Great Geologists | 19
with his views on basalt, Werner obviously did not
believe that the interior of the Earth was molten. He
considered that the primeval, original ocean might
have been drawn away by the attraction of a celestial
body passing near the Earth (obviously, a conjecture
that he was happy to embrace). However, he did not
emphasise this point and never really explained how
the original ocean had shrunk to the size it is today. REFERENCES
Werner was plagued by frail health his entire life, and
led a quiet existence in the immediate environs of
Freiberg. An avid mineral collector in his youth, he
abandoned field work altogether in his later years.
There is no evidence that he had ever travelled beyond
Saxony in his adulthood. He died at Dresden in 1817
from stress-related complications said to have been
caused by his consternation over the misfortunes
that had befallen Saxony during the Napoleonic Wars.
Although primarily a mineralogist and mining geologist,
Werner was at the forefront of promoting geology as
a history of the Earth and, in so doing, illuminated the
way forward for the great advances of the science in
the 19th century. Hallam, A. 1983. Great Geological Controversies.
Oxford University Press. 244pp.
Freiburg Institute of Mineralogy.
This essay has drawn upon the following works:
Adams, F.D. 1938. The Birth and Development of
the Geological Sciences.
Greene, M.T. 1982. Geology in the Nineteenth
Century. Cornell University Press. 324pp.
Laudan, R. 1987. From Mineralogy to Geology. The
University of Chicago Press. 278pp.
Oldroyd, D.R. 1996. Thinking About the Earth. The
Athlone Press, 410pp.
Rudwick, M.J. 1997. Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones,
and Geological Catastrophes. The University of
Chicago Press. 301pp.
Rudwick, M.J.S. 2005. Bursting the Limits of Time.
The University of Chicago Press, 708pp.