Gary D. Rosenberg and William C. Parcell, Presiding

LEONARDO'S MIRROR: REFLECTIONS ON THE EMERGENCE OF GEOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT DURING THE RENAISSANCE , THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION, AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT

In Leonardo da Vinci's drawing (ca. 1487), “Allegory of the Mirror” a Florentine man sits on a rock and with a mirror reflects the rays of the sun at a menagerie of real and imaginary animals romping in a canyon with stratified walls. Like his contemporaries, Leonardo's understanding of the geometry of light helped illuminate the anatomy of living things and of the landscape in a revolutionary way. This led to momentous changes in Western civilization, not least of which occurred during the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. Optics, astronomy, and anatomy were among the first sciences founded, and geology and evolutionary biology were among the last. Nevertheless, even before Steno and Darwin nailed their “golden spikes” to mark the start of the modern understanding of evolution of the Earth and life, artists had established an aesthetic tradition based on geometry that addressed issues of the structure, processes, transformations, and laws of nature and which facilitated the later development of the evolutionary sciences. In fact, there is new evidence that Steno was aware of this artistic tradition.

Art history spanning the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (and beyond) records a growing interest in the structure of the Earth, soils, erosion, earthquakes, floods, river flow, evolution, etc. Notable contributions come from 15th-16th Cy artists such as di Giorgio, Leonardo, Galileo, and Dürer and 17th Cy artists such as Rubens, van Goyen, and Ruisdael. Even the 19th Cy (Romantic) works of Ruskin and Turner are consonant with emergence of an evolutionary perspective of nature—despite Ruskin's hostility towards Darwin's ideas. Thomas Jefferson's coordinate surveys of America are the outgrowth and American epitome of the geometric study of the landscape. Early on, geometry standardized the description of nature and provided the means of depicting it to scale which, as Edgerton has stated, contributed to the development of democracy for such works communicate the same information to anyone with a modest education. Later, geometric transformations of space made it possible to visualize evolution. Thus, the origin of evolutionary science is, like all of the other sciences, integral to the development of democracy, which we celebrate here in Philadelphia, the epicenter of the American Experiment.

VIEWING THE HISTORY OF GEOLOGIC THOUGHT THROUGH THE LENS OF SEMIOTICS

The historical development of geologic thought is intrinsically viewed through the lens of our modern understanding of the Earth System and our current notions of how the discipline fits within a modern definition of “science.”

The communications theory of semiotics provides a framework to examine the development of geologic thought while retaining an appreciation for historical context. Semiotics investigates how an observer recognizes signs (or clues) pointing towards a hypothesis and how the observer explains their presence and relationships. The key to the semiotics approach is its use of objects, signs, and interpretants. Objects are things identified by understood common, shared characterizations or classifications. Signs are the meanings of an object within a particular context based on education, prior experience, conceptual model, hypothesis, or theory. Interpretants are the implications of sign, including how knowledge of the object expands understanding.

Through semiotics, by considering the meaning of the concept “Earth” in ancient times, we can adjust our understanding of the thought processes that led early scientists to explain and interpret natural symbols. For example, when examining the ancient Greek and Roman world, one must adjust the modern meaning of the word “Earth” to the context of the ancients. In addition to a geocentric universe, Aristotle's four elements of Earth, Water, Air and Fire were jointly physical and metaphysical concepts. Earth described interrelated processes such as mineral formation, earthquakes, volcanoes, and some weather patterns. Through the framework of semiotics, an earthquake (the object) might be understood as a collapsing subterranean caves (sign) attributed to a higher order, or astrological events, in the cosmos (interpretant).

PRINCIPLES OF THEORY CHOICE IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES: GEOLOGY AS A PHILOSOPHICAL CASE STUDY

Like astronomy and evolutionary biology, geology is a “historical” as opposed to an “experimental” science. This talk discusses the philosophical issue of how to decide between competing theories when the evidence is very sparse and/or ambiguous. The aim is to make general conclusions about the methodological principles of theory choice special to the historical sciences. For example, should uniformitarianism, or its opposite, be assumed in interpreting the data, and what reasons can be given in favor of one or the other? The history of geology is used as a case study for investigating these issues, and parallels to astronomy and biology in the 16th-18th centuries are drawn.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND GEOLOGY

Though Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) is well remembered in the United States as the most famous American scientist of his time, we often forget that his reputation extended beyond electricity to include other aspects of the science of the Earth. Throughout a career of sixty-some years he was seriously concerned with facts and speculations now recognized as preliminary to the emergence of geology. Earthquakes, fossils, economic minerals, and theories of the Earth all interested him. As a theorist himself, he exchanged epistolary conjectures on major problems with other like-minded savants and was regarded in Europe and America as one of them, indeed one of the most prestigious. Two of his letters on geology were published in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, which he helped to found. As the most honored intellectual of his time, Franklin strove to promote American natural history and those who practiced it. In his last years, he realized that a science of the Earth must not consist of closet speculations but of evidence from nature. Only in the year of his death did the word “geology” establish itself as the name of this new and much-needed science.

A YANKEE SAUNTERER: GEOGRAPHICAL AND GEOLOGICAL INFLUENCES ON THE LIFE OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Henry David Thoreau, American Transcendentalist and author of the literary classic "Walden," was born in Concord, MA, on 12 July 1817. Except for a few years as a child, his time at Harvard College, and a brief period of employment on Staten Island in 1843, he spent most of his life in the town of his birth—writing, teaching, working in his family's pencil business, surveying, lecturing, and leading huckleberry parties. Thoreau's entire life and literary output was shaped to a great extent by his relationship to the geography and geology of New England. Geology may even have contributed to his early death, in that breathing the finely ground graphite used in making pencils probably aggravated the “consumption” that killed him at the age of 44.

Thoreau “traveled a good deal in Concord.” His “sense of place” is nowhere better captured than in his descriptions of the Walden Woods and Estabrook Country in his hometown. Both areas abound in glacial landforms, erratic boulders, springs, and bedrock cliffs and outcrops, many of which he described in his writings. Though Concord was a constant source of literary inspiration, Thoreau also took many excursions throughout New England and beyond. Among these were a boat trip on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, culminating in an ascent of Mt. Washington (1839), and later trips to Mt. Monadnock (1844, 1852, 1858, and 1860), Mt. Greylock and the Catskills (1844), the Maine Woods (1846, 1853, and 1857), Cape Cod (1849, 1850, 1855, and 1857), Canada (1850), the White Mountains (1858), and Minnesota (1861).

Aside from some of his political and philosophical essays, Thoreau's literary works all show the pervading influence of nature and the landscape. Most of his books, essays, and lectures were culled from his extensive Journal, which was commenced in 1837 and ended in 1861, a few months before his death on 6 May 1862. Though his overriding interest in nature is expressed throughout the Journal, it is mainly in the years beginning with the sojourn at Walden Pond in 1845-47 that entries on botany, physiography, geology, and hydrography begin to dominate. His observations and writings on forest succession, the dispersal of seeds, and the hydrography of Walden Pond have led to his widespread recognition as a pioneer ecologist and limnologist.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU'S WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS

In the late afternoon of 31 August, 1839, Henry David Thoreau and his brother John stepped into a rowboat they had built that spring and pushed off into the slow moving Sudbury River, then down the Concord and up the faster waters of the Merrimack. They were equipped with two sets of oars, food from their garden, a cotton cloth that served as sail and tent, and buffalo hides for beds. Although their ultimate goal was the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the text records only Henry David's observations and thoughts while on the Concord and Merrimack. He uses the river journey as a framework on which he drapes many more pages of reflections and digression than observations. His already great knowledge of the river and the river's surroundings evinces his growing love affair with Dame Nature. He has observed and studied fish, birds, and plants with great interest and is proud to know the waters of the Sudbury and Assabet which combine to form the Concord River, as well as the headwaters of the Pemigewasset, one of the two founding members of the Merrimack. His wide reading included Agassiz on fish, but not on glaciers. Even Agassiz was unaware that the Concord River probably once flowed south and may even have been an early bed of the Merrimack. As a person who delighted in marching to his own drummer, I think the fact that the Concord flows north, against the regional gradient, would have pleased him. The potholes at Amoskeag Falls on the Merrimack River in Manchester, NH fascinated him. He digressed to other potholes associated with falls, although he places them above the falls rather than below and in the wrong rocks. An island at the confluence of a tributary with the Merrimack permits a digression on islands and recognition that islands commonly occur in such locations. Rivers were the highways of Thoreau's day so the brothers shared the rivers, locks, and canals with commercial barges. In some instances they "lock themselves" through, no lock keeper being available. Even as they rowed and sailed up the Merrimack amongst laden barges, rail lines were being laid alongside the river. Today the locks and canals are barely visible. Thoreau had to self-publish his reflections. Seven hundred six volumes were returned to him unsold enabling him to say: "I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself."

THOREAU ON MONADNOCK: LONG ON BOTANY AND PHILOSOPHY, SHORT ON GEOLOGY

Thoreau visited Monadnock four times between 1844 and 1860. His journal writings are replete with descriptions of flora, fauna and landforms on the mountain. He described the coarse gravelly soil, the “regularly stratified rocks”, the bogs and the cliffs, which he noted as being mostly on the southeast side. Using the crude method of hurling a stick ahead of him to estimate distances, Thoreau produced a fair map of the mountain with its “buttresses and spurs”. He sketched and measured glacial striae without speculating as to their origin, and noted “large boulders, left just on the edge. . .as if the Titans were in the very act of transporting them when they were interrupted”. He had read Jackson's 1844 account of Monadnock geology (“mica slate and garnet-bearing gneiss”) and was thus likely influenced by Jackson's low opinion of Agassiz' recent hypotheses regarding glacial striae and drift. Even Edward Hitchcock, in his 1856 discussion of "drift unmodified and drift modified", preferred iceberg transport to explain erratics, and glacial theory did not achieve widespread acceptance until the following decade.

