Bureaucratic Statistik or Actualism? K. E. A. Von Hoff's History and the History of Geology

Hoff has found a place in broad treatments of the history of geology including: Whewell William , History of the inductive sciences, from the earliest to the present times (3 vols, London, 1837); von Zittel Karl , Geschichte der Geologie und Paläontologie bis ende des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich and Leipzig, 1899); Hooykaas R. , The principle of uniformity in geology, biology and theology , 2nd edn (Leiden, 1963); Laudan Rachel , From mineralogy to geology: The foundations of a science (Chicago, 1987). He has also been the subject of a number of more specialized works: Andrée Karl , Karl Ernst Adolf von Hoff als Schriftgelehrter und die Begründung der modernen Geologie (Schriften der Königlichen Deutschen Gesellschaft zu Königsberg, no. 4; Königsberg, 1930); von Freyberg Bruno , “Hoff, Karl Ernst Adolf von”, in Dictionary of scientific biography , ed. by Gillispie C. G. (16 vols, New York, 1970–80), vi, 455–8; Mathé Gerhard , “Karl Ernst Adolf von Hoff, Verdienste und Grenzen eines Gothaischen Staatsbeamten um die Förderung geologischen Denkens”, in Leben und Wirken Deutscher Geologen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert , ed. by Prescher Hans (Leipzig, 1985), 117–39. The most reliable source for biographical detail remains Reich Otto , Karl Ernst Adolf von Hoff, der Bahnbrecher moderner Geologie: Eine wissenschaftliche Biographie (Leipzig, 1905). Reich's biography is the only one of the above accounts based on an extensive reading of Hoff's personal papers and diaries. The Hoff Nachlass is now deposited in the Goethe-Schiller Archiv in Weimar.

Statistik was not a science of number-crunching, indeed, throughout much of the eighteenth century it was not even a science of numbers, but a discursive practice fuelled by an insatiable need to collect notable facts about the state. This version of Statistik was known as “university statistics”, see Hacking Ian , The taming of chance (Cambridge, 1990), 16–26. For a descriptive overview of the history of Statistik see John V. , Geschichte der Statistik (Stuttgart, 1884). Recent literature on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century social statistics has greatly illuminated our understanding of the social, historical and philosophical implications of Statistik and related practices. In addition to Hacking, see Porter Theodore M. , The rise of statistical thinking, 1820–1900 (Princeton, 1986); Krüger Lorenz (eds), The probabilistic revolution (2 vols, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1987); and Bourguet Marie-Noëlle , Déchiffrer la France: La statistique départementale à l'époque napoléonienne (Paris, 1989).

von Hoff K. E. A. , Geschichte der durch Überlieferung nachgewiesenen natürlichen Veränderungen der Erdoberfläche: Ein Versuch (5 vols, Gotha, 1822–41), hereafter referred to as Geschichte.

This is true of all the works mentioned in ref. 1, with the notable exception of Laudan, From mineralogy. On actualism, uniformity and catastrophism more generally see Cannon Walter F. , “Uniformitarianism and catastrophism”, Isis, li (1960), 38–55; Guntau Martin , Der Aktualismus in den geologischen Wissenschaften: Versuch einer philosophischen Analyse der Auffassungen zum Aktualismus in der Geschichte der geologischen Wissenschaften (Leipzig, 1967); and especially Hooykaas R. , Catastrophism in geology, its scientific character in relation to actualism and uniformitarianism (Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wettenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, xxxiii, no. 7; Amsterdam, 1970). My argument is not with Hooykaas's clarification of the concept of actualism and uniformity, but with the practice of using such concepts as historiographic staring points.

Lyell set forth his understanding of the history and principles of geology in Principles of geology, with a new introduction by Rudwick Martin J. S. (3 vols, Chicago, 1990; orig. publ. London, 1830–33), i, chs 1–5. Lyell's historiographic strategies are discussed in Ospovat Alexander M. , “The distortion of Werner in Lyell's Principles of geology”, The British journal for the history of science, ix (1976), 190–8; Porter Roy , “Charles Lyell and the principles of the history of geology”, ibid., ix (1976), 91–103; and Rudwick Martin J. S. , “The strategy of Lyell's Principles of geology”, Isis, lxi (1970), 4–33. Lyell's prominence in the Darwin industry has undoubtedly contributed to the fame of the Lyellian view of the history of geology.

