Scriptural geologist

Scriptural geologists (or mosaic geologists) were "a heterogeneous group of writers" in the early nineteenth century, who claimed "the primacy of literalistic biblical exegesis" and a short 'Young Earth' time-scale. Their views were marginalised and ignored by the scientific community of their time. They "had much the same relationship to 'philosophical' (or scientific) geologists as their indirect descendants, the twentieth-century creationists." Paul Wood describes them as "mostly Anglican evangelicals" with "no institutional focus and little sense of commonality". They generally lacked any background in geology, and had little influence even in church circles.

Background

Reason for appearance

British Geology had been theologically based until the last decades of the eighteenth century, and among the educated in Britain an old-earth cosmology was not a foregone conclusion. As historian of science Nicolaas Rupke notes, classical scholarship in Britain traditionally turned to documents, such as the Bible, when it came to questions concerning world history and chronology. Scripture provided the foundational assumptions and geology's primary purpose was to explain geological data in terms of Creation and the Flood. Amateurs and popular geologists long after Hutton continued using a scripture based geology.

The early history of British geology is the story of how a new intellectual community (i.e., Geological Society of London, BAAS, etc.) laid exclusive claim to telling earth history and to geology as opposed by Scriptural geologists. By the 1880s the new science would apparently win. The word ‘geology’ would become synonymous with an old earth history. And ‘science’ would become synonymous with ‘natural science’, shutting out theology, once queen of the sciences. However, for the first half of the nineteenth century ‘geology’ was still a contested term.

Hutton’s revolutionary geological assertion that there was “no vestige of a beginning-no prospect of an end” at the beginning of the 19th century was difficult for the conventional mind to accept, without loss of faith. Thomas Chalmers, a minister of the Scottish Kirk, attempted to face the problem posed by this new geology in 1804 when he suggested that Scripture and “modern” geology could agree, in a sense, but “only at the cost of a remarkable reinterpretation of Scripture.” Reduced to its simplest terms, the early verses of Genesis recorded not one Creation but two; and the aeons of geology fall between. Thus there may have been an " interval" [or “Gap”] between the primal Creation and the Six Day's work—time for all of geologic history. Chalmers’ suggestion was favorably received by theological liberals, the party of "reconciliation," such as Edward Hitchcock, W. D. Conybeare, and the future Cardinal Wiseman. Sharon Turner included it in his children’s book A Sacred History of the World. When Buckland retreated from this youthful diluvial orthodoxy toward uniformitarianism it became his refuge. The gap theory became almost the official British rival to the continental framework hypothesis. Its appeal to many simple clergymen was such that the casual pulpit assurance that there was no conflict between geology and the Bible was based, probably seven times out of ten, on Chalmers’ gap theory.

The influence of the new geology was being developed using various strategies to persuade the literate that the new geology trumped biblical exegesis concerning earth history. There were primarily two ways in which believers could be expected to treat this new geology: they could work out a compromise with it, or utterly repudiate it. Both schools had strenuous and able advocates and no one thought permitting the errors of the opposite school to go undisputed. This resulted in a considerable pamphlet war engaging the abilities of genuinely competent men for nearly half a century.

The British scriptural geologists' writings came in two waves before Darwin's writings on evolution. The first, in the 1820s, was in response to 'gap theory' and included Granville Penn's A Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical Geologies (1822) and George Bugg's Scriptural Geology (1826). Realizing that the majority opinion was slipping away from scriptural geology, their zeal increased. While the period from 1815-1830 represents the incubation of the movement, 1830 to 1844 marks its most intense and significant activity. This was largely in response to Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology and William Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise, Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, which diverged from flood geology. Responses included George Fairholme's General View of the Geology of Scripture (1833) and The Mosaic Deluge (1837).

Geological competence

Professor of intellectual history David N. Livingstone states that scriptural geologists "were not, as it turns out, geologists at all", concluding that "while it may be proper to speak of Scriptural Geology, it is not really accurate to speak of Scriptural Geologists." L. Piccardi and W. Bruce Masse state that "[a]part from George Young, none of these scriptural geologists had any geological competence". David Clifford states that they were "not themselves geologists" but rather "keen but biased amateurs" and that one of them, James Mellor Brown, "felt that no scientific expertise was required when examining scientific matters." Taking a more positive view, Milton Millhauser states that the leaders of the party were "by no means ignorant of the science [they] assailed" and that Granville Penn "had studied geology".

They have been described as "genteel laymen ... versed in polite literature; clergymen, linguists, and antiquaries — those, in general, with vested interests in mediating the meaning of books, rather than rocks, in churches and classrooms", although a number of them were involved in fossil collecting or scientific endeavours. However for the majority, geology was not their main scientific interest, but rather a transient or peripheral concern.

Reception

By their contemporaries

Adam Sedgwick condemned Andrew Ure's A New System of Geology in his Presidential Address to the Geological Society in 1830, 'pulled it to pieces without mercy', calling it a "monument of folly".