Perhaps Thoreau's most original observations have to do with the water budget on Monadnock, centered on the bog which bears his name, where he debated the balance between rain, fog, evaporation, underground springs, and streams flowing away from the Connecticut/Merrimack divide. He described orographic cloud formation in stunning detail. However, he made no mention of the conspicuous sillimanite pseudomorphs after andalusite, which according to Jackson give Monadnock's rocks a “porphyritic appearance”, nor of the great isoclinal fold exposed on the west-facing cliff near the summit. Even more curious, given the Thoreau family pencil business, is the omission of reference to a graphite mine that operated on the mountain from 1847 to 1850! Were any of his visits to Monadnock in part on business at a time when the Thoreaus were expanding their trade in graphite?

The balance of Thoreau's Monadnock journal entries emphasize botany and philosophical musings. He was evidently much more interested in plants and the “science which deals with the higher law” than in geology. Significantly, in declining a membership to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he described himself as “a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot”, not as a scientist.

THOREAU'S OBSERVATIONS ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE NORTH MAINE WOODS

Henry David Thoreau made three trips to the North Maine woods; in 1846, 1853, and 1857. On each trip he travelled from Boston to Bangor by steamer. On his first trip he travelled up the Penobscot with loggers and rivermen and camped near the mouth of Abol Stream. He made a partial ascent of Mt. Ktaadn, but rather than using the then well-established Abol Slide Trail, he bushwhacked and clambered over boulders well to the east of that trail. While he had read Lyell's "Principles of Geology" and Dr. C.T. Jackson's "Report on the Geology of Maine," he was at a loss to explain "the vast aggregation of loose rocks, they lay as they fell on the mountain side, nowhere fairly at rest, but leaning on each other, all rocking stones." On the mountain he was in "a cloud factory" and was unable to reach the summit, to see the wide tableland, or the great cirques on its east side.

On his second trip he hired a guide from the Penobscot Nation, rode from Bangor to Greenville by stage, and up Moosehead Lake by steamer. Thoreau correctly observed that Mt. Kineo and two others nearby looked much alike, being made of the same rock. He was greatly taken with the idea of water being made to flow from Moosehead Lake to the West Branch and vise versa. Recent heavy rains raised the West Branch two feet, enough to reverse the flow in Lobster Stream, the current carrying them into Lobster Lake, more than a mile without paddling. During millennia of flow reversals, sediment carried into the lake has constructed a delta at the normal lake mouth.

For his last trip, Thoreau again went to Greenville, with another Penobscot guide, now paddling up Moosehead Lake. They stopped on Kineo Island. Quoting Jackson, Thoreau says of the Kineo volcanic rocks, "Hornstone, which will answer for flints, occurs ... where trap-rocks have acted on slate." He does find hundreds of arrow-heads made of this material, a material once widely traded for stone tools. Rather than going down the Allagash as planned, they decide to travel down the East Branch via the Telos Cut. On seeing the Traveler volcanic mountains, Thoreau notes how similar in shape they are to Mount Kineo, with steep slopes resulting from erosion along columnar joints. At Whetstone Falls he notes the eskers along the East Branch, using the Maine term "horseback," but does not comment on their origin. He does recognize the different vegetation pattern when he reaches the inland limit of glacial-marine submergence on the East Branch.

GEOLOGICALLY SPEAKING, WHAT'S IN A PLACE NAME?

Most students in introductory geology class hear the term monadnock, defined as an upstanding rock, hill, or mountain rising conspicuously above the general level of the surrounding landscape. The type locality is Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire; the Monadnock State Park website identifies the word as an Abenaki term meaning 'mountain that stands alone.' Other sources interpret it to mean 'at the mountain which sticks up like an island', or 'at the most prominent mountain.' Alternatively, the Western Abenaki Dictionary by Gordon M. Day, defines it as a 'smooth mountain' and provides the locative spelling 'menonadenak.' Here we encounter one of the pitfalls of interpreting place names in New England, in particular those names given to areas or places by the people who were living here before the European arrival. There are many Algonquian language-based words for mountains, rivers, and communities in Maine. The names were given to specific locations for their geographical characteristics and their importance to the Indian people. However, many of the names used by the Colonists do not apply in the same way as the original speakers intended them. To quote Day:

"Let us admit at the outset that Indian place-names are fun. They combine the romance of history, real or spurious, with the challenge of a detective story. And this is part of the trouble. Indian place-names seem to have had a greater attraction for the untrained than for the competent students of ethnolinguistics and ethnohistory. As a result we have all too many examples - both amusing and exasperating - of names which have been enthusiastically analyzed by the following procedure: (1) assuming that the name as spelled on a modern map and pronounced by the analyst himself is just what the Indian said: (2) segmenting the name in any way which seemed most convenient: (3) assigning a meaning to the... words from dictionaries of an Indian language in the same region, assuming that it is the same as the language of the place-name: and, (4) having ignored the Indian grammar altogether, rearranging the bits of English meaning into a grammatical phrase."

Having been forewarned, let us plunge headlong into a geological detective story. Day's definition of monadnock is not quite the same as the geological definition. Let's look at some of the place-names in Maine and see how they fit with their landscape, bearing in mind Dr. Day's four points.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU AND HIS MENTORS ON THE “DILUVIAL” LANDSCAPE OF NEW ENGLAND

An intriguing omission in the writings of Henry David Thoreau is any mention of continental glaciation in his descriptions of the New England landscape. He observed and measured glacial striations on Mt. Monadnock and described roches moutonnees on Monadnock and Mt. Katahdin—but failed to elaborate on their origins. The glacially transported boulders on the summit of Monadnock, he ascribed to transportation by “the Titans.” He noted many erratic boulders in the woods and fields around Concord, but offhandedly dismissed the origin of the rocks at the “Boulder Field” in the Estabrook Woods as having “tumbled and split off from an iceberg.” On his four trips to Cape Cod, he made no effort to see Doane's Rock in Eastham, by far the largest glacial erratic on the forearm of the Cape.

Thoreau's most insightful observations on glacial landforms involved Walden Pond, a large kettle pond in the southeastern corner of Concord. He accurately surveyed and sounded the pond in 1846, and noted the annual rise and fall of its water level. He correctly deduced that Walden is a flow-through pond, having underground connections to topographically higher ponds to the northeast and to the lower Sudbury River to the southwest.

Thoreau's early mentors on the “diluvial” geology of New England were C. T. Jackson and Edward Hitchcock. Jackson's rather uncritical acceptance of the Noachian flood origin of the drift is readily explained by the fact that his work in Maine during the 1830's predated the wide dissemination of the ideas of Bernhardi, Charpentier, and Louis Agassiz on continental glaciation in Europe. Hitchcock's early work in Massachusetts was contemporaneous with that of Jackson, but by 1841 he was a strong supporter of Agassiz. Over the next 20 years, however, he gradually drifted back toward “diluvialism.” In 1862 Hitchcock stated that the flood/iceberg and glacial theories on the origin of the drift “were not irreconcilable.” Agassiz came to Boston in 1846. Thoreau collected zoological specimens for the great naturalist's Harvard museum in 1847, and read a copy of “Agassiz sur les Glaciers” in 1854. But Thoreau's Journal and late essays maintain a cryptic silence on Agassiz's views on New England glaciation. Most likely, this omission reflected Thoreau's distrust of science as expressed in his polite refusal of membership in the AAAS in late 1853.

JOHN WHITEHURST'S CONTRIBUTION TO 18TH CENTURY STRATIGRAPHIC GEOLOGY

John Whitehurst's “An Inquiry into the Original State and Formation of the Earth” published in 1778 encompasses two distinct parts. Of the two, the second or Appendix, which is entitled ”General Observations on the Strata in Derbyshire,” indicates the value that knowledge of the stratigraphic superposition of rock units has in understanding earth history and in practical application in mining. The Appendix includes six stratigraphic cross sections. Three of these cross sections are of coal-bearing sequences and three are of successions that include limestones associated with lead ores. The lithologic aspects of the strata depicted in the sections are described in significant detail. Whitehurst stated that he had obtained many of these details from miners, “particularly Mr. George Tiffington.” Whitehurst stated that “all strata accompanying the coals abound in vegetable forms,” an observation that led him to suggest that coals originated from vegetable matter. Whitehurst commented in the Preface to the Appendix that stratigraphic sections should be useful in ”leading to discovery of those things which are concealed from our observations in the lower regions of the earth.” He went on to say: “I am fully persuaded in my own mind, that if the strata in all mineral countries were faithfully represented by sections, it would furnish miners with superior ideas of their respective works, and enable them to proceed in their works with more propriety.” He suggested that a museum be established to display strata and their contained fossils in the same stratigraphic order as could be seen in nature to enhance understanding of stratigraphic superposition.

THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON AND THE ENGLISH REVOLT AGAINST THEORY, 1802-1822

The foundation of the Geological Society of London in 1807 illustrates some of the ways in which the relationship between scientific progress and democracy was complicated by the reactionary climate that set in after the French Revolution. The institutionalization of geology initially excluded a wide variety of geological practices and practitioners from scientific consideration. Nonetheless, the founders of the Geological Society shared with an array of geological “outsiders” a rhetorical position that was designed to liberate English naturalists from the dictates of Enlightenment philosophes and Revolutionary terrorists alike: the revolt against “theory.” Charlotte Smith's poem Beachy Head (1807) made geology a paradigm case for the tendency toward “vague theories” and “vain dispute” in current science, advocating instead the traditional and more inclusive practices of natural history. The Geological Society's founders drew on the same national traditions of skepticism and empiricism to portray theorizing, conversely, as an error committed by amateurs who distorted their scanty local observations to support hypotheses derived from Continental thinkers. Thus a national institution was justified as an empirical research network that would check theoretical excesses. Yet Charlotte Smith's doubts were echoed by other amateur naturalists who objected that institutions tended to marginalize women and “practical men” by appropriating their knowledge and controlling publication. The Geological Society of London thus arose within and against a broad concurrent endeavor to keep the earth legible for non-specialists. Both the society's founders and a wide variety of “outsiders”—including nature poets, women travel writers, and self-taught geological fieldworkers—invoked their English resistance to Continental “theory” as a way of reimagining democratic intellectual life in the wake of the French Revolution.

NATURAL THEOLOGY, DESIGN AND LAW

It is widely recognized that Darwin discredited the argument from design. Less well known is the history of a related notion, the argument from law, according to which there cannot be a law without a legislator. Both rested upon the more fundamental assumption that we can interpret the world on the basis of privileged knowledge of the Deity, supposedly an anthropomorphic one. Given that the same Being both created the universe and ordained the laws of nature that govern it, viewing geological history and the fossil record as teleological is much easier. Pre-Darwinian scientists invoked both design and law in explaining the history of the world. In either case the result was a tendency to view the fossil record as if it were, like a developing embryo, headed in a particular direction. Those who have attempted to salvage design in the face of Darwin's contribution have generally put more causal burden upon laws of nature. The English anatomist and paleontologist Richard Owen (1804-1892)provides a good example.

ROBERT HOOKE, EVOLUTIONIST AND SUPER ROCK STAR

DRAKE, Ellen Tan, 7330 NW Acorn Ridge Drive, Corvallis OR 97330, drakee@onid.orst.edu

Robert Hooke (1635-1703) gave a series of lectures to the Royal Society of London over a period of some thirty-odd years that essentially laid down the foundation of the modern science of geology. These lectures were published posthumously in 1705. He recognized the true nature and importance of fossils at a time when the prevailing thought was that fossils were a trick of nature, a product of some magical or astrological force, or at best mere relicts of Noah's Flood. His studying of fossils he collected led him to express a theory of biologic evolution that was startlingly on target. His examination of the rocks and sediments on the shores of his native Isle of Wight convinced him of the cyclic nature of terrestrial processes and that the time needed to accomplish all that he witnessed in these cycles of erosion, sedimentation, consolidation and uplift had to be much longer than was allowed by the Scriptural Chronology. He insisted that the Earth had to be older than the 6000 years allowed by the Bible, and most of his contemporaries considered his attitude tantamount to a derogation of God. His lectures, therefore, not only contain ideas of biologic evolution, they contain the foundation of modern geology. There is evidence that both Steno, Hooke's contemporary, and Hutton in the 18th century may have benefited from them. The geological community has shown reverence for Steno and Hutton. Hooke should be acknowledged and honored by geologists and historians of geology as a precursor of Darwin and a true founder of the science of geology.

2006 Philadelphia Annual Meeting (22–25 October 2006)
General Information for this Meeting

Session No. 35
From the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment: Emergence of Modern Geology and Evolutionary Thought from the 16th–18th Century II
Pennsylvania Convention Center: 204 B
1:30 PM-5:30 PM, Sunday, 22 October 2006

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 38, No. 7, p. 99

 
HOOKE – STENO RELATIONS RECONSIDERED: REASSESSING THE ROLES OF OLE BORCH AND ROBERT BOYLE

YAMADA, Toshihiro, 2-22-2-305, Utase, Mihama-ku, Chiba 261-0013 Japan, tosmak-yamada@muf.biglobe.ne.jp

Robert Hooke (1635 – 1703) and Nicholas Steno (1638 – 1686) enjoy fame as seventeenth century founders of ‘geology'. At the same time, disputes have arisen about the priority of their contributions to the history of the science. Which of the two first established the organic origin of fossils and the principles for constructing Earth history? Did they independently discover these concepts, influence one another, or even plagiarize from each other? In order to clarify the relations between Hooke and Steno, I introduce two figures whose roles in the historiography of geology have been overlooked: Ole Borch and Robert Boyle. The Danish scholar Borch was a mentor of Steno's in Copenhagen. When he traveled through Europe, he met Steno in the Netherlands, and then went over to England where he visited English natural philosophers including Boyle. Borch again met Steno in Paris when he returned to the continent in 1664. This chronology suggests that Borch learned about Boyle's ideas and communicated them to Steno before Steno met English naturalists such as Martin Lister in Montpellier in 1665.

On the other hand, Hooke had deciphered the organic origin of fossils as early as 1663 and published the idea in his Micrographia (1665). Of course, Steno had already revealed his interest in meteorological and terrestrial phenomena in his student years in Copenhagen (Chaos manuscript, 1659), and consequently, it is possible he developed his concept about ‘solids within solids' independently. However, if we suppose Boyle and Hooke shared similar opinions on the nature of fossil objects, another possibility is that stimulation from England motivated Steno to study Earth theory.

Boyle's works including surviving manuscripts such as Origine of Minerals published in the 2000 edition of the Works of Boyle afford an opportunity to reassess these possible interchanges of ideas and shed light upon the complex relationship between Hooke and Steno.

2006 Philadelphia Annual Meeting (22–25 October 2006)
General Information for this Meeting

Session No. 35
From the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment: Emergence of Modern Geology and Evolutionary Thought from the 16th–18th Century II
Pennsylvania Convention Center: 204 B
1:30 PM-5:30 PM, Sunday, 22 October 2006

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 38, No. 7, p. 99

 
THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AND NICHOLAS STENO'S TWOFOLD CONVERSION

VAI, Gian Battista, Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra e Geo-ambientali, Univ. of Bologna, Via Zamboni 67, Bologna 40126 Italy, vai@geomin.unibo.it

Steno's life was punctuated by two conversions: (1) from anatomy and medicine to geology, and (2) from Lutheran to Roman Catholic confession.

Why was Steno (1638-1686) motivated to solve geological problems soon after having entered the Tuscan region of Italy? Was there any link between his scientific conversion and the religious one which occurred almost simultaneously and produced a revolution in his life?

The origin of marine fossils found in mountains had been debated in Italy for one and a half centuries. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) had already given a modern scientific explanation for the problem. Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), later tackled the problem with an experimental taxonomic approach (his famous museum and studio) and it was he who coined the word ‘geology' in 1603.

Italy provided spectacular exposures of rocky outcrops that must have impressed the Danish scientist who had lived in the forested north European lowlands. Since the time of Giotto and his successors such as Mantegna, Pollaiolo, Leonardo, and Bellini, the imposing Italian landscape had stimulated the visualization of geology. Inevitably science and art merged perfectly in the work of painter and paleontologist Agostino Scilla (1629-1700).

Thus, Steno was methodologically skilled, intellectually curious, and open to the stimuli that Italy had to offer to unwittingly re-discover, after Leonardo, the principles of geology and to solve the problem of fossils.

Steno's inclination to detailed ‘anatomical' observation of natural objects and processes as well as his religious conversion were influenced by his acquaintance with the circle of Galilei's (1564-1647) disciples who formed the Accademia del Cimento. They were firm Roman Catholic believers. To the rationalist and open-minded Steno this connection could not be dismissed and it prepared him for changing his paradigms for the sake of consistency. This occurred when a Corpus Domini procession triggered a revelation and led to his religious conversion.

2006 Philadelphia Annual Meeting (22–25 October 2006)
General Information for this Meeting

Session No. 35
From the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment: Emergence of Modern Geology and Evolutionary Thought from the 16th–18th Century II
Pennsylvania Convention Center: 204 B
1:30 PM-5:30 PM, Sunday, 22 October 2006

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 38, No. 7, p. 99

 
THE “QUESTION OF FOSSILS” AND THE HISTORY OF MOUNTAINS IN 18TH CENTURY ITALY

VACCARI, Ezio, Dipartimento di Informatica e Comunicazione, Università dell'Insubria, via Mazzini 5, Varese 21100 Italy, ezio.vaccari@uninsubria.it 

The question of fossils emerges in 17th century Italy to mark the birth of palaeontology, in particular through the work of prominent scholars such as Nicolaus Steno, Fabio Colonna and Agostino Scilla: all studied in depth by Nicoletta Morello (1979).

Beyond the definition of the organic origin of fossils, which was widely accepted in Italy at the beginning of the 18th century, their role within a new reconstruction of the Earth's history based on lithostratigraphical data became gradually more evident to naturalists and Earth scientists (or ‘oryctologists'). For example, the cases of Antonio Vallisneri (1721) and later Giovanni Arduino (1760, 1771-72) may be considered as particularly significant.

The variety and diversity of fossils, as well as their different distribution within the strata of hills and mountains, clearly revealed some possible changes which had occurred to the species over a very long time span, together with the changes which had modified the morphology and the lithology of the Earth's surface.