Lyell to Scrope G. P. , 14 June 1830, in The life, letters and journals of Charles Lyell , ed. by Lyell K. (2 vols, London, 1881), i, 268–9. For Lyell's efforts to learn German see Wilson Leonard G. , Charles Lyell, the years to 1841: The revolution in geology (London and New Haven, 1972), 267.

Whewell , History of the inductive sciences (ref. 1), iii, 551–2.

For examples of this interpretation see Reich , Karl Ernst (ref. 1); Andrée , Karl Ernst Adolf von Hoff als Schriftgelehrter (ref. 1); Mathé , “Karl Ernst Adolf von Hoff” (ref. 1).

Competing views of Hoff do not just partition along linguistic boundaries, there are intra-German, Saxon-Thuringian rivalries too, as in von Freyberg Bruno , Die geologische Erforschungen Thüringens in älterer Zeit: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Geologie bis zum Jahre 1843 (Berlin, 1932) and Fischer Walther , Mineralogie in Sachsen von Agricola bis Werner: Die ältere Geschichte des Staatlichen Museums für Mineralogie und Geologie zu Dresden, 1560–1820 (Dresden, 1939). The history of geology, like that of other sciences, has all too often been forced into the limits of national history. Fortunately, there is also a long tradition of treating geology in its international context: Zittel , Geschichte der Geologie (ref. 1); Greene Mott , Geology in the nineteenth century: Changing views of a changing world (Ithaca, 1982); Laudan , From mineralogy (ref. 1); and Gohau Gabriel , A history of geology , transl. and revised by Carozzi Albert V. and Carozzi Marguerite (New Brunswick, 1990). Martin Rudwick's magisterial The great Devonian controversy: The shaping of scientific knowledge among gentlemanly specialists (Chicago, 1985) demonstrates that even a richly detailed microstudy can be placed in the context of international debate. See also Rudwick's plea for internationalism in “International arenas of geological debate in the early nineteenth century”, Earth sciences history, v (1986), 152–8.

Martin Guntau shows there is support for a doctrine of actualism in Werner's unpublished papers, “Der aktualismus bei A. G. Werner”, Bergakademie, 1967, 294–7; Füchsel argued that “the way in which nature acts and produces bodies at the present time must be assumed as the norm … we know no other way”, “Historia terrae et maris ex historia Thuringae, per montium descriptionem eruta”, Acta Academiae Electoralis Moguntiae scientiarium utilium, Erfurt, ii (1761), 45–208, cited in Hansen Bert , “Füchsel, Georg Christoph”, Dictionary of scientific biography (ref. 1), v, 205.

Koch Rolf , “Die aktualistische bedeutung der Vulkanexperimente des Albertus Magnus”, Abhandlungen des Staatlichen Museums für Mineralogie und Geologie, xi (1966), 307–14; Hölder Helmut , Geologie und Paläontologie in Texten und ihrer Geschichte (Freiburg, 1960), 478. Bernhard Fritscher has noted these and a number of other attempts to find the origin of actualism in “Die Verwissenschaftlichung der Geologie”, Sudhoffs Archiv, lxxiv (1990), 22–44.

For a trenchant (if occasionally overstated) criticism of the entire enterprise of tracing abstract concepts through time see Skinner Quentin , “Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas”, History and theory, viii (1969), 3–53. The urge to trace things to their supposed classical origin was ridiculed long ago by the mineralogist-geologist Henrik Steffens: “Searching for the first traces of the science of mineralogy in ancient Rome and Greece is nearly as ridiculous as making Tubal-Cain the first chemist”, Über Mineralogie und das mineralogische Studium (Altona, 1797), 13.

Porter Roy , The making of geology: Earth science in Britain, 1660–1815 (Cambridge, 1977) is the standard work on early British geology. See also Secord James A. , “The discovery of a vocation: Darwin's early geology”, The British journal for the history of science, xxiv (1991), 133–57, pp. 133–5.

