John Martin portrayed the collapse of civilizations, or the onslaught of the
Deluge, as vast panoramas with a slightly hysterical veracity bordering on
kitsch. In his early nineteenth-century renditions of the dramatic past,
cowering crowds quake with terror before tidal waves or massacring invaders,
all lit by lurid lightning or dazzling sunbeams slicing through clouds.
Thanks to their extensive reproduction as mezzotints, his images achieved
great popularity. He was the perfect artist to illustrate the age of
monsters.
Geology came of age in Europe in the 1800s. For several decades it enjoyed the
kind of glamour status that nuclear physics occupies today. And small
wonder, because the concept of geological time revolutionized the narrative
of our planet, posed questions that challenged religious orthodoxy, and –
not least – introduced a cast of “prehistoric monsters” to an avid public.
The thrill that children still feel when they encounter Tyrannosaurus or
Brachiosaurus proves that the showbusiness possibilities of the distant past
survive undimmed. When Thomas Hawkins wanted to illustrate ichthyosauri and
plesiosauri in his Book of the Great Sea Dragons (1840) – those animals
whose fossil skeletons had been recently exhumed from the Lias strata of
Lyme Regis by Mary Anning – there was no better craftsman to illustrate the
distant past than John Martin. He applied the same principles of
dramatization to the Jurassic as he had to “Belshazzar’s Feast”. A full moon
illumines the grisly scene as sea-going reptiles gorge on one another: it
might as well be a vision of hell itself, an orgy of snarling and goring.
Martin had even cut his teeth on hell fifteen years earlier in his
illustrations for Paradise Lost (1825).
Yet among the middle classes, fossils also had several advantages for genteel
enthusiasts. Many of the finds were new and exciting, and, even if they were
animals of a kind, they no longer dripped inconvenient flesh and bloody
entrails. As the wealthy readers of the Edinburgh Review learned in 1837:
fossils are “sainted relics which the most sensitive may handle and the most
delicate may prize”. The implication was that even ladies might properly go
a-fossiling if suitably attired. The outdoor exercise would be good for the
health, and doubtless reveal aspects of the divine plan. An industry of
popular books explaining the wonders of geology was not far behind, and
there were many who regarded the contemplation of mountains and strata as a
guaranteed route to the sublime. Why bother with books of poetry when the
book of nature was being unravelled, page by geological page?
Ralph O’Connor and Martin J. S. Rudwick plot parallel paths through these
heroic days of geology. O’Connor’s concern is the public presentation of the
new science: its impact on the imagination through private shows and public
displays, through popular science books (a new genre at the time), and as
filtered through poetry and propaganda. Rudwick charts the fundamental
shifts of ideas among those who would shortly be described as scientists – a
term coined by William Whewell as recently as 1833. His is a history of the
intellectual circles around the Geological Society of London, who were
grappling with the implications of the evidence (or otherwise) for the Flood
as revealed by assiduous new fieldwork, and with an ever-expanding
geological timescale. The two books complement one another perfectly. The
public from all levels in society demanded new knowledge, even while the new
breed of gentleman researchers and the first Geological Survey professionals
fought over the very names for describing prehistory. Some of these words
still hang on in everyday language long after they have died in scientific
discourse: “antediluvian” once had a precise temporal definition – before it
acquired its current, generally antiquarian and fusty connotations.
Rudwick’s account follows on from his magisterial Bursting the Limits of Time,
which painted an unrivalled portrait of geology’s first days as a tardy
arrival to the high table of respectable sciences. Much of the seminal early
work on extinct animals and the organization of strata was carried out on
the Continent, especially in France by Georges Cuvier and his
contemporaries. Among European intellectuals there was already a general
acceptance that geological time was truly vast; the squaring of geological
with biblical timescales was a curiously English obsession, and partly a
consequence of the theologically centred education then offered by Oxford
and Cambridge. Rudwick’s new volume brings the story of geology back on home
soil. British geologists rather belatedly seized the lead in the decades
after the publication of William Smith’s famous geological map of the
British Isles in 1815. The central figure in this story is Charles Lyell,
whose Principles of Geology has often been credited with putting geology on
a respectable scientific footing. Darwin took the first volume of the
Principles, published in 1830, with him on the Beagle – the later volumes
were posted to him. His Lyellian conversion allowed him to make the first
plausible interpretation of the formation of coral islands, and provided the
spacious time- scale necessary for organic evolution to happen. If geology
needed to have a Newton, then Lyell probably filled the bill.
