Great Geologists | 43
Caricature by Henry De la Beche (1830) ridiculing Lyell’s suggestion
that Jurassic reptiles, or at least animals like them, might return in a
distant post-human future. Not all the contemporary geologists of Lyell
fully embraced the implications of his uniformitarianism.
rendered geology a great service by both popularising it, and
moving it from being based on theorising and conjecture to
linking observations with processes.
Charles Darwin was influenced by reading Lyell’s work all his
life. He provided this testament to his admiration for Lyell in The
Origin of Species in 1859: ...Sir Charles Lyell’s grand work on the
Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as
having produced a revolution in natural science…”
REFERENCES
This essay has drawn upon information from the following sources:
Bonney, T.G. 1895. Charles Lyell and Modern Geology. Macmillan &
Co, 221pp.
Cook, J. 2007. Charles Lyell: advocate of modern geology. In: Huxley,
R. (ed.) The Great Naturalists. Thames & Hudson, 246-249.
Gohau, G. 1990. A History of Geology. Rutgers University Press.
259pp.
Gould, S.J. 1978. Ever Since Darwin. Burnet Books Ltd.
Gould, S.J. 1987. Time’s Arrow, Times’s Cycle. Harvard University
Press, 222p.
Greene, M.T. 1982. Geology in the Nineteenth Century. Cornell
University Press. 324pp.
Hallam, A. 1983. Great Geological Controversies. Oxford University
Press, 244pp.
Frontispiece of Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology of 1830,
showing the ruined Temple of Serapis near Naples (later re-
interpreted as a market building) with its columns marked by a
zone in which the stone had been bored by marine molluscs.
This showed that in the 2,000 years that had passed since the
building had been constructed, this earthquake-prone volcanic
region had subsided and risen again – a testament (in Lyell’s
view) to the steady state dynamic processes of the Earth and
the use of the span of human history to explain geological
phenomena.It can also be interpreted as documenting
catastrophism!
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.S. 1972. The Meaning of Fossils. The University of
Chicago Press, 287pp.
Rudwick, M.J.S. 2014. Earth’s Deep History. The University of
Chicago Press, 360pp.
Secord, J.A. 1986. Controversy in Victorian Geology: The Cambrian-
Silurian Dispute. Princeton University Press, 363pp.
Wilson, L.G. 1972. Charles Lyell. The Years to 1841: The Revolution in
Geology. Yale University Press, 553pp.