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In search of the ‘true prospect’: making and knowing the Giant's Causeway as a field site in the seventeenth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2007

ALASDAIR KENNEDY
ALASDAIR KENNEDY
Affiliation:
School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT7 1NN. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

The phenomenon of the Giant's Causeway in the north of Ireland has attracted much attention over five centuries. This essay recounts the formative years between 1688 and 1708 of the Giant's Causeway as a field site and ‘philosophical landscape’ in the light of recent research on the historical geographies of scientific knowledge. This research has provided new perspectives on field science, emphasizing the spatial character of the field and its discursive formation in different spaces. A view of the field as a self-contained unit in which science is practised is rendered problematic. Instead, it is seen as part of a network of intersecting locales within which scientists and science circulate. This essay draws upon this work, exploring and mapping the spaces and techniques used by late seventeenth-century natural philosophers in London and Dublin to generate observational and conceptual knowledge of the Giant's Causeway. In doing so, the paper contributes to an understanding of the spaces of natural philosophy in the seventeenth century, of the knowledge networks within which the virtuosi operated and of the earth science field site.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 19 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2008

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References

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11 He had also been a member of the Dublin Philosophical Society, but this society had a rather shaky life and was not in existence at this point. It met formally from 1683 to 1687, from 1693 to 1697 and briefly around 1708. Many of its members were also Fellows of the Royal Society. See K. T. Hoppen, The Common Scientist in the Seventeenth Century: A Study of the Dublin Philosophical Society 1683–1708, London, 1970.

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14 P. B. Ellis, A Dictionary of Irish Mythology, London, 1987.

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20 S. Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Science and Civility in Seventeenth-Century England, Chicago, 1994.

21 B[ulkeley]., op. cit. (17), 708.

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24 King, op. cit. (23), 55.

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26 Molyneux, op. cit. (1), 209.

27 Molyneux, op. cit. (1), 214, 218.

28 Molyneux, op. cit. (1), 218.

29 See Shapin, op. cit. (20).

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31 Foley, ‘Answers’, op. cit. (18), 173–4.

32 Foley, ‘Answers’, op. cit. (18), 173.

33 Foley, ‘Account’, op. cit. (18); Royal Society, Journal Book Copy, vol. 8 (1690–96), minutes of the meeting of 27 June 1694, 247.

34 Rudwick, op. cit. (19).

35 Cole had previously sent a drawing to the Royal Society in 1690, A Demonstration of a Strange Appearance in the Air over Coleraine on Whitmunday 1690 Between Two & Three in the Afternn. Royal Society, Southwell Papers 1611–1700, MS 248, So.23.

36 Owen Lloyd to Richard Waller, 31 October 1693 (Royal Society, EL/L5/126).

37 Christopher Cole to Owen Lloyd, 30 March 1694, in K. T. Hoppen (ed.) The Papers of the Dublin Philosophical Society (microfiche archive; henceforth DPS papers), 377; Owen Lloyd to Richard Waller, 31 March 1694 (DPS papers, 378); Owen Lloyd to Richard Waller, 13 June 1694 (Royal Society, EL/L5/128).

38 Foley, ‘Answers’, op. cit. (18), 175.

39 B. J. Ford, Images of Science: A History of Scientific Illustration, London, 1992.

40 Rudwick, M. J. S., ‘The emergence of a visual language for geological science 1760–1840’, History of Science (1976), 14, 149–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; D. Topper, ‘Towards an epistemology of scientific illustration’, in Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science (ed. B. S. Baigrie), Toronto, 1996, 215–49.

41 W. B. Ashworth, Vulcan's Forge and Fingal's Cave: Volcanoes, Basalt, and the Discovery of Geological Time, Kansas City, 2004.

