Lyell's Principles Research Articles

Book reviews

Eleven book reviews in the July 1998 edition of Notes and Records : Robert Boyle. A free enquiry into the vulgarly received notion of nature , Edward B. Davis and Michael Hunter (eds.). P. Mancosu, Philosophy of mathematics and mathematical practice in the seventeenth century . Patricia Fara, Sympathetic attractions: magnetic practices, beliefs, and symbolism in eighteenth–century England . Alan Cook, Edmond Halley: charting the heavens and the seas . Jan Bondeson, A cabinet of medical curiosities . J.M.H. Moll, Presidents of The Royal Society of Medicine . W.H. Brock, Justus von Liebig: the chemical gatekeeper . Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830–33) , J. Secord (ed.). X–rays––the first hundred years , Alan Michette and Slawka Pfauntsch (eds.). Jack Morrell, Science at Oxford 1914–1939 . John Polkinghorne, Beyond science. The wider human context .

Darwin and the Seeing Eye: Iconography and Meaning in The Beagle Years

Strongly influenced by Lyell's Principles of Geology, Darwin during the Beagle voyage developed a highly theoretical geology based on premises of continental uplift and oceanic subsidence. From the beginning he used his theoretical interpretations to validate and select his field observations. These he interpreted and communicated largely in the form of profile diagrams, of South American shorelines, Andean tectonic structures, and coral reef development. His published works from the voyage are very sparsely illustrated, except for profile diagrams, and contain remarkably few maps. Of the latter all are derivative except one. The one exception is his 1842 map of the distribution of coral reefs, which he uses as a theoretical argument to delineate areas of elevation and subsidence in the oceans, implicitly illustrating the formal logical analogy between the nature of theory and the nature of maps. The illustrations in general illustrate the contrast between Darwin's verbal facility in describing landscapes and evoking mood, and his general inability to translate his images into visual representations.

Essay review: Let us not praise famous men: A critique of Lyell's Principles

Essay review: Let us not praise famous men: A critique of Lyell's Principles

Joseph Beete Jukes, the ‘Cambridge Connection’, and the Theory of Reef Development in Australia in the Nineteenth Century

Joseph Beete Jukes studied geology at Cambridge University under Adam Sedgwick at a time when Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830-1833) revitalized the subject and when Darwin was engaged in the voyage of the Beagle (1831-1836). He owed his first professional position in Newfoundland to the patronage of Sedgwick, Lyell, Darwin and others both in Cambridge and in London, and his appointment as naturalist on H.M.S. Fly (1842-1846), to survey the Great Barrier Reef of Australia to these same supporters. Darwin published his coral reef theory in 1838, and this provided the intellectual basis for Jukes's work. In New South Wales Jukes was met by another of Sedgwick's pupils, W. B. Clarke, the leading earth scientist in the colony. Clarke himself had recently met J. D. Dana, the reef geologist on the Wilkes Expedition, who was also enthusiastic for Darwin's theory. Jukes's reef work was characterised both by Darwin's theoretical insights, which he supported but did not extend, and Sedgwick's pragmatic commitment to empirical investigation. Jukes's work in Australia, and indeed his subsequent career until his tragic death in 1869, illustrates both the intellectual and the practical consequences of his early association with the Cambridge geology school, and the way in which his mentor Sedgwick (and through him the leading geologists of the time - Darwin, Lyell and Murchison) determined his career and influenced his views. His Great Barrier Reef research, published in 1847, as well as his association with Clarke, helped to mould the development of geology in colonial New South Wales into the mould of metropolitan science in general and that of Sedgwick's Cambridge in particular.

Charles Darwin and Captain Moresby on the Drowning of Great Chagos Bank: 19th century discovery of “aseismic” ridge seismicity in the Indian Ocean

