Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

24. Suzanne Kelly, ‘Theories of the earth in Renaissance cosmologies’, in Cecil J. Schneer (editor), Towards a History of Geology, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1969, pages 214–225.

25. Bowler, Op. cit., page 31.

26. Ibid., page 37.

27. Ibid., page 40.

28. Ibid., page 44.

29. Charles Gillispie, Genesis and Geology, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1949; Harper Torchbook, 1959, page 48.

30. Ibid., pages 41–42.

31. Nicholas Steno, The Prodromus of Nicholas Steno’s Dissertation concerning a Solid Body Enclosed by Process of Nature within a solid. Original 1669, translated into English by J. G. Winter in 1916, as part of the University of Michigan Humanistic Studies, volume 1, part 2, reprinted by Hafner Publishing Company, New York, 1968. John Woodward, ‘An Essay Toward a Natural History of the Earth and terrestrial Bodyes’, originally London 1695, reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1977.

32. Gillispie, Op. cit., page 42. Jack Repcheck, The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of the Earth’s Antiquity, London: Simon & Schuster, 2003, who says that Hutton’s prose was ‘impenetrable’ and that, at the time, people were not very interested in the antiquity of the earth.

33. See, for example, Gillispie, Op. cit., page 46.

34. Ibid., page 68.

35. Ibid., page 84.

36. Bowler, Op. cit., page 110.

37. Gillispie, Op. cit., page 99.

38. Bowler, Op. cit., page 116.

39. Gillispie, Op. cit., page 101.

40. Bowler, Op. cit., page 116.

41. Ibid., page 119.

42. Brooke, Op. cit., page 203, says that on one occasion Buckland ‘detained’ the British Association for the Advancement of Science until midnight, ‘expatiating’ on the ‘design’ of the great sloth.

43. Gillispie, Op. cit., page 107.

44. Bowler, Op. cit., page 110.

45. Ibid., page 124 for a table.

46. Gillispie, Op. cit., pages 111–112 and 142.

47. Bowler, Op. cit., page 130.

48. Ibid., page 132.

49. Ibid., pages 134ff.

50. Gillispie, Op. cit., page 133.

51. Bowler, Op. cit., page 138.

52. Gillispie, Op. cit., page 210.

53. Ibid., page 212.

54. Ibid., page 214.

55. Secord, Victorian Sensation, Op. cit., page 388.

56. Ibid., chapter 3, pages 77ff.

57. Ibid., page 526, for the publishing histories of Vestiges and the Origin compared.

58. Edward Lurie, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960, pages 97ff, for Agassiz’ development of the concept of the Ice Age.

59. J. D. Macdougall, A Short History of Planet Earth, New York and London: John Wiley & Sons, 1996, page 210.

60. But there was something else too. Among the moraines were found considerable quantities of diamonds. Diamonds are formed deep in the earth and are brought to the surface in the molten magma produced by volcanoes. Thus, here was further evidence of the continuous action of volcanoes, reinforcing the fact that the discovery of the great Ice Age(s) confirmed both the antiquity of the earth and the uniformitarian approach to geology. Ibid., pages 206–210.

61. Peter J. Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988, page 13.

62. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, Op. cit., page 349. See also: Moynahan, Op. cit., page 651.

63. Pietro Corsi, The Age of Lamarck: Evolutionary Theories in France 1790–1830, Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1988, pages 121ff. Ernst Mayr, the eminent historian of biology, says that Lamarck presented his view of evolution with far more courage than Darwin was to do fifty years later. Mayr, Op. cit., page 352.

64. Corsi, Op. cit., pages 157ff, for those who did and did not agree with Lamarck.

The rise of the Great Chain of Being, which was discussed in the Introduction, also formed part of the intellectual climate of the mid-nineteenth century. It was an ancient idea, which gave it credibility to begin with, but it was not really a scientific idea and therefore did not long outlive Darwin’s innovations. See Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, Op. cit., pages 59ff for nineteenth-century ideas about the Great Chain and page 61 for a diagram.