Stratigraphy in the early nineteenth century: a transdisciplinary approach, with special reference to Central Europe

Summary

The development of stratigraphy started with the work of the Danish scientist Nicolaus Steno (1638–1696), who ascribed the formation of strata to the gradual deposition of sediment in the sea. In the course of the eighteenth century, his work was complemented by the independent observations of various European scientists, who recorded deposits of fossilized plants and animals in sedimentary strata. Late in the eighteenth century, William Smith (1769–1839) discovered the specificity of fossil deposits in successive strata, an observation that allowed the identification of sedimentary layers by their fossil contents as well as by their lithological composition. These findings paved the way for the establishment of biostratigraphy as an additional tool for geognostic studies and later for the establishment of evolutionary biology. Stratigraphy—initially an interdisciplinary field between palaeontology and geognosy—thus achieved a transdisciplinary status as a new discipline in its own right. This paper traces the course of the concurrent development of biostratigraphy on the one hand and lithostratigraphy on the other, and their geognostic or stratigraphic application. In addition, there were the implications for naturalists asking for the history of life in the first third of the nineteenth century. The present study is based on the examples of printed and unprinted historical sources from that period, with special reference to developments in Central Europe.

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my gratitude to Prof. David Oldroyd for his valuable scientific advice and critical correction of the manuscript. Prof. Bernhard Hubmann and Prof. Hugh Torrens are likewise thanked for their fruitful suggestions to the improvement of this paper. This work has been supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), project-no. P-16993.

Notes

¹François Ellenberger, History of Geology, 2 vols (Rotterdam, 1999) II, 321, and David Oldroyd, Sciences of the Earth (Aldershot, 1998), 10/202 and 12b/239–41.

²William Smith, Stratigraphical system of organized fossils with reference to the specimens of the original geological collection in the British Museum (London, 1817), 7.

³Hugh Torrens, The transmission of ideas in the use of fossils in stratigraphic analysis from England to America 1800–1840, Earth Science History 9 (1990), 108–18 (113).

⁴Frederick John North, ‘Deductions from established facts in geology’, Geological Magazine, 64/762 (1927), 532–40; italics by C.S.

⁵Martin Lister, ‘A letter to Mr. Martin Lister . . . adding some notes upon M. Steno concerning petrify'd shells’, Philosophical Transactions 6 (1671), 2281–85; compare Ellenberger (note 1), 317.

⁶John Woodward, An essay toward a natural history of the Earth: and terrestrial bodies, especially minerals: as also of the sea, rivers, and springs. With an account of the universal deluge and of the effects that it had upon the Earth (London, 1695), compare Ellenberger (note 1), 317.

⁷Pierre-Augustin Boissier de Sauvages, ‘Mémoire contenant des observations de lithologie, pour servir à l'histoire naturelle Languedoc, et à la théorie de la terre’, Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences (1751), 713–18, plates 45–47, and (1752), 619–743, plates 21–24, compare Ellenberger (note 1), 317.

⁸Ellenberger (note 1), 317.

⁹Georg Christian Füchsel, ‘Historia terrae et maris, ex historia Thuringiae, per montium descriptionem eruta’, Actorum academiae electoralis moguntinae scientiarum utilium quae erfordiae est, 2 (1761), 44–209, and ‘Eivsdem vsvs Historiae suae terris et maris’, Actorum academiae electoralis moguntinae scientiarum utilium quae erfordiae est, 2 (1761), 209–54; plate V fold-out. Cf Ellenberger (note 1), 317.

¹⁰Ellenberger (note 1), 317.

¹¹Etienne Claude de Marivetz and Louis-Jacques Goussier, Géographie physique de la France (Paris, 1779). Cf. Ellenberger (note 1), 317.

¹²Giraud Soulavie, Histoire naturelle de la France méridionale ou recherches sur la minéralogie du Vivarais, du Viennois, du Valentinois, du Forez . . .: Sur la physique de la mer méditerranée, sur les météores, les arbres, les animaux, l'Homme et la femme de ces contrées (Nîmes, 1780), 275.

¹³Martin Rudwick, Bursting the limits of time. The reconstruction of geohistory in the age of revolution (Chicago, 2005), 217–20.

¹⁴G. Stegagno, Il Veronese Giovanni Arduino e il su contributo al progresso della scienza geologica (Verona, 1929), 13. Cf. Ellenberger (note 1), 318.

