The discovery of a vocation: Darwin's early geology

The British Journal for the History of Science

Volumn 24, Issue 2, 1991, Pages 133-157

  Secord, James A ^a  

^a IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84972219035     PISSN: 00070874     EISSN: 1474001X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007087400027059     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. General surveys of Darwin's geological work include: J. W. Judd, ‘Darwin and geology’, in Darwin and Modern Science (ed. A. C. Seward), Cambridge, 1909, pp. 337–84; the introductory essays by Judd in C. Darwin, On the Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs: Also Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands and Parts of South America Visited during the Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle (ed. J. W. Judd), London, n. d.; S. Herbert, ‘The logic of Darwin's discovery’, Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis Universiry, 1968; idem., ‘Darwin as a geologist’, Scientific American, (1986), 254, no. 5, pp. 116–23; F. H. T. Rhodes, pp. 193–229, this volume.
2. N. Barlow (ed.), The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, London, 1958, pp. 52–3. For a general discussion of Darwin's Edinburgh years, see J. H. Ashworth, ‘Charles Darwin as a student in Edinburgh, 1825–1827’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, (1934–35), 55, pp. 97–113.
3. C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker, 24 [May 1854], in F. Burkhardt and S. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Cambridge, 1985-, v, p. 195.
4. These and other comments on Jameson's lectures can be found in V. A. Eyles, ‘Robert Jameson and the Royal Scottish Museum’, Discovery, (1954), 15, pp. 155–62, esp. p. 159; see also D. Flinn, ‘James Hutton and Robert Jameson’, Scottish journal of Geology, (1980), 16, pp. 251–8. Jameson's course in the wider context of the University is clearly set out in J. B. Morrell, ‘Science and Scottish University reform: Edinburgh in 1826’, BIHS, (1972), 6, pp. 39–58, esp. pp. 48–51.
5. ‘ Darwin in Edinburgh. II ’, St. James's Gazette, (17 Feb. 1888), 16, no. 2404, p. 7. The anonymous author of this article notes that Darwin did not register for this class and probably joined it late in the session, perhaps with the encouragement of his friends in the Plinian and other student natural history societies. Any lectures he would have missed involved meteorology and hydrography.
6. Barlow (ed.), (3), p. 45.
7. R. Jameson, Manual of Mineralogy: Containing an Account of Simple Minerals, and also a Description and Arrangement of Mountain Rocks, Edinburgh, 1821, pp. 88–9; copy in Darwin Archive, CUL. I am grateful to Mario di Gregorio for providing a copy of his transcription of these remarks, published in M. A. Di Gregorio with the assistance of N. W. Gill, Charles Darwin's Marginalia, New York, 1990, i, cols. 432–40.
8. R. Jameson, p. 466., Manual of Mineralogy: Containing an Account of Simple Minerals, and also a Description and Arrangement of Mountain Rocks, Edinburgh, 1821, pp. 88–9; copy in Darwin Archive, CUL. I am grateful to Mario di Gregorio for providing a copy of his transcription of these remarks, published in M. A. Di Gregorio with the assistance of N. W. Gill, Charles Darwin's Marginalia, New York, 1990, i, cols. 432–40
9. see J. A. Secord, pp. 421, 447,452; for Jameson's encouragement of debate, ‘Edinburgh Lamarckians: Robert Jameson and Robert E. Grant’, Journal of the History of Biology, (1991), 24, pp. 1–18.
10. M. T. Greene, pp. 382, 341–2. For the emphasis of Wernerian geology on classification and order, see R. Laudan, From Mineralogy to Geology: The Foundations of a Science, Chicago, 1987, esp. pp. 138–79; and Geology in the Nineteenth Century: Changing Views of a Changing World, Ithaca, NY, 1982, pp. 19–68.
11. Secord, (10).
12. Evidence, Oral and Documentary, Taken and Received by the Commissioners… for Visiting the Universities of Scotland: The University of Edinburgh, Parliamentary Papers, 35, (1837), p. 145. Jameson's deployment of this approach in the context of Edinburgh lecturing is effectively dealt with in R. Porter, The Making of Geology: Earth Science in Britain, 1660–1815, Cambridge, 1977, pp. 149–56.