Most geologists, however, do not now re-read Lyell, and Rudwick rightly points
out that there is an important difference between the principles that he
urged on his scientific contemporaries and the geohistory of the planet he
himself deduced from them. Lyell emphasized that study of the present-day
processes such as erosion, sedimentation and glaciation, would permit the
accurate interpretation of all those rocks that record the passage of
geological time. This principle still drives today’s methodology, both in
the field and in the laboratory, and it has proved its worth repeatedly. But
Lyell was also unyielding in his belief that processes always operated with
the same intensity as they do today. For example, he thought that animal
species appeared and went extinct at a more or less constant rate. He
rejoiced in news of major earthquakes that suddenly heaved land upwards in
the Andes, because this proved to his satisfaction how mountains were
elevated: actual causes were always deemed sufficient to account for all of
history. He was possibly reacting against Cuvier’s ideas of successive
revolutions in the history of life, and may have believed that to yield on
this matter of principle might endanger his whole intellectual edifice. We
do, indeed, now know that there were periods of crisis in Earth’s long
history – times of mass extinction, for example – but, ironically, we still
use Lyellian experiments to study their causes. Lyell bequeathed a universal
method while himself applying it too dogmatically.
Rudwick’s book is a culmination of forty years of research into the history of
geology, and seals his reputation as the doyen of the subject. His writing
is always clear, often entertaining, unrelentingly scholarly, and,
appropriately enough for geology, he leaves no stone unturned. Worlds Before
Adam includes a reprise of much of his earlier work. Rudwick first
unravelled the story of the Devonian controversy from contemporary
correspondence and documents more than twenty years ago, and here it is
recruited again as part of the unfolding of the geological “systems” that
calibrated geological time. Rudwick had reflected on dramatic portrayals of
scenes from deep time fifteen years ago, and this provides an important
ingredient in O’Connor’s comprehensive survey of popular treatments of
geology. We owe to Rudwick and his colleagues the rehabilitation of several
geological reputations. William Buckland was for too long tarred with the
error of eagerly recognizing evidence of the Mosaic Deluge in the fossil
bones he dug up from limestone caves. But he soon left the theory behind as
new evidence came to light, and he was a crucial figure in showing how the
living detail of the prehistoric past could be revived through critical
study of fossil bones. He deserves to be recognized as one of the pioneers
in reanimating deep time. Even George Bellas Greenough, often vilified as
the man who insensitively “acquired” the data from William Smith’s famous
map for the Geological Society of London, emerges here as rather a useful
sceptic, a critical sounding board for new ideas.
The portrayal of the geological past to a public hungry for drama and
instruction is explored with great verve by O’Connor. The early nineteenth
century was a time when the contemplation of nature could be expected to
stir profound emotions and numinous thoughts. Thomas Hawkins and John Martin
together provided the Grand Guignol version, the past as a time of dark
predatoriness. Hawkins’s matching prose was purple enough to supply a dozen
Rothkos, and his legacy of “prehistoric monsters” still lurks at the edges
of our nightmares. However, George Scharf’s beautiful drawings of the real
ichthyosaur fossils in the same volume showed the other aspect of
illustration at this period: improved veracity and skill. Then there were
more decorous versions of such palaeontological time travel, including Hugh
Miller’s beautifully written accounts of the world of ancient fishes.
Charming works for the younger reader soon appeared, such as John Mill’s
Boy’s Dream of Geology (1855). The new fashion for geology spread through
all levels of literate society, and O’Connor makes much of the different
narrative stances used by geological writers to transport readers back to
the distant past. Nor were the implications of the newly explored geology
taken to diminish the role of the Creator; on the contrary, books describing
geological tours through all creation were seen as object lessons in God’s
wondrous beneficence. But contradictions soon emerged. Hawkins’s grisly
version of the age of reptiles seemed at odds with the notion of divinely
ordered, perfect adaptation as promulgated by the successors of William
Paley. Different versions of the past could be recruited for different ends.
God, it seemed, could either be cited as a designer or marginalized as
irrelevant.