The aim of this paper is to offer an overview of the Italian 18th century geological studies which gradually started to identify the traces of a long history of evolution.

2006 Philadelphia Annual Meeting (22–25 October 2006)
General Information for this Meeting

Session No. 35
From the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment: Emergence of Modern Geology and Evolutionary Thought from the 16th–18th Century II
Pennsylvania Convention Center: 204 B
1:30 PM-5:30 PM, Sunday, 22 October 2006

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 38, No. 7, p. 99

 
STENO, THE FOUNDER OF GEOLOGY, IN THE WORLD OF COLLECTIONS AND MUSEUMS

HANKEN, Elsebeth Thomsen, Department of Geology, Tromso University Museum, Tromso NO-9037 Norway, elsebeth.thomsen@tmu.uit.no

This year we celebrate the 350th anniversary of the beginning of an extraordinary career. On November 27th 1656, Niels Stensen, also known as Nicolaus Stenonis or Steno, and often considered to be the founder of geology as a science, commenced his studies at the University of Copenhagen.

All through his scientific life Steno was fortunate to be able to name many famous scholars amongst his acquaintances, experts in e.g. chemistry, mathematics, pharmacy, medicine and biology. He was also supported financially by patrons with a keen interest in natural history. Many of these people were also associated with collections or museums of reputation. Some had inherited collections or museums e.g. Jan Swammerdam and Manfredo Settala, others had established these themselves e.g. Athanasius Kircher. Steno eventually became a collector and curator for the Grand Duke of Toscana.

This work is documented in a catalogue, "Indice di Cose Naturali", listing i.a. minerals and fossils in the Grand Dukes collection, some collected by Steno himself. Examples are hematite crystals from Elba, collected before "De Solido" reveals the principles of "Stenos Law" in 1669, and fossil fishes from the copper shale in Eisleben collected later. The importance of "Indice" is that the samples listed partly were collected as documentation for his own research and inspection of economically important geological localities. In posterity, the late Dr. Gustav Scherz was able to reconstruct Stenos travels using the information of these samples.

There is only scattered information on Stenos interest in and experience with collections or museums in his publications and letters. The aim of this presentation is to elucidate this relatively unknown aspect of his life from the very beginning of his career.

2006 Philadelphia Annual Meeting (22–25 October 2006)
General Information for this Meeting

Session No. 35
From the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment: Emergence of Modern Geology and Evolutionary Thought from the 16th–18th Century II
Pennsylvania Convention Center: 204 B
1:30 PM-5:30 PM, Sunday, 22 October 2006

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 38, No. 7, p. 99

 
BIOLOGY IN STENO'S “CANIS CARCHARIÆ DISSECTUM CAPUT” (1667)

KARDEL, Troels, Private, Gl. Holtevej 117B, Holte DK-2840 Denmark, t.kardel@dadlnet.dk
For all the well-founded interest in his pioneering contributions to geology/paleontology, Steno's dissection of the head of a shark, published in Florence 1667 as “Canis Carchariæ dissectum Caput,” has more illustrations and slightly more text on biology than on paleontology. He famously identified the origin of “tongue stones” as fossil shark teeth but the significance to comparative anatomy has received less attention. The biological section was omitted in the first English translation published in 1958 by Garboe. The entire text in Scherz's “Steno – Geological Papers” in 1969 and the editor's commentaries raise the question whether this is just a geological/paleontological treatise.

Among Steno's important observations is the system of mucous canals in the shark's head. He had earlier described this in ray fishes. Later they were to be described in torpedo-fish by his pupil Lorenzini and named after the latter. Steno described a cavity behind the eye of the shark and mentioned, contrary to Aristotle (Hist. Animal. IV/8), that it was possibly an ear - at the location of the hearing organ as identified by much later techniques. Steno marvelled how motions of the huge muscle mass of the shark could be controlled by its tiny brain. He estimated that altogether the cross sectional area of the nerves from the spinal cord are larger by far than the cross sectional area of the spinal cord itself. Thus peripheral nerves could hardly be tubes to carry animal spirits from the brain as held by contemporaries. He added an experiment, much debated by members of the Royal Society of London. Temporary ligature of the abdominal aorta in the awake dog caused temporary hind leg paralysis, the “Steno Experiment,” showing the essential requirement of blood supply for motor control. He described the large number of teeth of the shark and discussed their formation. Further studies of tooth substance and formation, he wrote, could lead to a cure for caries to “diminish the number of the toothless.” Steno's ontological observations were essential in the emerging sciences of paleontology and comparative anatomy and for evolutionary thought.

2006 Philadelphia Annual Meeting (22–25 October 2006)
General Information for this Meeting

Session No. 35
From the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment: Emergence of Modern Geology and Evolutionary Thought from the 16th–18th Century II
Pennsylvania Convention Center: 204 B
1:30 PM-5:30 PM, Sunday, 22 October 2006

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 38, No. 7, p. 99

 
THE AGE OF THE EARTH IN NIELS STENSEN'S GEOLOGY

ZIGGELAAR, August, Sankt Knuds Stiftelse, Stenosgade 4A, 1616 Copenhagen V Denmark, ziggelaar@post.tele.dk

Congratulations to geologists for the Earth celebrates its birthday during the days of this conference, according to the story attributed to Bishop Ussher (1581 - 1656). This introduces the subject of this discussion. Niels Stensen also believed that the Earth had been created less than six thousand years ago. Was Niels Stensen sincere in making his new science and Holy Scripture agree? Or did he pretend so out of fear of suffering a fate similar to Galileo Galilei's? Did Niels Stensen act as he did in the face of geological evidence of a much longer time scale than the Biblical one?

There is no evidence that Niels Stensen made his time scale agree with Holy Scripture out of fear of suffering Galileo's fate. On the contrary he dared to honor Galileo, even though Galileo had been condemned and punished by Rome, not only in his student notebook, ”Chaos,” compiled in 1659 but also in his ”Prodromus,” published in 1669 after he had become a Catholic. Stensen was convinced of the agreement between his new science and Holy Scripture and in his situation he had good reason to believe so. Jesuits had found concrete evidence from genealogies in China for a longer stretch of time than that derived from the Bible. However, Niels Stensen's new science of geology was not exact like astronomy but rather qualitative and in that sense agreed with the Biblical chronology. Only later did sedimentation and slow changes in sea level create a problem for the Biblical view. Moreover speculations about the history of the Earth were freely allowed during Stensen's time because they were no danger for Christian dogma. In conclusion Stensen was not a creationist. A creatonist is someone who in spite of overwhelming evidence from modern science keeps to a literal interpretation of the Bible's time scale. If Niels Stensen had lived in our days, he would surely have accepted the geological time scale.

2006 Philadelphia Annual Meeting (22–25 October 2006)
General Information for this Meeting

Session No. 35
From the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment: Emergence of Modern Geology and Evolutionary Thought from the 16th–18th Century II
Pennsylvania Convention Center: 204 B
1:30 PM-5:30 PM, Sunday, 22 October 2006

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 38, No. 7, p. 99
  

STENO AND DEEP TIME

CUTLER, Alan H.., 6 Winesap court, Gaithersburg, MD 20878, ahcutler@aol.com

Nicolaus Steno's great achievement was his recognition that the earth has a scientifically interpretable history, but references to the span of time encompassed by that history are rare in his surviving writings. Did Steno have any inkling of “deep time”? The traditional view is that biblical concerns, as typified by James Ussher's chronology, made it impossible for 17th-century thinkers to contemplate a time span beyond a few thousand years. Accordingly, Steno would have necessarily rejected or suppressed the conclusion that geological processes required or implied long periods of time. The work of Rudwick and others in recent years on the influence of Aristotelean eternalism in geology's prehistory suggests that this should be reconsidered. Steno's failure to challenge biblical chronology in his major geological work De Solido is best seen as part of his rhetorical strategy in making a case for the organic nature of fossils, rather than a capitulation to biblical authority. He emphasized elements of the Bible consistent with his controversial theory, rather than those that might undermine it. Steno's geological history of Tuscany shows he that saw earth history as finite, and so rejected eternalism. But other passages in De Solido indicate that he was open to theories of the earth, such as Buridan's, that put no limit on time scale. However, even if he may have been willing to stretch the scale of earth history beyond biblical limits, Steno, like others of his era, assumed that it was co-extensive with human history. So he did not have a concept of deep time in a modern sense of a long span pre-dating human existence.

2006 Philadelphia Annual Meeting (22–25 October 2006)
General Information for this Meeting

Session No. 35
From the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment: Emergence of Modern Geology and Evolutionary Thought from the 16th–18th Century II
Pennsylvania Convention Center: 204 B
1:30 PM-5:30 PM, Sunday, 22 October 2006

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 38, No. 7, p. 100
  

NICHOLAS STENO'S (1638–86) WAY FROM EXPERIENCE TO FAITH

SOBIECH, Frank, Rotheweg 99, Paderborn 33102 Germany, franksobiech@web.de

The Danish anatomist, geologist, convert, and bishop Dr. Med. Nicholas Steno (1638-86) confessed in 1680 that in his youth he had been nearly seduced to 'atheism', doubting a personal God and preferring an impersonal 'fate'. Having surmounted that crisis, he got stuck in some kind of irresolute relationship with the Christian confessions, because he was fully occupied by his natural research. In the years after his final conversion to Catholicism in Florence in 1667, he was shaken more and more by an inner struggle whether he should give precedence to his geological studies or the pastoral care of souls. In 1675, Steno was ordained a Catholic priest; in 1677 he was ordained a bishop.

