 299.Google Scholar
16Gillispie, Charles Coulston, p. 295.Google Scholar
17Gillispie, Charles Coulston, p. 294.Google Scholar
18Trattner, Ernest R., Architects of ideas. The story of the great theories of mankind (New York, 1938), P. 57.Google Scholar
19Trattner, Ernest R., p. 54.Google Scholar
20Mather, Kirtley F. and Mason, Shirley L., A source book in geology (New York, 1939), p. 139.Google Scholar
21von Zittel, Karl Alfred, History of geology and palaeontology to the end of the nineteenth century, trans. Ogilvie-Gordon, Maria M. (London, 1901), p. 47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22Adams, Frank Dawson, The birth and development of the geological sciences (New York, 1938), passim.Google Scholar
23Geikie, Archibald, Text-book of geology (4th edn., 2 vols., London, 1903), i. 5–6.Google Scholar
24Geikie, Archibald, The founders of geology (2nd edn., New York: Dover Publications, 1962), p. 201.Google Scholar
25Geikie, Archibald, pp. 213–4.Google Scholar
26Geikie, Archibald, p. 286.Google Scholar
27Geikie, Archibald, p. 203.Google Scholar
28Geikie, Archibald, p. 212.Google Scholar
29 Archibald GeikieGoogle Scholar
30Geikie, Archibald, p. 299.Google Scholar
31 Archibald GeikieGoogle Scholar
32 Archibald GeikieGoogle Scholar
33 Archibald GeikieGoogle Scholar
34Geikie, Archibald, p. 281.Google Scholar
35Rudwick, Martin J. S., ‘The strategy of Lyell's Principles of geology’, Isis, lxi (1970), 5–33.Google Scholar
36Cannon, Walter F., ‘The bases of Darwin's achievement: a revaluation’, Victorian studies, v (1961–1962), 109–134.Google Scholar
37Page, Leroy E., ‘Diluvialism and its critics in Great Britain in the early nineteenth century’, in Schneer, Cecil J. (ed.), Toward a history of geology (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 257–71.Google Scholar
38 Kenneth L. Taylor, ‘Nicolas Desmarest and geology in the eighteenth century’, Taylor, Kenneth L., pp. 339–56.Google Scholar
39Rappaport, , op. cit. (8), p. 66.Google Scholar