Lyell’s Principles of Geology launched a fundamental change in the science of geology by rejecting catastrophic geological change and helping to free the discipline from the restrictions of religion, thereby drastically expanding the earth’s age and making Darwinian evolution conceptually possible.
Charles Lyell developed the theory of uniformitarianism as a determined effort to separate geology from the biblical view of creation and place it on the same footing as the general sciences. His theory was part of a tradition dating back to the seventeenth century French mathematician René Descartes
The claim that matter was law-bound and outside the proper area of theologians worked its way from cosmology into geology in the works of a noted French naturalist, the comte de Buffon
Sir Charles Lyell.
Buffon’s arguments, advanced in the first volume of his Natural History, General and Particular (1749), were largely rejected by his contemporaries and immediate successors. Over the next half century, geological speculation was dominated by such late eighteenth and early nineteenth century catastrophists as Jean-Étienne Guettard
Buffon’s
However, if Hutton incorporated Deist elements into his theory, he also rejected biblical creationism. He insisted that the present was the key to an understanding of the past, that geological change could, and should, be explained in terms of the ordinary actions of natural forces acting normally. That view, which emphasized the slow actions of temperature, wind, and water on land forms, automatically required an extension of the earth’s age that seemed to contradict the account of Earth’s creation in the Bible’s
A full-blown uniformitarianism finally appeared in July of 1830, when the English geologist Charles Lyell produced the first volume of his Principles of Geology. With impressive consistency, Lyell insisted on explaining geological change strictly in terms of known physical agents operating at current levels of force. The earth had been sculpted by the interplay of water and heat—as he expressed it, by aqueous and igneous phenomena. Through the erosion cycle, the action of water tended to level the earth. The raising or depressing of the earth’s surface was caused by volcanoes
Lyell’s work was more impressive than that of Hutton
The Principles of Geology immediately touched off a dispute over the rate of geological change known as the Uniformitarian-Catastrophist Debate. That dispute soon flowed into the question of whether change was progressive or whether the earth remained in structural equilibrium, in a sort of Lyellian steady state. In both cases, the controversy promoted further research, especially in potentially revealing areas such as mountain-building.
Lyell’s views were partly invalidated by later research, which found that intermittent cataclysmic episodes did, in fact, interrupt the normal flow of uniform forces and that the fossil record was, indeed, progressive. However, if he represented a philosophic extreme, he still occupied a prominent place in the development of modern geology. In undermining the legitimacy of a linkage between earth history and scriptural belief, in careful, extensive documentation of generalizations, and in searching for regularity in geological processes, his theory helped push that emerging discipline toward maturation.
Lyell’s work was also crucial to the development of Charles Darwin’s
Darwin also found that his observations of the fossil record supported Lyell’s conclusions about the correlation between species distribution, climate, and geography. That increased awareness of paleoecology
Lyell’s work is significant primarily because of the way it furthered Cartesian values in two emerging disciplines. In geology, his uniformitarianism further distanced science from theology and promoted the fundamental notion of René Descartes that the natural world was formed by law-bound matter in motion. In biology, it advanced the Cartesian definition of life as highly organized law-bound matter in motion by freeing geological time from scriptural bonds. In both cases, Lyell’s uniformitarianism accelerated the rise of modern scientific disciplines.
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Bolles, Edmund Blair. The Ice Finders: How a Poet, a Professor, and a Politician Discovered the Ice Age. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1999. Lively narrative of how naturalist Louis Agassiz, Charles Lyell, and poet Elisha Kent Kane collaborated to create public acceptance for the existence of an ice age. -
Dalrymple, G. Brent. The Age of the Earth. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991. Places Lyell’s concerns about the antiquity of the earth in fullest possible context, stretching from ancient beliefs to radiometric dating -
Gould, Stephen Jay. Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. Provides an extensive treatment of Lyell’s ideas and carefully analyzes the different ideas subsumed under the general umbrella of uniformitarianism. -
Greene, John C. The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1959. Places Lyell’s influence on nineteenth century science in perspective and traces the connections between Lyell’s and Darwin’s thoughts on species migration. -
Greene, Mott T. Geology in the Nineteenth Century: Changing Views of a Changing World. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982. Taking a broad perspective, Greene evaluates Lyell’s contributions and offers the view that Hutton’s work laid the foundations of modern geology. -
Klaver, J. M. I. Geology and Religious Sentiment: The Effect of Geological Discoveries on English Society and Literature Between 1829 and 1859. New York: Brill, 1997. Study of Lyell’s scientific and religious views about world antiquity and how they were received by theologians, philosophers, poets, and novelists. -
Lyell, Charles. Principles of Geology, Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth’s Surface by Reference to Causes Now in Operation. 3 vols. London: John Murray, 1830-1833. First of many editions of Lyell’s landmark work, which is remarkably easy to read, as it is written in an open and accessible style. -
Rudwick, Martin J. S. George Cuvier: Fossil Bones and Geological Catastrophes—New Translations and Interpretations of the Primary Texts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Study of the French naturalist Cuvier, whose writings on animal fossils and natural catastrophes anticipated modern research into mass extinctions and the study of fossils as records of plant and animal life that help to date the age of the earth. -
Wilson, Leonard G. Charles Lyell. 2 vols. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972. This sizable biography places Lyell in the scientific context of his times and provides a detailed account of his work and personal life.
Lamarck Publishes Zoological Philosophy
Tambora Volcano Begins Violent Eruption
Buckland Presents the First Public Dinosaur Description
Wallace’s Expeditions Give Rise to Biogeography
Neanderthal Skull Is Found in Germany
Darwin Publishes On the Origin of Species
Darwin Publishes The Descent of Man
Krakatoa Volcano Erupts
Bjerknes Founds Scientific Weather Forecasting
Wiechert Invents the Inverted Pendulum Seismograph
Georges Cuvier; Charles Darwin; Sir Charles Lyell.