His aphorism, which is an expression of his marveling at the structure of nature, points to the metaphysical secret embedded in nature: "Beautiful is that which one sees, more beautiful that which one knows, but by far the most beautiful is that which one is ignorant of." Unfortunately Steno's early death prevented the fruition of his life work of mediation between natural science and theological-spiritual contemplation of the order of nature as the Enlightenment dawned in the second half of the 17th century.

2006 Philadelphia Annual Meeting (22–25 October 2006)
General Information for this Meeting

Session No. 35
From the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment: Emergence of Modern Geology and Evolutionary Thought from the 16th–18th Century II
Pennsylvania Convention Center: 204 B
1:30 PM-5:30 PM, Sunday, 22 October 2006

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 38, No. 7, p. 100
 

THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES IN THE 18TH CENTURY:FIRST STEPS & PROGRESS IN GEOSCIENCES

MALAKHOVA, Irena, History of Geology, Vernadsky State Geological Museum, Russian Academy of Sciences, 11-2 Mokhovaya street, Moscow 125009 Russia, malakhova@sgm.ru

The Russian (Saint-Petersburg) Academy of Sciences was founded in 1724 by Peter the Great. The idea had occurred to him during visits to the European scientific centers and meetings with renowned scientists. To improve the progress in sciences and education in Russia all members of the Academy had to share their time between scientific work and lectures in the affilated University. Only prominent European scientists were invited to become members, and they signed contracts and received compensations. Russian emperors appointed all members and the President of the Academy. In 1745 the first Russian geoscientist Michael Lomonosov was named full member of the Academy. Russian historian and geographer Pavel Rychkov was appointed first corresponding member in 1759. The 18th century was the time of “palace revolutions” in Russia. From 1724-1801 there were nine emperors and five presidents of the Academy. At times, only an academic bureaucracy directed the Academy, and this led to disputes and resignations. The Academy's first legal decree was signed in 1803. Nevertheless, “academic” expeditions headed by Johann Gmelin, Peter Pallas, Ivan Lepekhin, and Johann Georgi succeeded in opening Russian “terra incognita”. Explorations in Central and South Russia, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East provided unique data for the geosciences. The first geological compilations appeared (Lomonosov, 1763; Pallas, 1777-1778; Severgin, 1798). Russian geoscientists did not participate in the great dispute between neptunism and plutonism. All first Russian handbooks (at the beginning of the 19th century) were based on Abraham Gottlob Werner's concepts. But ideas of Lomonosov and James Hutton (named in Russia as the “Lomonosov-Hutton concept”) did influence geology in Russia. When geoscience was introduced in Russia, foreign seeds found themselves on rich soil.

2006 Philadelphia Annual Meeting (22–25 October 2006)
General Information for this Meeting

Session No. 35
From the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment: Emergence of Modern Geology and Evolutionary Thought from the 16th–18th Century II
Pennsylvania Convention Center: 204 B
1:30 PM-5:30 PM, Sunday, 22 October 2006

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 38, No. 7, p. 100
 

STENO'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND THE FOUNDATION OF GEOLOGY

HANSEN, Jens Morten, Management, GEUS, Geological Surrvey of Dednmark and Greenland, Øster Voldgade 10, DK-1350 Copenhagen K, Denmark, Copenhagen DK-1350 Denmark, jmh@geus.dk

Nicolaus Steno's (1638-1686) reasoning has been shown to be similar to Karl Popper's revision the positivistic philosophy of science. Steno's ‘conjecture and refutation' arguments state: Similar things are produced in similar ways and in similar surroundings. Because natural processes can obliterate as well as preserve evidence, we must build scientific reasoning on conjecture and refutation.

Steno's studies of Tuscany had taught him that the Earth had undergone huge changes. But he realized that some might construe his ideas as contradicting Holy Scripture, and that no one could believe him unless his findings were based on incontrovertible logic and observation.
He knew that Nature speaks with one voice – what Lyell later restated as the ‘Actualistic Principle', and that there were specific prerequisites for understanding geological phenomena. These he defines as types of natural motion: (1) Change in location, (2) Liquid or gaseous flow and, (3) diffusion (unknown until Steno's doctoral thesis, De Thermis, was rediscovered in Philadelphia in 1969). In addition, he defined growth as surface phenomena common to all solids including sediments, crystals and living organisms.

These made it possible for Steno to formulate the principles that earned him fame: original horizontality, lateral continuity, and order of superposition. In addition, Steno deserves credit for acknowledging the principle of cross cutting relationships (generally attributed to Hutton), and the principle of reconstruction (geologic history is a series of causes and effects known by stripping strata back from youngest to oldest).

Steno's name was nearly forgotten after his death due in part to his religious conversion. Leibniz appealed in vain to Steno to return to science from his positions as priest and bishop. To his death Steno considered scientific knowledge to be the highest praise to God and he insisted that religious speculations could never have authority above scientific arguments!

2006 Philadelphia Annual Meeting (22–25 October 2006)
General Information for this Meeting

Session No. 35
From the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment: Emergence of Modern Geology and Evolutionary Thought from the 16th–18th Century II
Pennsylvania Convention Center: 204 B
1:30 PM-5:30 PM, Sunday, 22 October 2006

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 38, No. 7, p. 100

CHARLES S. PEIRCE AND "THE LIGHT OF NATURE"

BAKER, Victor R.., Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, Univ of Arizona, Building 11 - Room 122, Tucson, AZ 85721-0011, baker@hwr.arizona.edu

The American polymath and logician Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) spent his professional career working on geodetic measurements. Nevertheless, his very original studies of scientific inference have considerable relevance to geology. Particularly important influences on his views derive from his avid studies of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, notably the writings of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1642). From Kant Peirce derived an architectonic and categorical approach to philosophy. Following the example of William Whewell (1794-1866), Peirce pursued the history of science in order to uncover the logic of scientific inquiry. His original reading of Galileo revealed that scholar's reliance upon "il lume naturale" (“the Light of Nature”) as a guide toward the selection of potentially productive hypotheses from among the many that might be posed in regard to scientific explanation. This principle underpins Peirce's famous and controversial notion of abduction, or retroduction, i.e., informed guessing, as critical to the methodology of science as a mode of inquiry. The instinctive tendency of the experienced and informed scientist to “guess right” is essential to the productive nature of what T.C. Chamberlin (1843-1928) would call “working hypotheses.” Peirce even classified geology as a science of hypothesis (or abduction), thereby contrasting it methodologically with sciences of induction, e.g., chemistry, and those of deduction, e.g., physics. Peirce's antifoundationalist and fallibilist pragmatism can be seen in the philosophical writings of T.C. Chamberlin, G.K. Gilbert (1843-1918), and W.M. Davis (1850-1934), all of whom had professional contacts with him.

2006 Philadelphia Annual Meeting (22–25 October 2006)
General Information for this Meeting

Session No. 35
From the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment: Emergence of Modern Geology and Evolutionary Thought from the 16th–18th Century II
Pennsylvania Convention Center: 204 B
1:30 PM-5:30 PM, Sunday, 22 October 2006

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 38, No. 7, p. 100

History of Geology Division and History of the Earth Sciences Society Anniversary Celebration
Sally Newcomb and Maria Luisa Crawford, Presiding 

HISTORY OF GEOLOGY DIVISION STUDENT AWARD PAPER: CORE DRILLING AT BIKINI AND ENIWETOK ATOLLS, 1947-1952

The surveys conducted in connection with the Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons test in 1946-47 made Bikini Atoll the most carefully studied coral reef in the world. Two members of the scientific crew, Harry S. Ladd and Joshua I. Tracey, Jr., led an effort to bore through the reef to basement rock in order to test competing theories of atoll formation. Obtaining core samples from deep beneath a living reef was first suggested by Charles Darwin, whose subsidence theory implied that remains of shallow-water corals would be discovered in situ even at great depths. The crew at Bikini worked around the clock, and their progress was reported by a cascade of military press releases until they ran out of drill pipe while still in reef limestone at 2556 feet. In 1952 Ladd resumed this work at the new Pacific proving ground, and obtained cores from the foundation of Eniwetok Atoll that were widely hailed as the final proof of Darwin's theory.

This paper is based on a study of formerly classified Army and Navy documents and the personal papers of the geologists at Bikini and Eniwetok. Ladd advocated atoll drilling in a secret report during World War II and this plan was adapted, with some modifications, for inclusion in the Bikini survey. The commanders in charge of the controversial weapons test then seized upon the potential public relations benefit of carrying out Darwin's crucial experiment. Regular press releases about this “newsworthy...science stor[y]” were actually stipulated in the 1947 Operation Plan as a means of “forestall[ing] much press criticism and speculation of a harmful nature.” This publicity almost certainly helped to encourage a widespread belief that research into coral reef formation had been stagnant from Darwin's time until the heroic achievements at Bikini and Eniwetok. In fact, reef science flourished in the first half of the twentieth century as well, and the existence of an ongoing debate over various theories of atoll formation helps to explain why the issue was ever taken up during the Crossroads tests. It also clarifies why Ladd, who was not a supporter of Darwin's theory before the war, was always at pains in subsequent years to specify that although Bikini and Eniwetok had undergone “Darwinian subsidence,” they did not appear to have passed through the fringing reef and barrier reef stages that Darwin postulated.

