[CHAPTER X]
THE INTERACTION OF THE SCIENCES—WERNER, HUTTON, BLACK, HALL, WILLIAM SMITH
The view expressed by Franklin regarding the existence of a fiery mass underlying the crust of the earth was not in his time universally accepted. In fact, it was a question very vigorously disputed what part the internal or volcanic fire played in the formation and modification of rock masses. Divergent views were represented by men who had come to the study of geology with varying aims and diverse scientific schooling, and the advance of the science of the earth's crust was owing in no small measure to the interaction of the different sciences which the exponents of the various points of view brought to bear.
Abraham Gottlob Werner (1750-1817) was the most conspicuous and influential champion on the side of the argument opposed to the acceptance of volcanic action as one of the chief causes of geologic formations. He was born in Saxony and came of a family which had engaged for three hundred years in mining and metal working. They were active in Saxony when George Agricola prepared his famous works on metallurgy and mineralogy inspired by the traditional wisdom of the local iron industry. Werner's father was an overseer of iron-works, and furnished his son with mineral specimens as playthings before the child could pronounce their names. In 1769 Werner was invited to attend the newly founded Bergakademie (School of Mines) at Freiberg. Three years later he went to the University of Leipzig, but, true to his first enthusiasm, wrote in 1774 concerning the outward characteristics of minerals (Von den äusserlichen Kennzeichen der Fossilien). The next year he was recalled to Freiberg as teacher of mineralogy and curator of collections. He was intent on classification, and might be compared in that respect with the naturalist Buffon, or the botanist Linnæus. He knew that chemistry afforded a surer, but slower, procedure; his was a practical, intuitive, field method. He observed the color, the hardness, weight, fracture of minerals, and experienced the joy the youthful mind feels in rapid identification. He translated Cronstedt's book on mineralogy descriptive of the practical blow-pipe tests. After the identification of minerals, Werner was interested in their discovery, the location of deposits, their geographical distribution, and the relative positions of different kinds of rocks, especially the constant juxtaposition or superposition of one stratum in relation to another.
Werner was an eloquent, systematic teacher with great charm of manner. He kept in mind the practical purposes of mining, and soon people flocked to Freiberg to hear him from all the quarters of Europe. He had before long disciples in every land. He saw all phenomena from the standpoint of the geologist. He knew the medicinal, as well as the economic, value of minerals. He knew the relation of the soil to the rocks, and the effects of both on racial characteristics. Building-stone determines style of architecture. Mountains and river-courses have bearing on military tactics. He turned his linguistic knowledge to account and furnished geology with a definite nomenclature. Alex. v. Humboldt, Robert Jameson, D'Aubuisson, Weiss (the teacher of Froebel), were among his students. Crystallography and mineralogy became the fashion. Goethe was among the enthusiasts, and philosophers like Schelling, under the spell of the new science, almost deified the physical universe.
Werner considered all rocks as having originated by crystallization, either chemical or mechanical, from an aqueous solution—a universal primitive ocean. He was a Neptunist, as opposed to the Vulcanists or Plutonists, who believed in the existence of a central fiery mass. Werner thought that the earth showed universal strata like the layers of an onion, the mountains being formed by erosion, subsidence, cavings-in. In his judgment granite was a primitive rock formed previous to animal and vegetable life (hence without organic remains) by chemical precipitation. Silicious slate was formed later by mechanical crystallization. At this period organized fossils first appear. Sedimentary rocks, like old red sandstone, and, according to Werner, basalt, are in a third class. Drift, sand, rubble, boulders, come next; and finally volcanic products, like lava, ashes, pumice. He was quite positive that all basalt was of aqueous origin and of quite recent formation. This part of his teaching was soon challenged. He was truer to his own essential purposes in writing a valuable treatise on metalliferous veins (Die Neue Theorie der Erzgänge), but even there his general views are apparent, for he holds that veins are clefts filled in from above by crystallization from aqueous solution.
Before Werner had begun his teaching career at Freiberg, Desmarest, the French geologist, had made a special study of the basalts of Auvergne. As a mathematician he was able to make a trigonometrical survey of that district, and constructed a map showing the craters of volcanoes of different ages, the streams of lava following the river courses, and the relation of basalt to lava, scoria, ashes, and other recognized products of volcanic action. In 1788 he was made inspector-general of French manufactures, later superintendent of the porcelain works at Sèvres. He lived to the age of ninety, and whenever Neptunists would try to draw him into argument, the old man would simply say, "Go and see."
James Hutton (1726-1797), the illustrious Scotch geologist, had something of the same aversion to speculation that did not rest on evidence; though he was eminently a philosopher in the strictest sense of the word, as his three quarto volumes on the Principles of Knowledge bear witness. Hutton was well trained at Edinburgh in the High School and University. In a lecture on logic an illustrative reference to aqua regia turned his mind to the study of chemistry. He engaged in experiments, and ultimately made a fortune by a process for the manufacture of sal ammoniac from coal-soot. In the mean time he studied medicine at Edinburgh, Paris, and Leyden, and continued the pursuit of chemistry. Then, having inherited land in Berwickshire, he studied husbandry in Norfolk and took interest in the surface of the land and water-courses; later he pursued these studies in Flanders. During years of highly successful farming, during which Hutton introduced new methods in Berwickshire, he was interested in meteorology, and in geology as related to soils. In 1768, financially independent, Dr. Hutton retired to reside in Edinburgh.
He was very genial and sociable and was in close association with Adam Smith, the economist, and with Black, known in the history of chemistry in connection with carbonic acid, latent heat, and experiments in magnesia, quicklime, and other alkaline substances (1777). Playfair, professor of mathematics, and later of natural philosophy, was Hutton's disciple and intimate friend. In the distinguished company of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, established in 1782, the founder of dynamic geology was stimulated by these and other distinguished men like William Robertson, Lord Kames, and Watt. The first volume of the Transactions contains his Theory of Rains, and the first statement of his famous Theory of the Earth. He was very broad-minded and enthusiastic and would rejoice in Watt's improvements of the steam engine or Cook's discoveries in the South Pacific. Without emphasizing his indebtedness to Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, physicist, geologist, meteorologist, botanist, who gave to Europeans an appreciation of the sublime in nature, nor dwelling further on the range of Hutton's studies in language, general physics, etc., it is already made evident that his mind was such as to afford comprehensiveness of view.