13. P. R. Sloan, ‘Darwin's invertebrate program, 1826–1836: preconditions for transformism’, in The Darwinian Heritage (ed. D. Kohn), Princeton, 1985, pp. 71–120; and ‘Darwin, vital matter, and the transformation of species’, journal of the History of Biology, (1986), 19, pp. 369–445. M. J. S. Hodge has emphasized the importance of Edinburgh for Darwin's ‘zoonomicaP programme; see his ‘Darwin as a lifelong generation theorist’, in Kohn (ed.), pp. 207–43.
14. Barlow (ed.), (3), p. 53. The fruitful nature of Wernerian research is emphasized in Laudan, (11), and in A. M. Ospovat, ‘Reflections on A. G. Werner's “Kurze Klassifikation“’, in Toward a History of Geology (ed. C. J. Schneer), Cambridge, Mass., 1969, pp. 242–58. It is interesting to note that Jameson apparently played no part in the campaign to save Hutton's geological sections at Salisbury Crags from destruction by quarrying. The fight was led by Sir James Hall and Thomas Charles Hope, as explained in W. Forbes Gray, ‘The quarrying of Salisbury Crags’, The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, (1932), 18, pp. 181–210.
15. For Hope as a teacher, see Morrell, (5), esp. pp. 53–55; ‘Practical chemistry in the University of Edinburgh’, Ambix, (1969), pp. 66–80; and T. S. Traill, ‘Memoir of Dr. Thomas Charles Hope, Late Professor of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, (1849), 16, pp. 419–34.
16. E. W. Bennett, ‘Outlines of a course of lectures on chemistry delivered by Dr Hope – in the University of Edinburgh in the Session of 1822 Sc 23’, Edinburgh University Library: Ms Gen. 746D, fols. 204–5. Darwin seems to have followed Hope's advice to purchase the works of Jameson and Playfair ; his copy of the former author's Treatise on the External, Chemical, and Physical Characters of Minerals, 2nd edn, Edinburgh, 1816, is dated ‘ Feb. 13th 1826’. His copy of J. Playfair, Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, Edinburgh, 1802, is undated, but is signed ‘ Charles Darwin ’ in the same large hand found in many of his pre-Beagle books.
17. Edinburgh University Library: Ms. Gen. 7460, fols. 250–1.
18. ‘Notes on chemistry from Dr Hopes Lectures’, fols. 1,10,13. It is worth noting that Hope, like Hall, differed from Hutton in his willingness to admit to evidence for major catastrophes in Earth history. In 1810, for example, Hope claimed that the progress of erosion ‘must have been greatly accelerated by the Deluge’. Whether he still held this opinion in 1826 is not known. [Archibald] Alison, Edinburgh University Library: Ms. Gen. 1399, 4, p. 21.
19. Morrell, (5).
20. Evidence, (13), p. 145.
21. see G. Shepperson, As evidenced by a letter of 1844, when he claimed not to know the editor of the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal: C. Darwin to A. von Morlot, 9 Aug. [1844], Burkhardt and Smith (eds.), (4), iii, p. 51. For Hope, see C. Darwin to Caroline Darwin, 6 Jan. 1826, i, p. 25. For the family links, ‘The intellectual background of Charles Darwin's student years at Edinburgh’, in Darwinism and the Study of Society: A Centenary Symposium (ed. M. Banton), London, 1961, pp. 17–35.
22. Morrell, (16) ; L. Jameson, ‘Biographical memoir of the late Professor Jameson ’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, (1854), 57, pp. 1–49.
23. A. Thackray, ‘Natural knowledge in cultural context: the Manchester model’, American Historical Review, (1974), 79, pp. 672–709;
24. L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850, London, 1987.
25. S. S. Schweber, ‘The wider British context in Darwin's theorizing’, in Kohn (ed.), (14), pp. 35–69, esp. pp. 39–47.
26. S. Herbert, pp. 161,162, this volume. E. Darwin, The Botanic Garden; A Poem, in Two Parts, London, 1791, ‘Section of the Earth‘ facing p. 67 of the ‘Additional Notes‘ to pt i, The Economy of Vegetation. For the ‘Huttonian Earth-machine’, see G. L. Davies, The Earth in Decay: A History of British Geomorphology, 1578–1878, New York, 1969, pp. 154–99.
27. Barlow (ed.), (3), pp. 59–69, 67–9; Burkhard! and Smith (eds.), (4), i, pp. 539–40. For the model of the clergyman naturalist, see J. R. Moore, ‘Darwin of Down: the evolutionist as squarson-naturalist’, in Kohn (ed.), (14), pp. 435–81.