¹⁵Jean-André De Luc, Lettres sur l'histoire physique de la terre, adressées a M. l e Professeur Blumenbach: renfermant de nouvelles preuves géologiques et historiques de la mission divine de Moyse (Paris, 1798), 382–83; for further details on De Luc's views, see Ellenberger (note 1), 324–27.

¹⁶Rudwick (note 13), 154–55.

¹⁷In practice, however, De Luc was not so happy to apply stratigraphical principles in the correlation of strata from different areas faultlessly. So, he mis-correlated the London Clay at London with today's Kimmeridge Clay in Dorset at the south Coast of England (Hugh Torrens, personal communication).

¹⁸Martin Guntau, Abraham Gottlob Werner, Biographien hervorragender Naturwissenschaftler, Techniker und Mediziner, vol. 75 (Leipzig, 1984), 80.

¹⁹Guntau (note 18), 88.

²⁰Comp. Hugh Torrens, Geology in peace time: an English visit to study German mineralogy and geology (and visit Goethe, Werner and Raumer) in 1816, in: Toward a History of Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geochemistry, edited by B. Fritscher and F. Henderson, Proceedings of the International Symposium on the History of Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geochemistry, Munich, 8–9 March 1996, Algorismus. Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaften 23 (1998), 147–75 (166).

²¹Rudwick (note 13), 474–81.

²²Alexandre Brongniart, ‘Sur les caractères zoologiques des formations. Avec application de ces caractères à la détermination de quelques terrains de craie’, Annales des mines 6 (1821), 537–72.

²³De Luc offered three alternative explanations for the change of fossils in different strata: (a) extinction, (b) migration, and (c) transmutation of species; see Jean-André De Luc, Lettres physiques et morales sur l'histoire de la terre de l'homme: addressées à la Reine de la Grande-Bretagne, 5 vols (The Hague, 1779), vol. 5(2), 613; comp. Rudwick (note 13), 243.

²⁵Leopold von Buch, Reise durch Norwegen und Lappland (Berlin, 1810),. 2 vols, II, 100–102.

²⁴‘Mr. Deshayes accurately points out in his book, Petrifications, qui characterisent les terrains, that there are a few fossils, which—even though not very frequently or widely spread—still appear so distinct for the determination of the formation, that one can hardly go wrong, regarding the formation, one is dealing with, as long as one finds at least one or only a few of them. Such distinct shells, ‘guiding’ lighting shells are really found under the blue limestone’ (Sig. 15/H/6 4–11/24, Pámátník Národního Písemnictví, Prague; italics and underlining in the original text).

²⁶Rudwick (note 13), 545.

²⁷Jürgen Mittelstrass, ‘Transdisciplinarity—new structures in science’, in: Uwe Opolka et al.: Innovative Structures in Basic Research (Ringberg-Symposium 4–7 October 2000) (Munich, 2002), 43–54 (46). R. Wilding, From the rise of the Enlightenment to the beginnings of Romanticism (Robert Plot, Edward Lhwyd and Richard Brookes, MD), in History of Palaeobotany: Selected Essays, edited by A.J. Bowden, C.V. Burek and R. Wilding (London, 2005), 5–14 (11).

²⁸H. Torrens, The Moravian Minister Rev. Henry Steinhauer (1782–1818); his work on fossil plants, their first scientific description and the planned mineral botany, in History of Palaeobotany: Selected Essays edited by A.J. Bowden, C.V. Burek and R. Wilding (London, 2005), 13–28.

²⁹Sig. RA Sternberk 13b-213, Státní Oblástní Archiv, Prague.

³⁰Kaspar Sternberg, Versuch einer geognostisch-botanischen Darstellung der Flora der Vorwelt, 8 vols (Ratisbon, Leipzig, Prague, 1820–1838).

³¹August von Klipstein and Johann Jacob Kaup, Beschreibung und Abbildungen von dem in Rheinhessen aufgefundenen colossalen Schedel des Dinotherii Gigantei mit geognostischen Mittheilungen über die knochenführenden Bildungen des mittelrheinischen Tertiärbeckens (Darmstadt, 1836), 5.

³²William Daniel Conybeare and William Phillips, Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales (London, 1822), 333.

³³Sig. 15/H/8-15-11, Památník Národního Písemnictví, Prague.

³⁴Sig. 15/H/8, Památník Národního Písemnictví, Prague.

³⁵Rudwick (note 13), 251–53.