Charles Darwin's reading of Lyell's Principles of Geology and his own observations, made during the voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle, on earthquakes, the elevation of the west coast of South America, and the thick sections of marine strata in the Andean Cordillera led him to “. . . reflect much on the effects of subsidence . . .” with the result that he developed his subsidence theory of atoll formation before he ever saw an atoll. In 1836, during his first visit to an atoll, Keeling Island (now Cocos Island) in the Indian Ocean, he observed evidence of recent subsidence. Reports of a severe earthquake at Keeling in 1834 and two lesser ones in the preceding 10 years led him to conclude that small downward movements had recently taken place. However, it was not until he returned to England and became familiar with the hydrographic surveys of Captain Moresby and the latter's accounts of frequent earthquakes on the Great Chagos Bank that Darwin became convinced that the drowned reefs at Chagos, which now lie 6 to 8 fathoms beneath the surface, appeared “ . . . as if they had been carried down by one uniform movement,” the implication being that the earthquakes were accompanied by subsidence of the Great Chagos Bank. The observations of Darwin and Moresby on earthquakes and tectonics on an “aseismic” ridge are in accord with modern interpretations of “intraplate tectonics” of the Indian Ocean. In particular, earthquakes up to magnitude 7, which occur on the Chagos‐Laccadive Ridge, show normal faulting on an east‐west fault plane that intersects the Great Chagos Bank and can cause vertical slip of several meters. The work of Darwin and Moresby 150 years ago showed that atolls and their associated drowned banks are sensitive recorders of “intraplate tectonics.”

The Importance of French Transformist Ideas for the Second Volume of Lyell'S Principles of Geology

Recently there has been considerable revaluation of the development of natural sciences in the early nineteenth century, dealing among other things with the works and ideas of Charles Lyell. The task of interpreting Lyell in balanced terms is extremely complex because his activities covered many fields of research, and because his views have been unwarrantably distorted in order to make him the precursor of various modern scientific positions. Martin Rudwick in particular has contributed several papers relating to Lyell's Principles of geology, and has repeatedly stressed the need for a comprehensive evaluation of Lyell's scientific proposals, and of his position in the culture of his time. In the present paper I hope to contribute to the reassessment of Lyell's work by concentrating on his discussion of transformism, which constituted the central theme of the second volume of the Principles of geology: the very length of Lyell's detailed and critical analysis of Lamarck's theories reveals the importance he attributed to the question of transformism in the contemporary natural sciences.