42 Foley, ‘Answers’, op. cit. (18), 175.

43 L. Herrmann, British Landscape Painting of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1973.

44 P. D. A. Harvey, The History of Topographical Maps: Symbols, Pictures and Surveys, London, 1980.

45 Anglesea and Preston, op. cit. (4), 255.

46 Withers, op. cit. (30).

47 See E. S. Casey, Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps, London, 2002.

48 Foley, ‘Answers’, op. cit. (18).

49 Richard Bulkeley to Martin Lister, c. June/July 1694 (DPS papers, 381).

50 Cole to Lloyd, op. cit. (37).

51 Cole to Lloyd, op. cit. (37). Hoppen, op. cit. (37), notes that the ‘printed enquiries’ to which Cole refers suggest that the Dublin Philosophical Society was redistributing William Molyneux's 1682 Queries for a Natural History of Ireland.

52 Rudwick, op. cit. (40).

53 Molyneux, op. cit. (1), 211.

54 Cole to Lloyd, op. cit. (37).

55 Richard Bulkeley to Martin Lister, 13 April 1697 (DPS papers, 389); Molyneux, op. cit. (1), 211. Bulkeley noted that Sandys's drawing cost the Dublin Philosophical Society £13, and was ‘very curious and instructive’.

56 Molyneux, op. cit. (1), 212.

57 Hamilton, op. cit. (2), part II, 14–15.

58 See Rudwick, op. cit. (40).

59 B. Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Cambridge, MA, 1987, 227.

60 A. Larsen, ‘Equipment for the field’, in Cultures of Natural History (ed. N. Jardine, J. A. Secord and E. C. Spary), Cambridge, 1996, 358–77.

61 Foley, ‘Answers’, op. cit. (18), 174.

62 Molyneux, op. cit. (18).

63 Molyneux, op. cit. (1), 222.

64 Molyneux, op. cit. (1), 222.

65 Royal Society, Journal Book Copy, vol. 9 (1696–1702), minutes of the meeting of 20 October 1697, 66.

66 William Molyneux to Hans Sloane, 4 November 1697 (Royal Society, EL/M1/99).

67 William Molyneux to Hans Sloane, 13 November 1697 (DPS papers, 392).

68 Royal Society, Journal Book Copy, vol. 9 (1696–1702), minutes of the meeting of 22 December 1697, 77. The comment recorded in the minutes immediately after Mr Wilson's is intriguing: ‘Dr Hooke said that Glass plates were long since made Con Cave for Watches by the help of fire melting down plates on a fire Stone Concave.’ Such a comment might have been provoked by the concavo-convex surfaces of the Causeway stone just seen. If so, perhaps Hooke was proposing that the shape of the Causeway stones was the result of the action of heat. However, the comment is ambiguous and may also relate to a discussion on glass that evening. The minutes of the same meeting also record that a letter from a Mr Gray was read, ‘giving some Experiments about making Concave Speculums easy’. The discussion about lenses could have equally been stimulated by the Causeway specimen. The minutes of this meeting are somewhat confused and may not be in chronological order, as the presentation of the Causeway specimen and Sandys's drawing are recorded after Mr Wilson's comment on the specimen.

69 Molyneux, op. cit. (1).

70 Latour, op. cit. (59), 227.

71 Quoted in A. Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making, Chicago, 1998, 488.

72 Molyneux, op. cit. (18), 176.

73 Molyneux, op. cit. (18), 176.

74 Molyneux, op. cit. (18), 177.

75 Molyneux, op. cit. (18), 177.

76 Molyneux, op. cit. (18), 177.

77 Molyneux, op. cit. (18), 180.

78 Quoted in R. Laudan, From Mineralogy to Geology: The Foundations of a Science 1650–1830, London, 1987, 39.

79 Molyneux, op. cit. (18), 180.

80 See Ashworth, op. cit. (41).

81 Molyneux, op. cit. (18), 181. Translated this reads, ‘The greatest Irish stone is basalt or touchstone, standing with at least five corners and at the most seven; full of knots, it has numerous joints which are alternately and skilfully interlinked, but easily separable.’