28. Rodwell to F. Darwin, 8 July 1832, DAR 112, fol. 94v; for Herbert's reminiscences, see DAR 112, fols. 67–68. The issue is raised in Burlchardt and Smith (eds.), (4), i, p. 125.
29. C. Darwin to Caroline Darwin, [28 April 1831], Burlchardt and Smith (eds.), (4), i, p. 122.
30. C. Darwin to J. S. Henslow, [11 July 1831], in Burkhardt and Smith (eds.), (4), i, p. 125. Darwin described this type of clinometer in his essay on ‘Geology’.in J. F. W. Herschel's Manual of Scientific Enquiry, London, 1849; reprinted in The Collected Papers of Charles Darwin (ed. P. H. Barrett), 2 vols., Chicago, 1977, i, 227–50, at p. 229.
31. Barlow (ed.), (3), pp. 68–69. Several pages of early field notes from the area around Llanmynach (a village sixteen miles northwest of Shrewsbury) may date from this time, or may have been made during the first stage of the tour with Sedgwick ; see DAR 5.C4, fols. 1–4.
32. Compare C. Darwin to J. S. Henslow, [11 July 1831], with C. Darwin to W. D. Fox, [9 July 1831], in Burkhardt and Smith (eds.), (4), i, pp. 124–5.
33. For tacit knowledge, see M. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-critical Philosophy, London, 1958; idem, The Tacit Dimension, Garden City, New York, 1966; H. M. Collins, Changing, Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice, London, 1985, and J. R. Ravetz, Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems, Oxford, 1971, pp. 75–108.
34. M. J. S. Rudwick, ‘Charles Darwin in London: the integration of public and private science’, Isis, (1982), 73, pp. 186–206, at p. 193. The transformation was, however, not in Darwin's ascribed status (as Rudwick suggests), but in his self-image. For the quotation, see C. Darwin to C. T. Whitley, [12 July 1831], in Burkhardt and Smith (eds.), (4), vii, p. 466.
35. Barlow (ed.), (3), pp. 69–70: I told Sedgwick of the fact, and he at once said (no doubt truly) that it must have been thrown away by someone into the pit; but then added, if really embedded there it would overthrow all that we know about the superficial deposits of the midland counties…But I was then utterly astonished at Sedgwick not being delighted at so wonderful a fact as a tropical shell being found near the surface in the middle of England. ‘
36. The notes (DAR 5, fols. 5–16) are transcribed in P. H. Barrett, ‘The Sedgwick-Darwin geological tour of North Wales’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, (1974), 118, pp. 146–64. Sedgwick's maps and notebooks, including a typed transcription by O. T. Jones, are in the Sedgwick Museum, University of Cambridge.
37. G. B. Greenough, A Geological Map of England and Wales, London, 1820. A copy of a reduced version published by J. Gardner in 1826, in the map collection of Cambridge University Library, is said to have belonged to Darwin. For the role of Greenough's map, see M. J. S. Rudwick, ‘The foundation of the Geological Society of London: its scheme for co-operative research and its struggle for independence’, BJHS, (1963), 1, pp. 234–72, and the alternative view expressed in R. Laudan, ‘Ideas and organizations in British geology: a case study in institutional history’, Isis, (1977), 68, pp. 527–38. For Sedgwick's researches, see J. A. Secord, Controversy in Victorian Geology: The Cambrian-Silurian Dispute, Princeton, 1986, esp. pp. 47–50 ; for the work of his predecessors, see H. Torrens, ‘Arthur Aikin's mineralogical survey of Shropshire, 1796–1816, and the contemporary audience for geological publications ’, BJHS, (1983), 16, pp. 111–53, and J. Hailstone to A. Sedgwick, 6 June 1831, Cambridge University Library, Add. ms 7652.IA.56.
38. Barrett, (36), p. 157; A. Sedgwick, entry for 8 August 1831. For a good contemporary account of the caves at Plas-yn-Cefn, see E. Stanley, ‘Memoir on a cave at Cefn in Denbigshire’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, (1833), 14, pp. 40–53, based on fieldwork in the first three months of 1832. Stanley (p. 41) emphasizes the ease of finding vertebrate fossils at Cefn.
39. A. Sedgwick, entries for 6–8 August 1831, Journal no. XXI; Barrett, [36), p. 156. Also helpful is Sedgwick's contemporary account of the main results of the tour with Darwin: Sedgwick to Murchison, 13 September 1831, in J. W’. Clark and T. M. Hughes, The Life and Letters of Adam Sedgivick, 1 vols., Cambridge, 1890, i, pp. 377–9, at p. 378.