Lyell's Principles of Geology

Lyell's Principles of Geology

The Strategy of Lyell's Principles of Geology

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Strategy of Lyell's Principles of GeologyMartin J. S. RudwickMartin J. S. Rudwick Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 61, Number 1Spring, 1970 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/350576 Views: 45Total views on this site Citations: 35Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1970 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: Thousands, Millions or Billions, (Dec 2020): 97–118.https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316997475.008Marianne Sommer Lyell, Charles: Principles of Geology, (Oct 2020): 1–2.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05728-0_15428-1Cándido Manuel GARCÍA CRUZ El Pensamiento Geológico de Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) en Relación con el Actualismo-Uniformitarismo, Cuadernos Dieciochistas 20, no.00 (Dec 2019): 387.https://doi.org/10.14201/cuadieci201920387415Shirley C. Strum Why Natural History Is Important to (Primate) Science: A Baboon Case Study, International Journal of Primatology 40, no.66 (Dec 2019): 596–612.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-019-00117-7Adam Bobbette, Amy Donovan Encountering the Earth: Political Geological Futures?, (Nov 2018): 347–371.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98189-5_12Hans Hermann Rump „Die Wissenschaftliche Botanik“ im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert, (Sep 2018): 49–101.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-57727-1_3David Shackleton H. G. WELLS, GEOLOGY, AND THE RUINS OF TIME, Victorian Literature and Culture 45, no.44 (Nov 2017): 839–855.https://doi.org/10.1017/S1060150317000249 Bibliography, (Oct 2017): 744–842.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405166201.biblioKeynyn Brysse, Naomi Oreskes, Jessica O’Reilly, Michael Oppenheimer Climate change prediction: Erring on the side of least drama?, Global Environmental Change 23, no.11 (Feb 2013): 327–337.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.10.008David Oldroyd Lyell, Charles, (Dec 2010).https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470015902.a0002524.pub2Paul D. Brinkman Charles Darwin’s Beagle Voyage, Fossil Vertebrate Succession, and “The Gradual Birth & Death of Species”, Journal of the History of Biology 43, no.22 (Jun 2009): 363–399.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-009-9189-9Ben Jeffares Guessing the future of the past, Biology & Philosophy 25, no.11 (Mar 2009): 125–142.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-009-9155-0David Deming Design, science and naturalism, Earth-Science Reviews 90, no.1-21-2 (Sep 2008): 49–70.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2008.07.001David Oldroyd Lyell, Charles (1797-1875), (Aug 2007).https://doi.org/10.1002/0471743984.vse4702.pub2A. Alfredo Bueno-Hernandez, Jorge E. Llorente-Bousquets The other face of Lyell: historical biogeography in his Principles of geology, Journal of Biogeography 33, no.44 (Apr 2006): 549–559.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2006.01475.xJeff Dodick, Shlomo Argamon Rediscovering the historical methodology of the earth sciences by analyzing scientific communication styles, (Jan 2006): 105–120.https://doi.org/10.1130/2006.2413(08) A. M. C. Şengör On Sir Charles Lyell's Alleged Distortion of Abraham Gottlob Werner in Principles of Geology and Its Implications for the Nature of the Scientific Enterprise A. M. C. Şengör, The Journal of Geology 110, no.33 (Jul 2015): 355–368.https://doi.org/10.1086/339537Thomas A McCready, Neil C Schwertman The Statistical Paleontology of Charles Lyell and the Coupon Problem, The American Statistician 55, no.44 (Nov 2001): 272–278.https://doi.org/10.1198/000313001753272204David Oldroyd Lyell, Charles, (May 2001).https://doi.org/10.1038/npg.els.0002524David Oldroyd Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de, (Apr 2001).https://doi.org/10.1038/npg.els.0002468William A. Berggren The Cenozoic Era: Lyellian (chrono)stratigraphy and nomenclatural reform at the millennium, Geological Society, London, Special Publications 143, no.11 (Jan 1998): 111–132.https://doi.org/10.1144/GSL.SP.1998.143.01.10John C. Thackray Charles Lyell and the Geological Society, Geological Society, London, Special Publications 143, no.11 (Jan 1998): 17–20.https://doi.org/10.1144/GSL.SP.1998.143.01.03Peter J. Bowler Ökologie und Umweltschutz, (Jan 1997): 330–363.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-663-11759-9_11V.R. Baker Extraterrestrial geomorphology: science and philosophy of Earthlike planetary landscapes, Geomorphology 7, no.1-31-3 (Jul 1993): 9–35.https://doi.org/10.1016/0169-555X(93)90010-YV.R. Baker Extraterrestrial geomorphology: science and philosophy of Earthlike planetary landscapes, (Jan 1993): 9–35.https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-89971-2.50006-7David Leveson Teaching the History of Geology, Earth Sciences History 12, no.22 (Jan 1993): 234–242.https://doi.org/10.17704/eshi.12.2.9537782432503311 Essay review, Annals of Science 34, no.66 (Aug 2006): 607–611.https://doi.org/10.1080/00033797700200351Roy Porter Charles Lyell and the Principles of the History of Geology, The British Journal for the History of Science 9, no.22 (Jan 2009): 91–103.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087400014692Paul J. McCartney Charles Lyell and G. B. Brocchi: A Study in Comparative Historiography, The British Journal for the History of Science 9, no.0202 (Jan 2009): 175.https://doi.org/10.1017/S000708740001476XD. R. Stoddart Darwin, Lyell, and the Geological Significance of Coral Reefs, The British Journal for the History of Science 9, no.0202 (Jan 2009): 199.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087400014783Martin J. S. Rudwick Caricature as a Source for the History of Science: De la Beche's Anti-Lyellian Sketches of 1831, Isis 66, no.44 (Oct 2015): 534–560.https://doi.org/10.1086/351512Martin Rudwick Darwin and Glen Roy: A “great failure” in scientific method?, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 5, no.22 (Aug 1974): 97–185.https://doi.org/10.1016/0039-3681(74)90024-7D.R. Oldroyd Nineteenth century controversies concerning the mesozoic/tertiary boundary in New Zealand, Annals of Science 29, no.11 (Aug 2006): 39–57.https://doi.org/10.1080/00033797200200361Frank N. Egerton The triumph of the Darwinian method., Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 2, no.33 (Nov 1971): 281–286.https://doi.org/10.1016/0039-3681(71)90046-XRachel Bush Towards a history of geology: proceedings of the New Hampshire Inter-Disciplinary Conference on the History of Geology, September 7–12, 1967, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 2, no.22 (Aug 1971): 176–182.https://doi.org/10.1016/0039-3681(71)90031-8

Humboldt, Darwin, and population.