THE HISTORY OF THE WISSAHICKON

In some sense, the history of the valley of Wissahickon Creek could be said to be the early history of the city of Philadelphia. The name was taken from a Delaware Indian word for the valley, used in pre-colonial times. Settled in the late 17th century, by the early 19th century there were 54 mills erected along the stream, the source of power for the growing city. The valley is the type locality for the Wissahickon schist which underlies the city, a foliated metamorphic rock with predominant mica and quartz, which provided a building material for early inhabitants.

The Wissahickon entered the geological literature in the earliest 20th century. Since that time, virtually all of the tools of geology have been brought to bear on the questions of its origin and age. The rock itself remains enigmatic. This series of papers will explore the work done during the 20th and 21st centuries. Those first geologists benefited from several centuries of investigations of earth materials. By the 20th century, much was known. Minerals of interest for their beauty and/or usefulness had been identified since antiquity. By the last decades of the 18th century there were reliable and organized means of cataloging their physical properties. Those means became increasingly sophisticated, with numerical scales attached. Devices such as the sclerometer to test hardness were originated in the late 18th century, and improved throughout the 19th. By the end of the century it was recognized that different methods of testing hardness were not congruent because different instruments tested different atomic properties. Optical methods improved with the origination of thin sections and Nicol prisms. Fustion points were determined with greater and greater accuracy, from use of the blowpipe through Seger cones to Joly's meldometer. More and more chemical elements were discovered, and mineral compositions and their properties were clarified. Minerals were increasingly identified with particular types of field sites. As well, there was better understanding of the interlocking nature of magnetism and electricity. Wissahickon researchers took advantage of all possible tools, and their work was the impetus for further development.

100 YEARS OF WISSAHICKON — WHAT'S IN A NAME?

The Wissahickon Formation has been, and continues to be, one of the more controversial units of the Central Appalachian Piedmont. When Florence Bascom compared the Cecil County, Maryland mica-schists to the Wissahickon Creek mica-gneisses in 1902, she extended the Wissahickon from the Philadelphia area southwest into the Maryland Piedmont. She then correlated the Wissahickon mica-schist and gneiss with the Berkshire schist of New England and the Hudson schist of New York, while Maryland researchers first used the name Wissahickon Formation and extended the unit southwest through Maryland and into Virginia. With this extension, the Wissahickon became a massive formation traversing three states and correlated with other metasedimentary rocks in New York and New England. In 1932, Bascom mapped the Wissahickon Formation into Delaware. Since that time, researchers have excised parts of the Wissahickon Formation throughout the Central Appalachian Piedmont. In Maryland and Pennsylvania, the Octoraro Schist and Peters Creek Schist were created from parts of the Wissahickon. The Wissahickon was raised to the “group” level in Maryland, assigning the mica schists and gneisses to the Loch Raven Schist and Oella Formation. The name Wissahickon was abandoned in Virginia by Pavlides. This left an isolated mass of mica schists and gneisses mapped as Wissahickon in northeast Maryland, Delaware and southeastern Pennsylvania. This package of metasediments, which is physically separated by the Wilmington Complex and the Rosemont Fault from the type locality in Philadelphia, is referred to as “Glenarm Wissahickon” for its relationship to the Glenarm Group (Cockeysville Marble and Setters Formation). Newer work has provided further support for isolating this metasedimentary package and renaming it for clarity. Current endeavors include radiogenic ages from detrital zircons, geochemistry and monazite ages for a direct comparison between the Wissahickon sensu stricto in the Philadelphia area and the “Glenarm” Wissahickon to bring closure to 100 years of wandering Wissahickon creating stability for future geologic work in the Central Appalachian Piedmont.

THE MARTIC LINE CONTROVERSY - HOW IT STARTED

During mapping for the Philadelphia and Trenton folios Bascom noted the Wissahickon formation contained a mica schist and a more highly metamorphosed mica gneiss. Her 1905 GSA paper assumed the Wissahickon formation was Ordovician. By 1909, the time the folios were published, she assigned the Wissahickon mica gneiss to the Precambrian and the mica schist remained Ordovician. In 1916, she and her ex-students Jonas and Bliss proposed the Doe Run fault thrust the gneiss over the schist in the Coatesville quadrangle creating the contact between the Wissahickon mica gneiss and the Octoraro mica schist; Bascom never abandoned this interpretation. Knopf (nee Bliss) and Jonas, 1923, proposed the Precambrian Glenarm Series which included the Wissahickon mica gneiss overlain by the Octoraro mica schist thus moving the Octoraro schist to the Precambrian. In 1929 they proposed the Martic Overthrust which placed the Glenarm Series over the Ordovician Conestoga limestone. As no fault is exposed at the type locality of Martic Forge many geologists believed the fault interpretation was based on the misconception the Octoraro and Wissahickon were Precambrian and suggested the Wissahickon-Octoraro-Conestoga contact is a conformable sedimentary one.

Wyckoff notes the controversy embraces two really distinct problems, and it is not true that settling one of them would necessarily settle the other. First, there is the question of the status of the Glenarm series – are there really two series of sediments, one Precambrian and one lower Paleozoic, or are the Glenarm rocks merely the metamorphic equivalents of the Cambro-Ordovician rocks? The second question is that of the Martic Thrust itself. Is this, a purely mental construct, designed to account of the position of supposedly Precambrian rocks on top of known Paleozoic rocks? Or is there independent evidence that large scale thrusting has actually occurred? Oh, if only the ages and interrelationships of the rock units lumped into the Wissahickon formation were truly known and their structural relations to other rocks beautifully exposed.

THE WISSAHICKON CONTROVERSY: FLORENCE BASCOM'S EDUCATIONAL TRIUMPH

Florence Bascom, the first professional US woman geologist, achieved her greatest and lasting effects through her teaching and training of other women geologists via her position at Bryn Mawr College. Although Bascom was territorial in her fieldwork and disliked others trespassing within a research area that she considered to be her own (Arnold, 1983), her geology students rose to challenge her interpretation of the Wissahickon mica schist. Eleanora Bliss and Anna Jonas Stose proposed an age of Precambrian for the mica schist, as well as the presence of the Martic Overthust, in geological opposition to their esteemed mentor's interpretation.

Even when publicly contradicting her students' views, Bascom remained succinct and relatively dispassionate. She offered only “an alternative hypothesis tentatively held by the writer” (Bascom & Stose, 1932). Eventually, Benjamin Miller (1935, p. 755) challenged Stose's and Bliss' analysis, and concluded “Bascom's views concerning the age of these schists should not have been set aside.” Bascom's original interpretation prevailed at that time, with eventual modifications to the present day.

We assert that this controversy should be seen as an educational victory for Bascom, in addition to a geologic one. Our previous research (Clary & Wandersee, 2005) mapped Bascom's movements into the geological realm as predicated upon male contacts already in place. It was also another male—Miller—who directly challenged Bascom's students. Bascom strove for gender anonymity and free thinking; she was moderate and not discouraging in her attempt to promote her own interpretations about the Wissahickon above that of her students'. Historical evidence suggests to us that the challenge of Bascom's interpretation of the Wissahickon mica schist by her former students should appear as a triumph of her teaching: Bascom obviously had trained her students well to think independently, and to communicate their findings with vigor in a decidedly male arena. Stose and Bliss moved beyond their mentor by becoming the first professional US women geologists to publicly challenge an authority figure. Bascom, fond of saying that she did not want to be a one-of-a-kind woman geologist, witnessed this educational eclipse by her students.

THE WISSAHICKON SCHIST AND RELATED ROCKS: STUDIES OF METAMORPHISM IN SE PENNSYLVANIA

For over 100 years metamorphic studies have played a significant role in geological interpretations in SE Pennsylvania. Early workers recognized lithological differences due to metamorphism that increases in intensity south and east across the region. Bascom, who named the metamorphosed argillaceous rocks of the Piedmont Wissahickon Formation, attributed the higher metamorphism at the type locality in the Philadelphia area relative to rocks to the west and north to intrusion of igneous rocks. In 1929 her students, Knopf and Jonas, mapped metamorphic intensity in Pennsylvania and Maryland and reported evidence for superimposed metamorphic events including retrograde metamorphism. They related deformation and metamorphism and recognized that superimposed fabrics may reflect superimposed metamorphic events. Using the ideas of metamorphic zones and isograds developed in Scotland, McKinstry (1949) and Weiss (1949) published isograd maps. Wyckoff (1952) applied the concept of metamorphic facies to the schist to stress the role of rock chemistry on mineral occurrence. She suggested an early contact metamorphic event based on occurrences of andalusite and sillimanite, followed by kyanite-bearing regional metamorphism related to introduction of granitic material. Subsequent papers on details of metamorphic mineral properties and chemistry contributed little to unraveling the details of the metamorphism; that awaited the next major advance, experimental work that defines P-T conditions for metamorphic assemblages. Using these data and careful petrographic work, Wagner (1975) identified two prograde metamorphic events in the Precambrian gneiss and Mark (1977) recognized low P overprinted by high P metamorphism in the Wissahickon N of the Wilmington Complex, N Delaware. Srogi, Plank and Bosbyshell further documented a thermal aureole around the Wilmington Complex locally overprinted by high P metamorphism. These studies led to our present identification of at least 3 metamorphic events: basement gneiss granulite facies metamorphism; high T, low P metamorphism around the Wilmington complex; and a superimposed regional metamorphism grading from greenschist to amphibolite facies from NW to SE across the region. Most of the evidence was seen by the early workers; we have but worked out the details.