40. Barrett, (36), pp. 157–8.
41. Barrett, (36), p. 158. For the prevalence of this interpretation of valley formation, see Davies, (26), p. 241. Darwin recalled Sedgwick's reaction in C. Darwin to T. M. Hughes, 24 May 1875, in Clark and Hughes, (39), i, pp. 380–1.
42. Barlow (ed.), (3), pp. 69–70; see note 35 above.
43. Secord, (37), pp. 57–68; C. Smith, ‘Geologists and mathematicians: the rise of physical geology’, in Wranglers and Physicists: Studies on Cambridge Physics in the Nineteenth Century (ed. P. Harman), Manchester, 1985, pp. 49–83.
44. Barrett, (36), p. 159. Darwin's research on this topic on the voyage is summarized in his Geological Observations on South America, London, 1846.
45. C. Darwin to J. S. Henslow, 16 June 1832, in Burlchardt and Smith (eds.), (4), i, p. 238; see also Darwin to Henslow, 11 April 1833, p. 308.
46. A. Sedgwick to C. Darwin, 4 September 1831, (4), i, p. 137. For problems that could result from collecting loose specimens, see Secord, (37), pp. 250–1.
47. C. Darwin to J. S. Henslow, 18 May 1832, in Burkhardt and Smith (eds.), (4), i, p. 236–9.
48. R. D. Keynes (ed.), Charles Darwin's Beagle Diary, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 6–7, entries for 12–13 November 1831. The Admiralty instructions for the voyage-which contain much on geology-are in Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle, Between the Years 1826 and 1836, Describing their Examination of the Southern Shores of South America, and the Beagle's Circumnavigation of the Globe, 3 vols., London, 1839, ii, pp. 24–40, and are conveniently available in C. Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle (ed. J. Browne and M. Neve), London, 1989, pp. 378–99.
49. These and other books carried on the Beagle are listed in Burkhardt and Smith (eds.), (4), i, pp. 553–66.
50. Laudan, (11), esp. pp. 180–97 gives the best available summary of the kind of causal geology that dominated European geology in the 1820s, and shaped much of Darwin's own work. The special importance of Herschel - particularly in relation to the reading of Lyell - is emphasized in M. Ruse, ‘Darwin's debt to philosophy: an examination of the influence of the philosophical ideas of John F. W. Herschel and William Whewell on the development of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution ’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, (1975), 6, pp. 159–81.
51. Darwin's pre-Lyellian geology is presented as an essentially Scriptural science in the classic discussion in H. E. and V. Gruber, ‘The eye of reason: Darwin's development during the Beagle voyage’, Isis, (1962), S3, pp. 186–200. For a detailed account of Darwin's attitude towards the diluvium, see Herbert, (26).
52. Darwin's later use of Lyell has of course been explored in considerable detail. Besides the general sources cited in note 1, see esp. S. Herbert, ‘Les divergences entre Darwin et Lyell sur quelques questions géologiques’, in De Darwin au Darwinism (ed. Y. Conry), Paris, 1983, pp. 69–76; M. J. S. Hodge, ‘Darwin and the laws of the animate part of the terrestrial system (1835–1837): on the Lyellian origins of his zoonomical explanatory program’, Studies in History of Biology, (1983), 6, pp. 1–106; M. J. S. Rudwick, ‘Darwin and Glen Roy: a “great failure“ in scientific method?’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, (1974), 5, pp. 97–185; D. R. Stoddart, ‘Darwin, Lyell, and the geological significance of coral reefs’, BJHS, (1976), 9, pp. 199–218.
53. Barlow (ed.), (3), pp. 77, 101.
54. Herbert, (26), provides a full analysis with references to the documents. The significance of these records was first brought out in Herbert, (1), esp. pp. 117–18.
55. A. Sedgwick to C. Darwin, 18 September 1831, in Burkhardt and Smith (eds.), (4), i, p. 157.
56. DAR 32.1, fol. 19, where Darwin also wrote ‘I could have scarcely credited that rocks nearly as hard as the conglomerates of older formation (viz of red-sandstone formation Anglesey) could daily be increasing under my own eyes. ’.See also Notebook 1.4, entry for 17 January 1832. The criticism of Daubeny on lava was noted about St Jago; see DAR 32.1, fol. 35v. Lyell's emphasis on vera causae is well brought out in Laudan, 2, pp. 201–220.