I have attempted to clarify some of the pathways in the development of Darwin's thinking. The foregoing examples of influence by no means include all that can be found by comparing Darwin's writings with Humboldt's. However, the above examples seem adequate to show the nature and extent of this influence. It now seems clear that Humboldt not only, as had been previously known, inspired Darwin to make a voyage of exploration, but also provided him with his basic orientation concerning how and what to observe and how to write about it. An important part of what Darwin assimilated from Humboldt was an appreciation of population analysis as a tool for assessing the state of societies and of the benefits and hardships which these societies can expect to receive from the living world around them. Darwin exhibited in his Journal of Researches a casual interest in the economic and political conditions of the countries he visited, but these considerations were much less important to him than to Humboldt. Instead, Darwin, with the assistance of Lyell's Principles of Geology, shifted from Humboldt's largely economic framework to a biological one built around the species question. This shift led Darwin away from a consideration of how the population biology of animals was related to man's economy to focus instead upon how population biology fitted into the economy of nature. Humboldt's Personal Narrative served very well as a model for Darwin's Journal of Researches, thereby helping Darwin gain scientific eminence. The Journal of Researches, like virtually all of Humboldt's writings, was a contribution to scientific orthodoxy. But Darwin had, along the way, acquired an urge to do more than just add his building blocks to the orthodox scientific edifice. He decided to rearrange those blocks of knowledge into a different structure, and for that task neither Humboldt's Personal Narrative nor any other of his works could serve as a model. Humboldt had lacked the confidence which Darwin needed that biogeography and the origin of species could be understood. Humboldt had not explored very far the possible connections between biology and geology. Nor had he provided a general synthetic account of population biology. Had he done so, he might have been more explicit about the extent of his endorsement of Malthus. But even if he had, Humboldt's strong orientation toward cooperation would probably have inhibited his recognition of the importance of competition in nature. Lyell, who had also benefited from reading Humboldt, gave Darwin insights that were lacking in Humboldt's Personal Narrative. Lyell admirably demonstrated how stratigraphy, paleontology, biogeography, and population biology could be interrelated, and his reasons for doing so were essentially the same as Darwin's. Lyell's understanding of biogeography and ecology came from the writings of Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle as much as from Humboldt's, and from the former Lyell derived an appreciation for the importance of competition and also a confidence that the mysteries of biogeography could be explained.117 Furthermore, Lyell's discussion of all these subjects and also of evolution in his Principles of Geology is a good synthetic argument that was the ideal model for Darwin's greatest book. Darwin, having become convinced that species change through time, was able to synthesize in his mind the contributions which he had derived from the writings of Humboldt and Lyell as they applied to the species question. When Darwin wrote his Journal of Researches there were two large gaps in his thinking about evolution that bothered him—the mechanism of evolution and the causes of extinction. It was only after reading Malthus in 1838 that he realized, as Lyell had more or less pointed out, how important was competition in nature. He now had the general outlines for his theory, and in the 1845 abridged edition of his Journal, now retitled The Voyage of the Beagle, he inserted a fuller discussion of competition in nature which showed his awareness of its importance as an ecological factor.118

Lyell and the "Reality" of Species: 1830-1833

USTOMARILY the historian of science, upon mention of the name of Charles Lyell (1795-1875), will speak of those physical forces whose regular and gradual operations, acting without change of intensity throughout immense periods of time, modify the surface of the globe, slowly eroding its mountains, gently depositing layers of sediment upon the ocean floor, and occasionally throwing up volcanoes. Yet, despite Lyell's successful advocacy of uniformitarian geology, he was not exclusively a geologist.1 In his youth he had been an avid entomologist and, when later in life he traveled in Europe and North America, he rarely failed to record the conspicuous flora and fauna of these regions. Lyell was, in fact, an accomplished naturalist who understood that the geological series of strata and the sequence of the fossil record must be investigated as parts of the same problem, that the geographical distribution of contemporary organisms was directly related to the history of life on earth, and that resolution of the question of the of species must precede any genuine progress in biology. This paper, which is intended to review the neglected biological contribution of Lyell, attempts to demonstrate the cautious assurance with which he accepted the reality of species and to indicate Lyell's confusion of the taxonomically distinct species with the temporally fixed species. Lyell's rejection of the transformation of species, a stand which he would publicly abandon only in the 1860's, is reviewed and his answer to the species problem presented. Finally there is a short discussion of Lyell's relationship to the work of Edward Blyth and Charles Darwin. The second, or biological, volume (1832) of Lyell's Principles of Geology proposes to deal with the changes of the organic world, including those which are impressed upon it by external circumstances and those which the organisms themselves effect. Lyell immediately turns to the vicissitudes to which a species is subjected, and asks . . whether species have a real and permanent existence in nature; or whether they are capable, as some naturalists pretend, of being indefinitely modified in the course of a long

