Preface

While the whole science of geology made gigantic advances during the nineteenth century, by far the most astonishing sprang from the recognition of the value of fossils.^[1]

During the 1980s a number of reports reviewed the effectiveness of British museums as functioning collection repositories. The first and most startling of these concerned geological collections.^[2] It revealed a state of chaos; collections dating from the very origins of geology, and which remained the vital underpinning of the science, were rotting, neglected or lost. Subsequent work showed the extent of the disaster and how such a situation may have come about over the intervening period.^[3]

The Geological Curators Group, the organisation which sponsored much of this research, then began the task of trying to locate these missing collections. Simultaneously, and following the lead of C.D. Sherborn, Hugh Torrens, Ron Cleevely and others began to pioneer research into the history of geological collections, giving particular focus to the comparatively unknown collectors who enabled the achievements of their more illustrious contemporaries. Their mission was not simply to create histories but also, in a very practical way, to restore type, figured and cited material to its rightful place in science.^[4] Modern science, however, has not always been willing to re-admit these lost souls;^[5] it seems that a proviso has been placed upon the unquestionable principle of priority of publication – that this should not disrupt the bliss of ignorance.

Cleevely and others in producing published catalogues of named collections continue a tradition that dates back to the earliest years of the science.^[6] The modern interest in the history of collecting, however, exploits contemporary historiographical methodologies to flesh out these lists, and place the actions of collectors in their socio-political context. At very least this process has given geological collections yet another attribute of intellectual worth.

This interest in collecting has been paralleled by contemporary interest in historical biography which has resulted in reviews of the lives of Darwin, Huxley, Owen, Buckland and others. In similar fashion collection studies have often focused on individuals rather than other categories of knowledge such as ideas, research paradigms, collection types, interpersonal associations, and so on. Such research, however, reveals in detail the workings of a nineteenth century science, down to its lowliest participants, and is in many ways a necessary precursor to more integrated studies. Another related strand of historical research which is directly of interest to this thesis is that concerned with the chronicling of institutional histories.^[7] More recently, historiography has developed a new level of sophistication, placing ideas, rather than people at the centre of research.^[8]

Inevitably, such approaches are far from clear cut, they borrow methodologies from all these different schools of study. This thesis is no different: whilst focusing on the scientific and social context of fossil collecting – the ‘idea’ of the fossil collection – it must also exploit personal and institutional biography. Its aim is to understand the role of fossil collections and collecting in society during the period 1820 to 1850. This was geology’s ‘heroic age’.^[9] Widely popular, but ultimately in the control of a few individuals, it rose into a science of considerable maturity within these three decades. Such understanding is vital to modern interpretation of the millions of specimens now held in museums and which are viewed simply as scientific evidence; they are also the products of history. This thesis investigates the motives which generated this scientific resource.

Given the constraints of a thesis, were such a review comprehensive, even for a period of just 30 years, it would merely skim the surface and omit detail essential to understanding the complexities of the social interaction which brought about these collections. Thus the survey has been further constrained in a number of ways. Two major, and apparently disparate components, will be discernible. The first concerns the philosophical movement of the 1820s. This movement gave rise to numerous museums and extensive fossil collections, many of which survive to the present day. The second concerns the Geological Survey of Great Britain, an organisation which marks the beginning of a rapid shift towards publicly funded science.^[10] Its collections, too, have survived into the present. Geographically, interest in the philosophical movement is focused on Yorkshire, the county which saw its strongest manifestation. And within this county, the city and towns of York, Whitby, Scarborough and Hull. The work of the Survey is focused on developments in the South West, South Wales and the Malverns. In terms of depth of analysis, this too has been varied in an attempt to give both the detail and the overview.

These two movements reflect the wider changes in society which the nineteenth century embodied and which continued well into the twentieth century. As power was devolved from the landed classes to a new middle class and an increasingly educated working class, so science, too, shifted from a system based on wealth and patronage to a meritocracy. Early nineteenth century learned societies were the birthplace of academic palaeontology; a science the Geological Survey was to nationalise. The Survey with its publicly funded professionalism undermined the role of the regional philosopher and his societies, which had established themselves as the provincial centres for geological research.