57. N. Barlow (ed.), Charles Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle, London, 1945, pp. 155–7, and Keynes (ed.), (48), p. 25, both state that Darwin was using his blowpipe here as a way of testing the effects of burning lava on the shell bed. But this is highly improbable. As he wrote in an undated passage at the end of his field notebook, ‘shells action under blowpipe try the old ones’. The results of the test were recorded in his geological notes (DAR 32.1, fol. 21v): ‘These shells have lost their animal matter, that is they do not when heated alter or emit an animal smell. ‘
58. C. Darwin to W. D. Fox, May 1832, in Burlchardt and Smith (eds.), (4), i, p. 232; for Lyell, see M. J. S. Rudwick, ‘Lyell on Etna, and the antiquity of the Earth’, in Schneer (ed.), (15), pp. 288–304.
59. Secord, (37), discusses the field styles of Sedgwick and Murchison.
60. Barlow (ed.), (3), p. 101. Henslow's view was typical, as shown in M. Bartholomew, ‘The singularity of Lyell’, History of Science, (1979), 17, pp. 276–93.
61. S. Herbert, (26).
62. Keynes (ed.), (48), p. 24. For the agenda before Darwin landed, p. 13, entry for 13 December 1831, and S. Darwin to C. Darwin, 12 February 1836, in Burkhardt and Smith (eds.), (4), i, p. 488. For Darwin's self-identification as a geologist, see Gruber and Gruber, (51); S. Herbert, ‘The place of man in the development of Darwin's theory of transmutation: Part I. To July 1837’, Journal of the History of Biology, (1974), 7, pp. 217–58; Herbert, ‘Darwin the young geologist’.and M. J. S. Rudwick, ‘Darwin and the world of geology’, both in Kohn (ed.), (14), pp. 483–510 and pp. 511–18.
63. For the importance of such moments in the formation of disciplines, see S. Schaffer, ‘Scientific discoveries and the end of natural philosophy’, Social Studies of Science, (1986), 16, pp. 387–420.
64. Barlow (ed.), (3), p. 81.
65. The ‘partial sinking’.is mentioned in Darwin's early notes (DAR 32.1, fols. 18, 29–30) and in one of the geological books that Darwin did in fact write; see Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands Visited during the Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle, together with some Brief Notices of the Geology of Australia and the Cape of Good Hope, London, 1844, p. 9. In this later account, the change in level of the beds at Quail Island was no longer considered as an example of subsidence, although it had been in his early notes. When revisiting the island in 1836, Darwin was able to place St Jago in the larger framework of his global theory of subsidence and elevation that he had developed in South America; p. 95.
66. Darwin, (67), pp. 93–96. The essay by J. W. Judd in Darwin, (1), pp. 157–65 is the most helpful source for the place of Darwin's work in nineteenth-century studies of volcahoes. For background, see D. Dean, ‘Graham Island, Charles Lyell, and the craters of elevation controversy’, Isis, (1980), 71, pp. 571–88, esp. pp. 584–5; and Laudan, (11), p. 193. Contemporary expositions of the debate are in C. Daubeny, A Description of Active and Extinct Volcanoes; “With Remarks on their Origin, their Chemical Phenomena, and the Character of their Products, as Determined by the Condition of the Earth during the Period of their Formation, London, 1826, esp. pp. 253–5, and C. Lyell, Principles of Geology, Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface, by Reference to Causes now in Operation, London, 1830, i, pp. 386–98.
67. An analysis of the notebooks gives a very different picture of Darwin's changing self-image from that obtained in F. Sulloway, ‘Darwin's early intellectual development: an overview of the Beagle voyage (1831–1836)’, in Kohn (ed.), (14), pp. 121–54. Sulloway relies on the misleadingly guarded and cautious letters he wrote to Henslow.
68. D. Outram, ‘The language of natural power: the Eloges of Georges Cuvier and the public language of nineteenth-century science’, History of Science, (1978), 16, pp. 153–78, at p. 153. I am indebted to Outram, Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science and Authority in Post-revolutionary France, Manchester, 1984, esp. chapter vii, ‘Geology, history and the shaping of a self-image’. For geology as a specialist vocation in Britain, see R. Porter, ‘Gentlemen and geology: the emergence of a scientific career, 1660–1920’, Historical Journal, (1978), 21, pp. 809–36.
69. Keynes (ed.), (48), p. 19.
70. Keynes (ed.), p. 23., (48)