At the same time, the current distinction between popular writing and
professional monograph was decidedly blurred. Gideon Mantell not only made
the fossils of the first dinosaurs known in scientific circles, but
published many popular accounts to turn a penny. His Thoughts on a Pebble
(1849) ran to eight editions. Charles Lyell offered public lectures for
which subscribers paid handsomely, and he had hopes for Principles of
Geology to make his fortune as well as his reputation. Any academic ivory
tower sponsored by the state was still a long way off. Even the foundation
of national geological surveys was justified on thoroughly pragmatic
economic grounds. The literate geologist was obliged not only to put ideas
on to paper, but was also committed to be a virtual tour guide for the
reader. Few ordinary folk could yet afford to travel to see the rock or
fossil wonders described in the text: somewhat declamatory encomia on the
glories of one aspect or another of the natural scene were all part of
presenting the hungry reader with spectacle as well as information. The
earth was indeed on show.
Poetry was recruited both to the cause of description and as a kind of
romantic validation. Chunks of Milton, Byron or Spenser's The Faerie Queene
were introduced to up the artistic ante of descriptions of a carboniferous
coal-swamp or the age of mammals. Hugh Miller was quite clear that he had
artistic ambitions for his prose; as he wrote in 1859: “It is said that
modern science is adverse to the exercise and development of the imaginative
faculty. But is it really so? Are visions [of the past] such as those in
which we have been indulging less richly charged with that poetic pabulum .
. . . Because science flourishes, must poesy decline?”. His answer was that
his visions of the past actually were a kind of poetry, and many of his
educated contemporaries from the middle classes would have agreed. Modern
use of poetry in popular science writing is rather sparing – a discreet line
or two seems about right – seasoning rather than a main course.
If the modern equivalent of nineteenth-century geology is particle physics,
then the recent media build-up for the Large Hadron Collider affords an
appropriate comparison as far as public reception of new science is
concerned. Portents of doom figured powerfully. Would the end of the planet
come about through the creation of a microscopic black hole? Are there
questions best left unanswered? The Almighty appears once again in talk of
the God particle, and there is renewed discussion of first causes. The voice
of the theologian might well be heard alongside that of the physicist on
“balanced” Radio 4 topical items. It still seems as if scientific advance is
fated to rub up against theology, even in heathen times. The story of the
rise of geology might be more relevant to our own age than one might think.
Both Rudwick and O’Connor have produced exemplary history. An added pleasure
in both books is provided by illustrations taken from contemporary sources,
not only the ghastly and dramatic scenes of John Martin, but also the
charming, humorous sketches of Henry De la Beche, the first Director of the
Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland. In the atmosphere of serious
moral improvement and general worthiness with which geology tended to be
imbued by the finger-wagging side of Victorian society, it is easy to forget
that there was such a thing as a light touch. De la Beche managed to extract
humour from even the most ardent scientific wrangling. Perhaps receiving the
first salary from HM Government for a geologist allowed him the security to
be a little flippant.
With books of such quality the poor critic is reduced to picking nits, and
there are not many of those. I tired of the use of the word “savant” in
order to avoid the (anachronistic) “scientist” – we all now know that
Whewell’s word was a late arrival, but there is not very much evidence to
suggest that English researchers called one another “savants” either.
Perhaps a little leeway in terminology should be allowed. In O’Connor’s book
a weird pagination system located on the generous left-hand margins
continually makes the reader feel as if he has somehow missed a page. Since
both books are published in a closely similar format by the same press, this
irritating difference in design is puzzling. Otherwise, both are models of
their kind and I feel churlish even to mention such minutiae. Any reader
interested in the development of the concept of geological time should read
Martin Rudwick’s book – one could argue that the awareness of deep time has
changed human perception of our place in the cosmos more than any other
discovery. Anyone interested in how such new ideas are promulgated at large
will enjoy Ralph O’Connor’s work.
Ralph O’Connor
THE EARTH ON SHOW
Fossils and the poetics of popular science, 1802–1856
541pp. University of Chicago Press. $45; distributed in the UK by Wiley.
£23.50.
978 0 226 61668 1
Martin J. S. Rudwick
WORLDS BEFORE ADAM
The reconstruction of geohistory in the age of reform
614pp. University of Chicago Press. $49; distributed in the UK by Wiley. £25.
978 0 226 73128 6
Richard A. Fortey is Research Associate at the Natural History Museum
in London. His most recent book is Dry Store Room No.1, which appeared earlier
this year.