Useful definitions of Mineralogie and Geognosie are available in Werner A. G. , Short classification and description of the various rocks, transl. with an introduction and notes by Alexander M. Ospovat (New York, 1971), 101–2. For other examples of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century usage of Mineralogie and its subdiscipline Geognosie see the textbooks of the Göttingen natural historians J. Erxleben C. P. , Anfangsgründe der Naturlehre, 5th edn with supplements by G. C. Lichtenberg (Göttingen, 1791), and Blumenbach Johann Friedrich , Handbuch der Naturgeschichte, 7th edn (Göttingen, 1803). Hoff referred to Geologie without any fanfare whatsoever in “Einleitung und Bemerkungen über das Studium und die Behandlungsart der Mineralogie als Wissenschaft”, Magazin für die gesammte Mineralogie, Geognosie und mineralogische Erdbeschreibung, i (1801), 1–42, p. 2, but for the most part he and his German-speaking contemporaries avoided the word because of its associations with overly speculative theories of the Earth. Geologie and geology were popularized by the emigré Swiss Jean André de Luc (1727–1817), a tutor in the Georgian court and an honorary (and absentee) professor of Geologie at the Hanoverian university of Göttingen. It is interesting to ask why the London Society called itself Geological, especially since it was well known for its anti-theoretical programme. Was it because the Society's members, ever conscious of their elevated place in society, were eager to distance themselves from their crass colleagues who had to work for a living, and because they knew that the Georgian court would at least recognize their name? For a history of the word ‘geology’ see Dean Dennis R. , “The word geology”, Annals of science, xxxvi (1979), 35–43. For the history of the Geological Society see Rudwick Martin J. S. , “The foundation of the Geological Society of London: Its scheme for co-operative research and its struggle for independence”, The British journal for the history of science, i (1963), 324–55, and his more recent remarks in Great Devonian (ref. 9), 18–27.

Hoff's views and researches on basalts are found in his reviews of Hall James , Experiments on whinstone and lava, Kirwan Richard , Observations on the process of the Huttonian theory of the Earth, adduced by Sir James Hall , and Kennedy Robert , A chemical analysis of three species of whinstone, and two of lava , in Magazin für die gesammte Mineralogie, Geognosie und mineralogische Erdbeschreibung, i (1801), 479–93, and in his “Bemerkungen über das, was neuerlich in Frankreich zur Aufklärung der Naturgeschichte des Basalts geschehen ist”, Magazin für den neuesten Zustand der Naturkunde, xi (1806), 3–36, 369–70, and “Beobachtungen über die Verhältnisse des Basaltes an einigen Bergen von Hessen und Thüringen”, Magazin der Gesellschaft der Naturforschende Freunde zu Berlin, v (1811), 347–62. The success of recent work on geological controversy in Britain suggests that the basalt controversy richly deserves a thorough re-evaluation in both its national and international contexts, see Rudwick , Great Devonian (ref. 9); Secord James , Controversy in Victorian geology: The Cambrian–Silurian dispute (Princeton, 1986); and Oldroyd David , The Highlands controversy: Constructing geological knowledge through fieldwork in nineteenth-century Britain (Chicago, 1990). Aspects of the basalt controversy are discussed in Wagenbreth Otfried , “Abraham Gottlob Werner und der Höhepunkt des Neptunistenstreites um 1790”, Freiberger Forschungshefte, series C, ccxxiii (1955), 183–241; von Engelhardt Wolf , “Neptunismus und Plutonismus”, Fortschritte der Mineralogie, lxi (1982), 21–43; and Fritscher Bernhard , Vulkanismustreit und Geochemie: Die Bedeutung der Chemie und des Experiments in der Vulkanismus-Neptunismus-Kontroverse (Boethius, xxv; Stuttgart, 1991).

In Geschichte Hoff no longer had reservations about the word Geologie, which by then had lost its speculative connotations and thus become useful as an alternative to the more narrowly defined Geognosie.

By 1716 the Hoff family was not listed under the nobility of Gotha and did not even belong to its “prominent Burghers”. The Hoff family was officially regranted noble status in 1838 for the merits of Karl Ernst Adolf's work, see Reich , Karl Ernst (ref. 1), 3.

Reich says of the Jena students: “Die Neigung der akademischen Jugend zu engeren Verbänden war auf eine Weise ausgeartet, die sie wenig empfahl”, Karl Ernst (ref. 1), 9. Theodore Ziolkowski has argued that all German universities were rowdy and Jena was the rowdiest of all, German Romanticism and its institutions (Princeton, 1990), ch. 5. Jena's ascent to the ideal began in 1794, when Goethe hired Fichte.

Strictly speaking, Göttingen taught the Staatswissenschaften, not cameralism. The Göttingen programme was, however, highly regarded among traditional German cameralists, see Tribe Keith , Governing economy: The reformation of German economic discourse, 1750–1840 (Cambridge, 1988), 114–15; for cameralist education more generally see Bleek Wilhelm , Von der Kameralausbildung zum Juristenprivileg: Studium, Prüfung und Ausbildung der höheren Beamten des allgemeinen Verwaltungsdienstes in Deutschland im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1972).