82 Molyneux, op. cit. (1). The greater scope of vision inherent in such a space can be further seen in the discussions between Thomas Molyneux and Edward Lhuyd. Lhuyd had discovered a basalt formation in Wales, and sent an account of it, accompanied by a drawing, to Thomas Molyneux, who advised him to compare a specimen of the Welsh basalt with a specimen of Causeway basalt in the Repository at Gresham College. See Thomas Molyneux to Edward Lhuyd, 4 May 1699 (DPS papers, 402).

83 Molyneux, op. cit. (18), 176.

84 Molyneux, op. cit. (18), 177. This comment reflects the prevalent conception of nature as art and God as the artisan; cf. L. Daston, ‘Nature by design’, in Picturing Science, Producing Art (ed. C. A. Jones and P. Galison), London, 1998, 232–53.

85 Molyneux, op. cit. (1), 210.

86 Molyneux, op. cit. (1), 219.

87 Davies has observed that Woodward ‘was evidently the first fully to appreciate the vital importance of field-work in geological studies’, this around the 1690s. G. L. Davies, The Earth in Decay: A History of British Geomorphology 1578–1878, London, n.d., 75.

88 Molyneux, op. cit. (1), 209.

89 J. G. Simms, William Molyneux of Dublin, Dublin, 1982.

90 Davies, op. cit. (87); R. Rappaport, ‘The earth sciences’, in The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 4: Eighteenth-Century Science (ed. R. Porter), Cambridge, 2003, 417–35; Rudwick, op. cit. (19).

91 Strange, J., ‘An account of two giants causeways, or groups of prismatic basaltine columns, and other curious vulcanic concretions, in the Venetian State in Italy; with some remarks on the characters of these and other similar bodies, and on the physical geography of the countries in which they are found’, Philosophical Transactions (1775), 65, 5–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92 Anonymous, , ‘A letter from Dublin to the author of the miscellaneous letters, giving an account of some petrifactions, with animadversions thereupon’, Miscellaneous Letters (1696), 2, 49–57Google Scholar. This issue is incorrectly numbered.

93 See S.G.A., ‘An account of, and reflections upon the two essays sent from Oxford to a nobleman in London, concerning some errors about the creation, general flood, and the peopling of the world; as also of fables, romances, and the state of learning’, Miscellaneous Letters (1695), 1, 561–6Google Scholar.

94 Anonymous, op. cit. (92), 49.

95 Anonymous, op. cit. (92), 49–50.

96 Anonymous, op. cit. (92), 50.

97 Molyneux, op. cit. (1), 221.

98 See J. A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, Chicago, 2000.

99 S.G.A., op. cit. (93).

100 For Samuel Molyneux's diary of his tour in the north of Ireland, see S. Molyneux, ‘Journey to ye North, August 7th, 1708’, in Historical Notices of Old Belfast and its Vicinity (ed. R. M. Young), Belfast, 1896, 152–60; note that Young mistakenly attributes this account to Thomas Molyneux.

101 Molyneux, op. cit. (100), 157.

102 Molyneux, op. cit. (100), 157, 158.

103 Although Samuel Molyneux did redistribute copies of his father's questionnaire on Irish natural history, he also made the effort to go and see natural phenomena for himself, further evidence of the beginning of a shift away from collating data obtained through eyewitness reports; see Hoppen, op. cit. (11), and idem, op. cit. (37).

104 Molyneux, op. cit. (100), 157.

105 Klonk is more concerned with ‘inaccuracy’ and ‘errors’ in these images than with their intellectual importance and conceptual significance. C. Klonk, ‘Science, art, and the representation of the natural world’, in The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 4: Eighteenth-Century Science (ed. R. Porter), Cambridge, 2003, 584–617. Porter's history of geology mentions them only in passing and wrongly attributes Sandys's drawing to William Molyneux. R. Porter, The Making of Geology: Earth Science in Britain 1660–1815, Cambridge, 1977. Rudwick, op. cit. (40), while admittedly dealing with later geological illustration, still does not mention its predecessors from the pens of Cole and Sandys.

106 Hoppen, op. cit. (11).