The Singularity of Lyell

Woodward H. B. , The history of the Geological Society of London (London, 1907).

von Zittel K. A. , History of geology and palaeontology, trans. Ogilvie-Gordon M. M. (London, 1901).

Gillispie C. C. , Genesis and geology (Harper Torchbooks edn, New York, 1959). See esp. pp. 121–48. The Quarterly review article is cited on p. 104 and p. 117.

Representative works of these writers are: Hooykaas R. , “The parallel between the history of the Earth and the history of the animal world”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences (1957), 3–18; Cannon W. F. , “The uniformitarian-catastrophist debate”, Isis, li (1960), 38–55; Rudwick M. J. S. , “The strategy of Lyell's Principles”, Isis, lxi (1970), 4–33, and “Uniformity and progression: Reflections on the structure of geological theory in the age of Lyell”, in Roller D. H. D. (ed.), Perspectives in the history of science and technology (Norman, Oklahoma, 1971), 209–27. Further citations of Lyell scholarship will be found in the Lyell Centenary issue of The British journal for the history of science, ix (1976).

Wilson L. G. , (ed.), Sir Charles Lyell's scientific journals on the species question (New Haven and London, 1970). Hereafter cited as SJ.

See Bartholomew M. , “Lyell and evolution: An account of Lyell's response to the prospect of an evolutionary ancestry for man”, The British journal for the history of science, vi (1972), 261–303.

Cannon W. F. , “Charles Lyell, radical actualism, and theory”, The British journal for the history of science ix (1976), 104–120; see esp. pp. 110–11. My italics.

Wilson L. G. , Charles Lyell, the years to 1841: The revolution in geology (New Haven and London, 1972), xi, 255.

Rudwick in Roller , op. cit. (ref. 4).

Bowler P. J. , Fossils and progress: Palaeontology and the idea of progressive evolution in the nineteenth century (New York, 1976).

Porter Roy , “Charles Lyell, L'Uniformitarismo e l'atteggiamento del secolo xix verso la geologia dell'Illuminismo”, in Santucci A. (ed.), Eredità dell'Illuminismo (Bologna, 1979), 395–433.

Lyell to Murchison, 15 January 1829, in Lyell K. (ed.) Life, letters and journals of Sir Charles Lyell (2 vols, London, 1881), i, 234. Lyell's emphasis. (Hereafter cited as LLJ.)

Lyell , “Anniversary address of the president”. Quarterly journal of the Geological Society of London, vii (1851), xxv–lxvii.

Principles of geology (3 vols, London, 1830–33) i, 123 (hereafter cited as PG); Lyell to Mantell, 15 February 1830, LLJ, i, 262.

On Darwin, see Bartholomew M. , “The non-progress of non-progression”, The British journal for the history of science, ix (1976), 166–74: On De la Beche , see Rudwick M. J. S. , “Caricature as a source for the history of science: De la Beche's anti-Lyellian sketches of 1831”, Isis, lxvi (1975), 534–60.

Bartholomew , op. cit. (ref. 6). A paper that appeared in 1826, and which suggested that Lamarck's theory might be united with fossil progression, might very well have alerted Lyell to the ideas that he worked on during 1827. See [ Grant Robert ], “Observations on the nature and importance of geology”, Edinburgh new philosophical journal, i (1826), 293–302.

LLJ, ii, 2–7.

Ibid.; Herschel to Lyell, 20 February 1836, in Cannon W. , “The impact of uniformitarianism”, American Philosophical Society proceedings, cv (1961), 301–14; Lyell to Herschel , 1 June 1836, LLJ, i, 464–69; Lyell to Babbage, May 1837, LLJ, ii, 9–10. Babbage C. , The ninth Bridgewater treatise: A fragment (London, 1837).

LLJ, i, 467–9.

Lyell , Manual of elementary geology, 5th edn (London, 1855), 160.

SJ, 64.

Whewell W. , History of the inductive sciences, 3rd edn (3 vols, London, 1857), iii, 476, 484.

See, for example, Sedgwick to Hugh Miller, 3 September 1849, in Clark J. W. and Hughes T. McK. (eds), The life and letters of the reverend Adam Sedgwick (2 vols, Cambridge, 1890), ii, 161.

Cannon , op. cit. (ref. 18), 305.

SJ, 356. For an alternative interpretation of this problem, see Cannon W. , “The Whewell-Darwin controversy”, Journal of the Geological Society, cxxxii (1976), 377–84.

PG, i, ch. 9.

I owe this last point to Dr W. F. Bynum.

Exceptions are: Rudwick M. J. S. , “The glacial theory”, History of science, viii (1969), 136–57; Ospovat D. , “Lyell's theory of climate”, Journal of the history of biology, x (1977), 317–39; Bynum W. F. , History of Medicine Dept, University College London, unpublished papers on Lyell and the antiquity of man; Lawrence P. J. , “Heaven and Earth: The relation of the Nebular Hypothesis to geology”, in Yourgrau W. and Breck A. D. (eds), History, theology and cosmology (New York, 1977), 253–81; and also Rudwick M. J. S. , “Charles Lyell's dream of a statistical palaeontology”, Palaeontology, xxi (1978), 225–44.

[ Whewell W. ], “Principles of geology …”, Quarterly review, xl (1832), 103–32, p. 126.

Whewell W. , Philosophy of the inductive sciences, 2nd edn (2 vols, London, 1847), ii, 676–7.

Rev. Powell Baden , Essays on the spirit of the inductive philosophy (London, 1855), 56–58.

Ibid, 331–49.

Huxley T. H. , “Presidential address to the Geological society, 1869”, repr. as “Geological reform”, in Discourses: Biological and geological (collected essays, vol. viii, London, 1894), 305–39.

I have traced the personal relationships between Lyell and Darwin in my Ph.D. thesis, “Lyell's conception of the history of life” (Lancaster University, 1974; British Library ref. no. D5147/75).

Rudwick , op. cit. (ref. 4), 209.

[ Bunbury E. H. ], “Life, letters and journals of Sir Charles Lyell …”, Quarterly review, cliii (1882), 96–131, p. 123.

Rudwick M. , “Charles Lyell, f.r.s. (1797–1875) and his London lectures on geology, 1832–33”, Notes and records of the Royal Society, xxix (1975), 231–63.

See Bynum , op. cit. (ref. 28).