STRUCTURAL AND TEMPORAL INTERPRETATIONS OF THE WISSAHICKON FORMATION: THE FIRST 100 YEARS

Two main themes run through the history of structural interpretation of the Wissahickon Formation: the nature of its basal contact; and the model used to describe regional structures of the Wissahickon and associated basement massifs. Structural interpretation throughout is influenced by current ideas about stratigraphy, formation age, and structural models.

Bascom (1902) assigned a Silurian age to the Wissahickon, noting that it conformably overlies “limestone” correlated with the Chester Valley limestones, known by fossils to be Cambrian-Silurian. By 1909, she had decided that metamorphism and “eruptive material” within the Wissahickon required it to be Precambrian, lying above the younger rocks in overturned synclines. Bliss and Jonas (1916) changed the basal contact to an overthrust, analogous to structures in the southern Appalachians, Scotland and Scandinavia. In 1923, the same authors assigned the Wissahickon and all underlying metasediments to the Precambrian, abandoning the overthrust and interpreting all contacts as depositional. Bascom and Stose (1932) kept these ages, showing the regional structures as asymmetric, overturned folds. McKinstry (1961) and Mackin (1962) were influenced by Alpine structures in their classic interpretations of the basement massifs as refolded nappes. Using modern thermobarometric techniques, Alcock (1994) identified a metamorphic discontinuity at the base of the Wissahickon, and determined that it could not be in stratigraphic contact with the underlying metasediments. Field observations and local gravity surveys led him to reinstate the overthrust. In a regional mapping study, Blackmer (2004) found no structural discontinuity and some evidence for stratigraphic transition at the base of the Wissahickon. She removed the overthrust, and interpreted the basement massifs as sheath folds and hanging-wall antiforms.

The depositional age of the Wissahickon remains uncertain. Metamorphism dated by monazite growth gives an Ordovician upper limit. Interlayered amphibolites with continental initial-rift geochemistry suggest an Iapetan rifting association and Neoproterozoic-Cambrian age. Despite our modern isotopic techniques, we have barely improved on Bascom's 1902 conclusion that the Wissahickon “…is either pre-Cambrian or Lower Silurian.”

THE ROLE OF TRANSCURRENT SHEAR ZONES IN THE HISTORY OF THE WISSAHICKON FORMATION

Structural studies from the mid 1980s through 1990s led to the recognition and characterization of a system of steeply dipping shear zones in the central Appalachian Piedmont of southeastern Pennsylvania. Dextral displacement on these ductile shear zones allowed significant horizontal displacement of adjacent terranes, making interpretations of a widespread Wissahickon Formation suspect.

The type locality for Wissahickon Formation underlies Philadelphia and is well exposed along Wissahickon Creek. It is part of a terrane bounded to the west by the Rosemont shear zone and to the north by the Cream Valley-Huntingdon Valley shear zone. Amphibolite facies metamorphism of this Wissahickon schist is overprinted by later syntectonic greenschist facies metamorphism along the Cream Valley-Huntingdon Valley shear zone. Structural interpretation indicates that this terrane has been translated southwestward with respect to autochtonous Laurentia.

Other metasedimentary lithologies mapped as Wissahickon Formation are not likely to be correlative as they lie on the other side of proposed terrane boundaries within regions that do not share the same history of metamorphism and deformation. Early tectonic interpretations relied on this lithologic correlation in suggesting a simple collisional history for this part of the central Appalachians. The recognition of significant transcurrent displacements along ductile shear zones indicates a tectonic history of oblique convergence and orogen-parallel displacement of discrete terranes along this part of the Laurentian margin.

These investigations, conducted by the structural geology group at Temple University, were built on a foundation of earlier detailed metamorphic studies and laid the groundwork for more recent studies that divide the Wissahickon Formation on the basis of timing of metamorphism.

GEOLOGIC INFLUENCES ON BENEDICT ARNOLD'S MARCH TO QUEBEC, 1775

In 1775, Benedict Arnold proposed an attack on British held Quebec, Canada, advocating a route up the Kennebec and Dead Rivers in Maine, down the Chaudière River in Quebec, and crossing the St. Lawrence River. Using inaccurate maps, Arnold estimated completing a distance of 280 km in 20 days. In addition to hasty planning, poor boat construction, and bad weather, geology significantly influenced this historic event.

Arnold's ships entered the Kennebec at dawn on 20 Sept 1775, and soon encountered the Chopps, a swift flowing constriction at Merrymeeting Bay, confluence of the Kennebec and 7 other rivers. Beyond the Chopps, head tide of the Kennebec was easily reached at Fort Western and bateaux were loaded. Four divisions then left for Quebec on 29 Sept.

The Kennebec presented four portages around falls over exposed Paleozoic metamorphic rocks. Portages occurred at Ticonic, Skowhegan, Norridgewock, and Caratunk Falls. Beyond Caratunk Falls, the expedition left the Kennebec at Carrying Place Stream heading west.

Great Carrying Place is a 21 km portage that avoided an impassable section of the Dead River. Besides length, a 365 m change in elevation existed, with 240 m occurring in the first kilometer. Portage took 5 days and 5-7 trips for each bateau and traversed quagmire spruce bogs.

Reaching Dead River (17 Oct), easy travel occurred until a hurricane struck (21 Oct). Associated rain caused a 3 m rise in the river. Pressing on, bateaux, supplies, and food were lost trying to pass raging waters at Shagadee Falls, arriving at Chain of Ponds on 24 Oct. A 13 km portage over Height of Land via Chain of Ponds was necessary to reach Lac Megantic, headwaters of the Chaudière. Part of the group became lost in swamps around Spider Lake and one division turned back, the remainder regrouping on 3 Nov.

From Lac Megantic (335 m), the Chaudière drops 180 m in 80 km in a series of continuous rapids with several large falls. Without scouting, these cost the expedition many bateaux and much provisions. Passing Grand Falls of the Chaudière, the expedition re-supplied itself and on foot 550 troops reached Quebec City (14 Nov).

Arnold's short venture had turned into a grueling ordeal of 640 km lasting 2 months. Quebec was finally attacked during a snowstorm and resulted in defeat (31 Dec). Arnold was promoted to Brigadier General and the March to Quebec is regarded as one of history's greatest military logistical operations.

WASHINGTON'S PROVIDENTIAL ESCAPE FROM BROOKLYN HEIGHTS IN AUGUST 1776

Following a costly defeat at the Battle of Long Island in August 1776, General Charles Lee retreated to Brooklyn Heights, where his Americans were out-numbered three-to-one. British General William Howe ordered his men to dig in and bring his canon into range. George Washington arrived to take command on August 27th, and began overseeing the construction of new fortifications on the Heights. A serendipitous downpour made further British attacks unlikely. The next day additional troops arrived to boost the number of men under Washington's command to 9,000.

Washington soon realized that he had placed his forces in a trap by splitting his troops between Manhattan and Long Island, as the waterways were controlled by British warships. The British Navy could cut off Washington's forces by moving their ships from the New Jersey Shore to the East River. At this juncture, unusual weather conditions intervened. Unfavorable northeast winds prevented the British from moving their ships up New York Bay to encircle the American position. This mile wide channel was Washington's only possible path of retreat. The rain continued and on the night of August 29th an unusual northeast breeze began. The seagoing soldiers of John Glover's Marblehead Massachusetts Regiment were called on to ferry the American troops across the East River to Manhattan, and the exodus began at 9 PM. The wind ceased at Midnight, and Glover's men muffled their oarlocks. After an hour of calmness a gentle southwesterly breeze erupted, which allowed the Marblehead men to hoist sails, increasing the rate of transport by four-fold. By this time the sky had cleared and the moon was shinning brightly.

When first light appeared, the evacuation of 9,000 American troops was far from complete, the oarsmen needed at least three more hours. The soldiers occupying the front line trenches and huddled along the beach, worried that they would be spotted or left behind. Then, rising out of the wet ground and off the East River came a dense fog, which covered the entire river. When the sun rose the miraculous fog did not lift! The entire Army was extracted, except for the heaviest caliber canon. Just as the last boat pulled into the channel with General Washington aboard, the fog began to lift and dissipate. 9000 men had been saved from certain capture or destruction, and the American cause preserved.

THE GETTYSBURG BATTLEFIELD: GEOLOGY'S IMPACT UPON MILITARY HISTORY

The Gettysburg battlefield is a mile-wide lowland with low ridges on W and E. The lowland is on soft red shale to fine sandstone (lower Gettysburg Fmn; U. Triassic; floodplain or lake/playa deposits). The ridges are on hard basal-Jurassic diabase: Seminary Ridge on the W on a thin vertical dike of Rossville lower-Ti diabase, and Cemetery Ridge on the E on a thick west-dipping sill (Gettysburg Sill) of slightly older York Haven higher-Ti diabase. Both ends of Cemetery Ridge rise into higher hills eroded from the Gettysburg Sill: Cemetery + Culp's Hills to the NE, Little + Big Round Tops to the S. Further W of Seminary Ridge are low hills (McPherson + Herr Ridges), but developed on hard gray sandstone, redbeds, argillite, and black shale (Heidlersburg Member, mid-Gettysburg). By analogy with the Newark Basin, these strata appear cyclic, orbitally forced, arid and monsoonal tropical climates.

During the mid-Civil War (1863), 75 000 Confederates under Lee slowly moved Nward behind the Blue Ridge – South Mountain barrier, while 90 000 Union troops under Hooker (later Meade) remained E on the Piedmont to shield Washington. By late June, both armies converged on Gettysburg, due to the landscape's grain, the many roads radiating out from that town, and reports of possible supplies available there.

