A century of science in America

by Unknown

By JOSEPH BARRELL

Introduction
The Intellectual Viewpoint in 1818.

In 1818, the year of the founding of the Journal, the natural sciences were still in their infancy in Europe. Geology was still subordinate to mineralogy, was hardly recognized as a distinct science, and consisted in little more than a description of the character and distribution of minerals and rocks. America was remote from the Old World centers of learning. The energy of the young nation was absorbed in its own expansion, and but a few of those who by aptitude were fitted to increase scientific knowledge were even conscious of the existence of such a field of endeavor. Under these circumstances the educative field open to a journal of science in the United States was an almost virgin soil. Original contributions could most readily be based upon the natural history of the New World, and the founder of the Journal showed insight appreciative of the situation in stating in the “Plan of the Work” in the introduction to the first volume that “It will be a leading object to illustrate American Natural History, and especially our Mineralogy and Geology.”

At this time educated people were still satisfied that the whole knowledge of the origin and development of the earth so far as man could or should know it was embraced in the Book of Genesis. They were inclined to look with misgiving at attempts to directly interrogate the earth as to its history. Philosophers such as Descartes and Liebnitz, the cosmogonists de Maillet and Buffon had been less instrumental in developing science than in fitting a few facts and many speculations to their systems of philosophy. By the opening of the nineteenth century, however, men of learning were coming to appreciate that the way to advance science was to experiment and observe, to collect facts and discourage unfounded speculation. Silliman’s insight into the needs of geologic science is shown in the following quotation (1, pp. 6, 7, 1818):

“Our geology, also, presents a most interesting field of inquiry. A grand outline has recently been drawn by Mr. Maclure, with a masterly hand, and with a vast extent of personal observation and labour: but to fill up the detail, both observation and labour still more extensive are demanded; nor can the object be effected, till more good geologists are formed, and distributed over our extensive territory.

To account for the formation and changes of our globe, by excursions of the imagination, often splendid and imposing, but usually visionary, and almost always baseless, was, till within half a century, the business of geological speculations; but this research has now assumed a more sober character; the science of geology has been reared upon numerous and accurate observations of facts; and standing thus upon the basis of induction, it is entitled to a rank among those sciences which Lord Bacon’s Philosophy has contributed to create. Geological researches are now prosecuted by actually exploring the structure and arrangement of districts, countries, and continents. The obliquity of the strata of most rocks, causing their edges to project in many places above the surface; their exposure, in other instances on the sides or tops of hills and mountains; or, in consequence of the intersection of their strata, by roads, canals, and river-courses, or by the wearing of the ocean; or their direct perforation, by the shafts of mines; all these causes, and others, afford extensive means of reading the interior structure of the globe.

The outlines of American geology appear to be particularly grand, simple, and instructive; and a knowledge of the important facts, and general principles of this science, is of vast practical use, as regards the interests of agriculture, and the research for useful minerals. Geological and mineralogical descriptions, and maps of particular states and districts, are very much needed in the United States; and to excite a spirit to furnish them will form one leading object of this Journal.”

The Prolonged Influence of Outgrown Ideas.

Those interested in any branch of science should, as a matter of education, read the history of that special subject. A knowledge of the stages by which the present development has been attained is essential to give a proper perspective to the literature of each period. Much of the existing terminology is an inheritance from the first attempts at nomenclature, or may rest upon theories long discarded. Popular notions at variance with advanced teaching are often the forgotten inheritance of a past generation.

Gneiss, trap, and Old Red Sandstone are names which we owe to Werner. The “Tertiary period” and “drift” are relics of an early terminology. The geology of tourist circulars still speaks of canyons as made by “convulsions of nature.” Popular writers still attribute to geologists a belief in a molten earth covered by a thin crust. Within the present century the eighteenth century speculations of Werner and his predecessors, postulating a supposed capacity of water to seep through the crust into the interior of the earth, resulting in a hypothetical progressive desiccation of the surface, views long abandoned by most modern geologists, have been revived by an astronomer into a theory of “planetology.”