³⁶Sig. RA Sternberk 13b–187, Státní Oblástní Archiv, Prague.

³⁷Jean-Guillaume Bruguière, Histoire naturelle des vers, Encyclopédie methodique (Paris, 1792); cf. Rudwick (note 13), 258.

³⁸Kaspar Sternberg, ‘Rede des Präsidenten Kaspar Grafen von Sternberg in der allgemeinen Versammlung der Gesellschaft des böhmischen Museums im April 1838’, Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft des vaterländischen Museums in Böhmen 14 (1836), 15–33 (20–22).

³⁹W.G. Chaloner and H.L. Pearson, John Lindley: the reluctant palaeobotanist, in History of Palaeobotany, Selected Essays, edited by A.J. Bowden, C.V. Burek and R. Wilding (London, 2005), 29–39 (32).

⁴⁰Sternberg (note 30), II/1-IV/48.

⁴¹Sig. RA Sternberk[0] 14–232, Státní Oblástní Archiv, Prague.

⁴²Sig. RA Sternberk 14–232, Státní Oblástní Archiv, Prague.

⁴³Sig. RA Sternberk 14–232, Státní Oblástní Archiv, Prague.

⁴⁴Chaloner and Pearson (note 39), 29.

⁴⁵Von Buch's subdivisions were later termed ‘Lias’, ‘Dogger’, and ‘Malm’.

⁴⁶Leopold von Buch, Über den Jura in Deutschland, Abhandlungen der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin aus dem Jahr 1837 (1839), 49–136, 61; in this publication von Buch used the term ‘white Jura’ instead of ‘blue Jura’.

⁴⁷Conybeare and Phillips (note 32), compare William B.N. Berry, Growth of a Prehistoric Time Scale Based on Organic Evolution (Palo Alto, CA, 1987), 74.

⁴⁸Georg Münster, Mittheilung an Prof. Bronn, Jahrbuch für Mineralogie, Geognosie, Geologie und Petrefaktenkunde, 3 (1832), 78.

⁴⁹Peter Merian, Beiträge zur Geognosie, 2 vols (Basel, 1821–31), I, 37–40.

⁵⁰Thomas Vallance, The fuss about coal: troubled relations between palaeobotany and geology, in Plants and Man in Australia, edited by D.J. and S.G.M. Carr (Sydney, 1981), 136–76 (141–43).

⁵¹William Buckland, Notice on the geological structure of a part of the Island of Madagascar, founded on a collection transmitted to the Right Honourable the Earl Bathurst, by Governor Farquhar, in the year 1819; with observations on some specimens from the interior of New South Wales, collected during Mr. Oxley's expedition to the River Maquarie, in the year 1818, and transmitted also to Earl Bathurst, Transactions of the Geological Society of London 5 (1821), 476–81.

⁵²Thomas H. Scott, ‘Sketch of the geology of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land’, read in the Geological Society of London on 19 March and 2 April 1824, for summary see Annals of Philosophy 7 (1824), 461–62.

⁵³Adolphe T. Brongniart, Histoire des végétaux fossiles, ou recherches botaniques et geologiques sur les végétaux renfermés dans les diverses couches du globe, 2 vols (Paris, 1828–1837), I, 223. Sternberg (note 30), VIII, 57.

⁵⁴Compare R. Wilding (note 27), 5–14 (10).

⁵⁵Later, the Australian coals were identified as Permian, a finding that was supported by their animal fossil deposits.

⁵⁶Ann Moyal, ed., The Web of Science: the Scientific Correspondence of the Rev. W.B. Clarke, Australia's Pioneer Geologist (Melbourne, 2003); for a review, see: Hugh Torrens, Geoscientist 16/11 (2006), 18–19.

⁵⁷Torrens (note 3), 112–13.

⁵⁸Torrens (note 3), 113.

⁵⁹Claudia Schweizer, Pioneers of Palaeobotany: Buckland, Brongniart, Sternberg and their relations to Schlotheim, submitted for publication.

⁶⁰Berry (note 47), 24–25.

⁶¹Lister (note 5).

⁶²Sig. 15/H/7-15-11, Památník Národního Písemnictví, Prague.

⁶³Johann F.L. Hausmann, Reise durch Skandinavien in den Jahren 1806 und 1807, 5 vols (Göttingen, 1811–1818), I, 146–67.

⁶⁴Brongniart (note 22), 537–72.

⁶⁵The preparation of this paper has been supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Project No. P-16993.