Early July 1, Confederates moving SE toward Gettysburg ran into Union troops coming N just W of town. Both sides began to fight vigorously, especially for McPherson Ridge, and ever more units fed into that conflict all day. By late afternoon, the Confederates prevailed and spread S along Seminary Ridge, while the Federals retreated through town and prepared positions on its S edge on Cemetery Ridge + Hill. Intense fighting continued July 2 as the Confederates attacked (unsuccessfully) the ends of the Union position, the S (Little Round Top) in the afternoon, the N (Cemetery + Culp's Hills) in the evening + night. July 3, Lee struck Meade's center on Cemetery Ridge. Like 1859's battle at Solferino, Lee heavily cannonaded the Union line, and then sent a massive infantry assault (under Pickett) across the lowland. As Pickett's troops neared Cemetery Ridge, the Union artillery opened a devastating fire, so that few Confederates were left when they got up to the Union line; hence, this frontal charge also failed. July 4, under heavy rain, both armies sat exhausted. The following night, the Confederates began withdrawing back to Virginia.

MILITARY GEOLOGY AND THE APACHE WARS, SOUTH WEST UNITED STATES

The Apache Wars fought in the South West United States for much of the nineteenth century had a consistent theme of the testing of Apache homelands that created a cycle of violence. Recent studies of the archaeology of these battlefields have identified a pattern of Apache warfare that demonstrates a strong engagement with terrain. The high desert terrain of the South West provided a means of constructing a fortified battlefield in which the effect of terrain multiplication magnified the effort of the few Apache warriors. Ambush was a favoured tactic. Military theorists consider the use of terrain from the perspective of at least four basic issues: 1, vantage – observing and being observed by your enemy; 2, going – the nature of the ground traversed; 3, fortification – the means of creating field fortifications; 4, supply – the possibility of supplying the needs of the army from the ground. The battles of the Apache Wars show elegantly how these principles work. The Battle of Hembrillo Canyon, 6-7 April 1880, is a good example, fought in the Hembrillo Basin in southern New Mexico. The Basin is developed in the north-south trending San Andres mountains, and comprises north-south striking Late Paleozoic sedimentary rocks of Permian and Carboniferous age, with a regional dip of around 10°W. The Permian rocks comprise mudrocks and sandstones which are freely weathering to create a series of steps. These slopes and cap rocks were to be used to advantage by the Apaches in 1880. The Battle of Hembrillo Canyon is a battle in which two units of the US Cavalry (6th and 9th) were deployed against a numerically inferior force. The Apaches used the advantages of terrain to greatest effect. From a vantage perspective, the Apaches were well sited; they had prepared fortifications, and were always able to occupy the eastwards facing sandstone scarp edges, which were denied the US soldiers of the 6th Cavalry, who were pinned down on exposed dip slopes to the east. Breastwork fortifications were used widely, built along the scarps, denying access to the more open dip slopes, and creating a strong, integrated system of natural fortifications. Ultimately, this battle was inconclusive. But as Hembrillo and other battles and skirmishes of the long running Apache Wars shows, the Apaches were masters of their battlefields, using geology to the greatest effect in multiplying the firepower of a numerically inferior force.

CLARENCE EDWARD DUTTON: GEOLOGIST, MAJOR OF ORDNANCE, MAN OF LETTERS

Clarence Edward Dutton has emerged from obscurity. In an authoritative recent geologic history of the Grand Canyon, the author termed Dutton, John Wesley Powell and G.K. Gilbert "Amerca's Greatest Geologists". This was high praise for a field geologist whose geological fame originally consisted of his coining the word Isostasy and championing that concept.

Dutton was a complex person. Rather than as classics of geology, university presses recently reprinted two of his USGS monographs as timeless literary journeys: the Grand Canyon and the magnificent volcanoes of Hawaii. Even earlier, Dutton was acclaimed as the writer who made the world aware of the magnificance of the canyon. In Washington, D.C. he was an insiders' insider. He served brilliantly as a military officer merely on loan to the USGS for 15 years. Late in life he quickly recognized readioactivity as a vital missing link in volcanism. His influence on American geology was both obvious and subtle; the aged James Dana surprisingly returned to Hawaii soon after publication of Dutton's "Hawaiian Volcanoes". Subsequently Dana wrote "Characteristics of Volcanoes" and was acclaimed "Father of American Volcanology". Perhaps Dutton merits this accolade.

GROVE KARL GILBERT'S PHOTOGRAPHS AS EVIDENCE IN GEOLOGY: DOCUMENTING THE 1906 SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE

On April 18, 1906, Grove Karl Gilbert (1842-1918) of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) was in Berkeley, conducting experiments on stream transport and evaluating the damage of hydraulic mining in California. He began immediately to study the effects of the earthquake, taking over a hundred photographs of structures and landscapes disrupted by the tremors and conducting fieldwork, especially north of the Golden Gate in the Bolinas-Point Reyes area. Many of these images appeared in Gilbert's articles in USGS Bulletin 324 (1907), and in a massive report (1908-1910) edited by Andrew Lawson of the University of California, The California Earthquake of April 18, 1906: Report of the State Earthquake Investigation Commission. Collections of his photographs came to be archived at the California Academy of Sciences and at the USGS Photo Library in Denver.

Gilbert's use of photographs dated back to his work as an assistant to John Strong Newbery on the Ohio State Geological Survey in 1870. During his work (1871-1875) on the Wheeler Survey of the American West, Gilbert learned to take striking photographs from master photographer Timothy O'Sullivan (1840(?)-1882), who had apprenticed to the great Civil War photographer Matthew Brady (1823(?)-1896). Gilbert refined his photographic skill with John Hillers (1843-1925) of the Powell Survey during 1875-1879. Gilbert built up a large photographic library during his career with the USGS, documenting Niagara Falls, the Great Basin, Meteor Crater, the Sierra Nevada and the geology of Alaska (as geologist of the Harriman Expedition) in the years before 1906. After the earthquake, he continued to assemble photographs to illustrate his geological work. The publication of his images was influenced by the limitations of printing of the time; before 1890s, most of the published photographs were transferred to engravings for printing; thereafter, they began to appear as halftones and heliotypes.

STATEMENT ON EVOLUTION-SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION- 1925

During 1925, perhaps as a result of the Scopes trial, a statment on evolution was prepared by Smithsonian Institution Assistant Secretaries C. G. Abbot and A. Wetmore. The context in which it was found, an attachment to a forwarding letter, suggests this was designed as a standard piece to be sent to all public inquiries concerned with evolution. The three-page statment notes that the Smithsonian, Bureau of American Ethnology and Zoo all collect objects "to increase the knowledge of the public." "The Institution makes no preference between rival religions or rival theories in its collections and exhibitions of objects illustrating facts." In regard to human evolution "the opinions of those [of the staff] best qualified to judge unanimously support that theory . . ." The statment then list 11 lines of evidence. Those of most interest in geological context are: increase in brain size through times; similarity in structure to other mammals; "every order of life shos similar evidences of development . . ."; fossils show a "progressive change" with man in the youngest strata; sequences of rock indicate the long expanse of geologic time; radio-activity further expands that time sequence; evolution in stars suggests "that evolution is a universal process to which man is no exception. The statement ends by noting that a belief in organic evolution is not "exclusive and destructive of religious belief . . ."

WHERE IS THAT COLLECTION?

One advantage of being an octogenarian, especially if you have a modicum of memory remaining, is that you become a living data-bank for all the geologic lore that has come your way during a half-century of field and laboratory experiences. A common problem today, now that many geologic results are digitally developed and announced on the web to an eagerly awaiting geoscience community, is that the basic geologic evidence is never, or hardly ever, re-examined. Occasionally the perpetrator of such a synthesis may be stricken by conscience and wonder if a "new look" at an old fossil might substantiate or change the results. So, who might know the answer? Perhaps an old pal from graduate school days (or 1960s field work in northern Alaska) would remember. Especially if he has been in, or near, a repository of "geologic stuff" (not necessarily a museum) for that half-century, or so. The subsequent phone call (or e-mail) pleads: "Do you remember in the summer of 1972..."; or "Where can I find the recent brachiopods discussed by a Dr. Morse in the mid-1880s..."; or "We have been arguing about fossils in metamorhpic rocks-- where might we find collection X from Y?" Not surprisingly, in these days when whole departments, let alone basic subdisciplines, disappear from universities, many geologic PhD's have never been exposed to the logistics or folk history of collecting and preserving collections-- let along understand what a type specimen is and how it is documented. The above scenarios, among others, are discussed with the hope of enlightening a few of the folks who might well be asking similar questions in the future.

BRADFORD WASHBURN: A LIFE OF EXPLORATION

Bradford Washburn's career evolved from a lifetime of dedicated work, detailed preparation, and an encylclopedic, uncanny knowledge of his subjects. He has conducted mountaineers and scientists high atop the mountains of Alaska, Canada, Nepal, and the continental United States. His life's accomplishments include a vast library of stunning aerial photographs, detailed and strikingly-accurate maps, and many first ascents throughout North America. At the very core of Washburn's expeditions can be found a few primary motifs: a fundemental love for high and distant places, a yearning to discover the unknown, and the desire to share with others the world's natural beauty and scientific wonders.

For nearly eight decades, Bradford Washburn focused his life's work on the interdisciplinary study of our natural world. This presentation will discuss Washburn's accomplishments as photographer, explorer, cartographer, mountaineer, field scientist, and educator and provide context for this celebratory keynote symposium in his honor.