For Lichtenberg's physics and wit see Schöne Albrecht , Aufklärung aus dem Geist der Experimentalphysik: Lichtenbergsche Konjunktive (Munich, 1982). The details of Hoff's education are in Reich, Karl Ernst (ref. 1), 8–12.

See von Hoff Karl , “Erinnerung um Blumenbach's Verdienste um die Geologie bei fünfzigjährigen Jubelfeier seines Lehramtes am 24. 2. 1826”, Leonhards Taschenbuch für die gesammte Mineralogie, xx (1826), 312–32.

Hoff descended the “Samson” silver mine in Andreasberg, the same one Goethe had descended in 1776, Reich , Karl Ernst (ref. 1), 11. For a discussion of mines, the Harz and foot journeys see Ziolkowski , German Romanticism (ref. 18), ch. 2.

Martin Guntau claims mining and metal production accounted for one quarter of Saxony's income in the second half of the eighteenth century, Die Genesis der Geologie als Wissenschaft (Berlin, 1984), 45–46.

See the account of Schlözer's examination in Kern Bärbel and Kern Horst , Madame Doctorin Schlözer: Ein Frauenleben in den Widersprüchen der Aufklärung (Munich, 1988), 118.

Reich , Karl Ernst (ref. 1), 13. Weimar's contribution to the Prussian campaign is memorable for giving Goethe the occasion for his memoirs of the revolutionary wars, Campagne in Frankreich , in von Goethe J. W. , Werke, Weimarer Sophienausgabe (133 vols in 143, Weimar, 1887–1919), I: xxxiii.

See McRae Robert J. , “Ritter, Johann Wilhelm” in Dictionary of scientific biography (ref. 1), xi, 473–5. See also Strickland Stuart Walker , “Circumscribing science: Johann Wilhelm Ritter and the physics of sidereal man” (unpublished Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1992), ch. 1.

Reich , Karl Ernst (ref. 1), 23, 38–39.

This does not, of course, include the books which were obviously written for his work in the bureaucracy. A complete bibliography of Hoff's publications is in Reich , Karl Ernst (ref. 1), 139–44.

Alexander von Humboldt noted that in 1792 Schlotheim began making the relations “between certain fossils and formations of different ages … the principal object of his studies”, Essai géognostique sur le gisement des roches dans les deux hémisphères (Paris, 1823), transl. in A geognostic essay on the superposition of rocks in both hemispheres (London, 1823), 67.

Hoff introduced himself to the geological public as a co-worker of Schlotheim , “Einleitung und Bemerkungen …” (ref. 14), 2.

A glance into any of the numbers of the journal shows Hoff was keenly aware of and interested in the work of his French, Scottish, Swiss, English and even American colleagues — their works are given in translation, presented in excerpts and given critical reviews.

One of the only examples of national sentiment in Hoff's work is his criticism of French intellectual intolerance in “Bemerkungen über das, was neuerlich in Frankreich” (ref. 15). Given the context of the Napoleonic wars, such a remark is easily understandable, and in any case Hoff's remarks were mild in comparison to many of the polemics in the basalt controversy.

The idea for prize questions seems to have come from Albrecht von Haller in 1751, see “Haller's Plan zur Einrichtung der Preisschriften”, Archiv der Akademie der Wissenschaften, Göttingen, Stat. 1, 2, no. 16, and Stat. 1, 3, no. 9. Oekonomie was not economics, but a broader field concerned with the management of practically all fields that might be of utility for the state, i.e. mining, natural history, technology and agriculture. For a history of the Society see Arnim Max , Academicum Gottingense (1737–1928), nebst Verzeichnis der Preisträger der Georgia Augusta (1753–1928) (Göttingen, 1930).

Zittel suggested Blumenbach formulated the question, Geschichte der Geologie (ref. 1), 285; Andrée , Karl Ernst Adolf von Hoff als Schriftgelehrter (ref. 1), 11, and Mathé, “Karl Ernst Adolf von Hoff” (ref. 1), 130, both claim Blumenbach manipulated the Society into setting this question for Hoff. However, in the papers surrounding the choice of the question Blumenbach explicitly identifies Hausmann as the author of the question, Archiv (ref. 33), Scient. 180, 3, no. 29. Hausmann also wrote the citation for the prize.