The Bearing of Science on the Thought of Arthur Hugh Clough

Arthur Hugh Clough died at the age of forty-two just two years after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. The main body of his slender volume of work was done by 1859, and it is barely probable that he knew Darwin's epoch-making study or had even heard of it. But Darwin, one must remember, climaxed a period of continuing scientific research on the results of which speculation had abundantly fed. Clough's adult years coincided with the last twenty years or so of this period. Such circumstances as the appearance of Lyell's Principles of Geology or the impact on English religious thinking of Strauss and German higher criticism, on the one hand, and the emergence of the Oxford Movement with its appeal to the principle of authority, on the other, could not but evoke from sensitive and thoughtful minds some significant response. In the period that produced Tennyson's In Memoriam, Clough's response was equally or more significant. Though their inward struggles were not unlike, the resolution for Clough differs sufficiently from Tennyson's to repay careful study of his thought. I fancy that of the two Clough's mind and the upshot of his speculation are the more congenial to the twentieth century.

The Centenary of Lyell's “Principles of Geology”

In the literature of geology there is no book that has exercised a more lasting influence on the science than Lyell's Principles of Geology, the first volume of which was published a hundred years ago. The twelfth and last edition appeared in 1875, some months after the author's death. The active life of the work thus extended over some fifty or sixty years, while indirectly its influence still survives.

Founders of Seismology.—II. Robert Mallet

WHILE Michell's interest in geology lasted until at least 1788, he made no further known contribution to the study of earthquakes. He must have been aware of the disastrous Calabrian earthquakes of 1783, but he would no doubt regard them as timely illustrations of his theory. The eighty years which followed 1760 were, indeed, somewhat barren as regards the progress of seismology. Among the more important contributions during this period were Dolomieu's report on the Calabrian earthquakes of 1783, Darwin's memoir on the connexion of certain volcanic phenomena in South America (1838), and the well-known chapters in Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830).

I.—Subsidence and Elevation, and on the Permanence of Oceans

The theory of permanent Continents and Oceanic basins, opposed as it is to the general teaching of text-books, seems to have given rise to comparatively little discussion. In the latest edition, for instance, of Lyell's Principles, we read: “It is not too much to say that every spot which is now dry land has been sea at some former period, and every part of the space now covered by the deepest ocean has been land.” The new theory has been upheld chiefly by Sir Wyville Thomson, Prof. Geikie and Mr. Wallace. The latter especially has collected every kind of evidence together that seems to support it in his latest, and most admirable work, “Island Life.” By a process of reasoning, supported by a large array of facts of different kinds, he arrives at the conclusion that the distribution of life upon the land, as we now see it, has been accomplished without the aid of important changes in the relative positions of continents and seas. Yet if we accept his views, we must believe that Asia and Africa, Madagascar and Africa, New Zealand and Australia, Europe and America, have been united at some period not remote geologically, and that seas to the depth of 1000 fathoms have been bridged over; but we must treat as “utterly gratuitous, and entirely opposed to all the evidences at our command,” the supposition that temperate Europe and temperate America, Australia and South America, have ever been connected, except by way of the Arctic or Antarctic Circles, and that—lands now separated by seas of more than 1000 fathoms depth have ever been united.

The Tides at Chepstow and Fundy

IN NATURE, vol. xix. p. 363, Mr. Moseley, of Exeter College, Oxford, quotes a passage from Lyell's Principles, to the effect that the tides at Chepstow have a range of 72 feet.

Lyell's Principles of Geology*

Lyell's Principles of Geology*

Lyell's Principles of Geology

THE appearance of a new edition of the “Principles of Geology” would mark a fitting time to pass in review the state of Geologic Science, to count up what has been added to the treasury of truth, and inquire in what direction and by what methods the pioneers of Science encourage us to search for new facts. Within the limits of a short review, however, it is impossible to do more than call attention to a few of the more striking points which seem to illustrate the principles which we should apply to the examination of the phenomena of the crust of the earth.