There is one further element which brings these two halves together, that is the life of John Phillips (1800 – 1874). Phillips rose from reasonably humble beginnings to become a major influence on philosophical developments in Yorkshire. As a result of his work here he ascended to prominence nationally as a geologist and palaeontologist, and looked set to head the Survey’s new national perspective on palaeontology. There is, however, no attempt here to construct a biography. Interest is focused solely on those elements in his life which relate to fossil collecting; no biography would ever classify Phillips simply as a collector of fossils or even a palaeontologist. Phillips’ life was heavily influenced by his relationship with palaeontological material, and it is this relationship which forms the basis of any biographical inferences. In part Phillips is simply a thread which is drawn through these decades to reveal the issues relating to fossil collections. As these are exposed, extended forays are then made into the surrounding territory: participants in collecting, curatorial models, geographical and commercial interests, and so on. Phillips also forms a useful reference against which to judge the interests of others: he was infatuated with science and to him fossils were scientific evidence; others viewed fossils very differently.

With regard to the meaning of fossils in the context of the development of geology during this period, this territory is far from virgin. Research here does not shy away from paths which may seem well-trodden. It does so without the intention of revision. The early chapters examine the origins and development of philosophical societies, a movement closely linked to the British Association for the Advancement of Science which has been chronicled by Morrell and Thackray, and more particularly in the institutional biographies of Browne, Porter, Orange and Pyrah. But these works do not examine in any detail the nature of contemporary fossil collecting or explore intersociety interactions. I have also taken the greatest care not to encroach too much on Jack Morrell’s on-going biographical work on Phillips. Two chapters – ‘The nation claims provincial geology’ and ‘Phillips’ elucidation of Yorkshire’ – do, however, overlap with papers produced by Morrell.^[11] But surprisingly, whilst there is ‘coincidence of thought’ the archival materials to which we refer and the emphasis we give are quite different and in many ways complementary. As with all the research in this thesis, the story has been almost entirely constructed from an examination of primary sources, not least so that I could develop my own ideas on what appeared important without getting drawn into the train of thought of others; I have, however, generally cross-referenced to this earlier work in footnotes where appropriate. The final three chapters all cover subject areas discussed in great detail by Secord and Rudwick,^[12] but again the emphasis here is entirely different. In particular, I have chosen not to re-examine the details of the two controversies these authors have exposed so fully, but rather to look at the internal issues of the development of Survey technique.

^[1] Geikie (1905:401).

^[2] Doughty (1981).

^[3] Area Museum Councils (AMCs) which provide regional support to museums funded peripatetic investigation and support services in the late 1980s (see Knell 1987). Archival evidence relating to this period remains with these organisations. Knell (1996) traces the changing fortunes of geological collections over the last 200 years.

^[4] Sherborn (1940); Cleevely (1983). See also, for example, Cleevely and Torrens’ contributions to early editions of the Newsletter of the Geological Curators’ Group.

^[5] Torrens (see Spamer, Bogan, & Torrens 1989) has found this with regard to the Etheldred Benett (1776-1845) collection; I have run into similar problems in attempting to locate lost fossil material associated with James Parkinson (1755-1824).

^[6] See Cleevely (1983:9) for a review of the subject. This work has been enlarged over the last two decades by the Collection Research Units associated with AMCs.

^[7] Davies (1889); Woodward (1904;1907); Porter (1922); Clarke (1924); Russell Goddard (1929); Browne (1946;1949); Bailey (1952); Orange (1973); Pyrah (1974); Morrell & Thackray (1981); Morrell (1983;1988b); Wilson (1985); Torrens (1974; 1990a); Torrens & Taylor (1990); Moore, Thackray & Morgan (1991).

^[8] Browne (1983); Rudwick (1985); Secord (1986a) and Desmond (1989).

^[9] Porter (1978:817); Morrell (1994).

^[10] Secord (1986b).

^[11] Morrell (1988a;1989).

^[12] Secord (1986a;1986b); Rudwick (1985).

Simon Knell

Books and essays by Simon Knell

Preface