Hugh Miller described Granville Penn as one of "the abler and more respectable anti-geologists" and "certainly one of the most extensively informed of his class," Miller described Penn's view of Biblical verses that conflicted with his own views as "mere idle glosses, ignorantly or surreptitiously introduced into the text by ancient copyists." Thus he wrote:

It need not surprise us that a writer who takes such strange liberties with a book which he professes to respect, and which he must have had many opportunities of knowing, should take still greater liberties with a science for which he entertains no respect whatsoever, and of whose first principles he is palpably ignorant.

Adam Sedgwick generalized in 1830 that they had promoted "a deformed progeny of heretical and fantastical conclusions, by which sober philosophy has been put to open shame, and sometimes even the charities of life have been exposed to violation." Early in 1834 he added that,

Scriptural geologist Henry Cole responded to Sedgwick in kind. He referred to Sedgwick's ideas as "unscriptural and anti-Christian," "scripture-defying", "revelation-subverting," and "baseless speculations and self-contradictions," which were "impious and infidel".

Contemporary of George Young, geologist Martin Simpson described Young's Geological Survey as "in every way worthy of a pupil of the celebrated Playfair."

By historians of science

A number of modern historians have "rounded on scriptural geologists as simplistic fundamentalists who defended an untenable and anti-scientific worldview". Historian of science Charles Gillespie chastised a number of them as "men of the lunatic fringe, like Granville Penn, John Faber, Andrew Ure, and George Fairholme, [who] got out their fantastic geologies and natural histories, a literature which enjoyed surprising vogue, but which is too absurd to disinter". Gillespie describes their views, along with their "reasonably respectable" colleagues (such as Edward Bouverie Pusey and William Cockburn, Dean of York), as clerical "fulminations against science in general and all its works", and listed the works of Cockburn and Fairholme as among "clerical attacks on geology and uninformed attempts to frame theoretical systems reconciling the geological and scriptural records." Martin J. S. Rudwick initially dismissed them as mere 'dogmatic irritants', but later discerned a couple of points of consilience: a concern with time and sequence; and an adoption of the pictorial conventions of some scriptural geologists by the mainstream.

Bibliography of works by scriptural geologists

• 1820, Rodd, Thomas (Philobiblos), A Defence of the Veracity of Moses
• 1822, Penn, Granville, A Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical Geologies
• 1822, Young, George, A Geological Survey of the Yorkshire Coast
• 1826, Bugg, George, Scriptural Geology
• 1829, Ure, Andrew, A New System of Geology
• 1831, John Murray, The Truth of Revelation (276 pages), 2nd Ed. 1840, (380 Pages)
• 1833, Brown, James Mellor, Reflections on Geology
• 1833, Fairholme, George, General View of the Geology of Scripture, and 1837, The Mosaic Deluge
• 1833, Nolan, Frederick, Analogy of Revelation and Science Established
• 1834, Cole, Henry, Popular Geology Subversive of Divine Revelation
• 1836, Gisborne, Thomas, Considerations on the Modern Theory of Geology
• 1837, Fairholme, George, The Mosaic Deluge
• 1838, Cockburn, William, A Letter to Professor Buckland Concerning the Origin of the World
• 1838, John Murray, Portrait of Geology (214 pages)
• 1838, Rhind, William, Age of the Earth, Considered Geologically and Historically
• 1838, Young, George, Scriptural Geology
• 1839, Cockburn, William, The Bible Defended Against the British Association

See also

• Young Earth creationism
• Flood geology
• Biblical literalism
• Genesis creation narrative

References

• Brooke, John Hedley; Cantor, G. N. (2000). Reconstructing nature: the engagement of science and religion. ISBN 019513706X. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Clifford, David (2006). Repositioning Victorian Sciences: Shifting Centres in Nineteenth-Century Thinking. City: Anthem Press. ISBN 1843312123. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gillispie, C. C. (1996). Genesis and Geology. London: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674344812. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Livingstone, David; Hart, Darryl G.; Noll, Mark A. (1999). Evangelicals and Science in Historical Perspective. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195115570. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Millhauser, Milton (1954). "The Scriptural Geologists: An Episode in the History of Opinion". Osiris. 11. Saint Catherines Press: 65–86. doi:10.1086/368571. Retrieved 2009-08-25. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• O’Connor, Ralph (2007). "Young-Earth Creationists in Early Nineteenth-century Britain? Towards a reassessment of 'Scriptural Geology'" (PDF). History of Science. 45 (150). Science History Publications Ltd: 357–403. ISSN 0073-2753. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Simpson, Martin (1884). The Fossils of the Yorkshire Lias Described from Nature. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Wood, Paul (2004). Science and Dissent in England, 1688-1945. Aldershot: Ashgate. ISBN 0754637182. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Further reading

• Morrell, Jack (1984). Gentlemen of Science. London: Royal Historical Society. ISBN 0861931033. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Lynch, John (2002). Creationism and Scriptural Geology, 1817-1857. Bristol: Thoemmes Press. ISBN 1855069288.