The full question appears in Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen , 1818, 2047–8 and is reprinted in Geschichte, i, pp. xiii–xiv.

Cuvier George , Essay on the theory of the Earth: With mineralogical notes by Professor Jameson (New York, 1818), 43–44. For a good discussion of Cuvier's catastrophism see Outram Dorinda , Georges Cuvier: Vocation, science and authority in post-revolutionary France (Manchester, 1984), 141–60.

Blumenbach Johann Friedrich , Beyträge zur Naturgeschichte , 2nd edn (2 vols, Göttingen, 1806–11), i, transl. by Bendyshe Thomas in idem, The anthropological treatises (London, 1867), 277–324, p. 287. Blumenbach argued for extinction and the use of fossils for determining the relative age of formations at least as early as 1790, in the 1st edn of Beyträge, which appeared as “Beyträge zur Naturgeschichte der Vorwelt”, Magazin für das Neueste aus der Physik und Naturgeschichte, vi (1790), 1–27.

Blumenbach , Anthropological treatises (ref. 37), 277–324. For helpful discussions of the Bildungstrieb see Lenoir Timothy , The strategy of life: Teleology and mechanics in nineteenth-century German biology (Dordrecht, 1982) and Dejager Timothy , “G. R. Treviranus and the biology of a world in transition” (unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1990).

Blumenbach , Anthropological treatises (ref. 37), 321.

The French natural historian Jean Louis Giraud Soulavie's (1752–1813) division of fossils into five main groups, each associated with a particular rock formation, might have inspired arguments for extinction and multiple catastrophes, see his Histoire naturelle de la France méridionale (7 vols, Nîmes, 1780–84), i, 317–35. On extinction more generally see Rudwick Martin J. S. , The meaning of fossils: Episodes in the history of palaeontology, 2nd edn (Chicago, 1985).

Blumenbach , Anthropological treatises (ref. 37), 318.

von Schlotheim Ernst Friedrich , Beschreibung merkwürdiger Kräuter-Abdrücke und Pflanzen-Versteinerungen: Ein Beitrag zur Flora der Vorwelt (Gotha, 1804) and see ref. 29.

Urgeschichte , ed. with introduction and commentary by Gabler Johann Phillip (3 vols, Altdorf, 1790–93), i, 168. Eichhorn's Urgeschichte was first published anonymously in Repertorium für Biblische und Morgenländische Literatur, v (1779), 129–256.

Buffon's experiments on metal globes led him to conclude the Earth required 74,832 years to cool from its original state to its present temperature, de Buffon G.-L. L. Comte , Histoire naturelle, générelle et particulière (44 vols, Paris, 1749–1804), xxxi, 361–564, p. 486. Benoît de Maillet presented “indisputable proofs” that the sea level had been diminishing for the past two billion years, Telliamed, or conversations between an Indian philosopher and a French missionary on the diminution of the sea, ed. and transl. by Carozzi Albert V. (Urbana, 1968; orig. publ. 2 vols, Amsterdam, 1748), 181. Palassou believed erosion was continuously changing the Earth's surface and that in about a million years posterity would say “Il n'y a plus de Pyrénées”, Essai sur la minéralogie des Monts Pyrénées (Paris, 1781), 81. Strictly speaking this was not an estimate of the Earth's age, but it does show Palassou was willing to abandon the time scale of a literalist, Biblical eschatology.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg once directed his rapier-like wit at much of what passed for geology in “Geologische Phantasien, (Franklins Geogenie)”, Göttinger Taschencalendar, 1795, 79–108.

Some of Gatterer's most important essays on historical methodology are “Von der Evidenz in der Geschichte”, preface to Allgemeine Welthistorie, ed. by Boysen F. E. (Halle a. S., 1767), 1–38; “Vom historischen Plan”, Allgemeine Historische Bibliothek, i (1767), 15–89; “Vom Standort und Gesichtspunkt des Geschichtschreibers”, ibid., v (1768), 3–29. See also Reill Peter Hanns , “Johann Christoph Gatterer”, in Deutsche Historiker, ed. by Wehler Hans-Ulrich (Göttingen, 1980), vi, 7–22, and idem, The German Enlightenment and the rise of historicism (Berkeley, 1975).

Ironically so in Gatterer's case, who was well known for adhering to a literal Biblical chronology. For an introduction to the history of Biblical scholarship see Frei Hans W. , The eclipse of Biblical narrative: A study in eighteenth and nineteenth century hermeneutics (New Haven, 1974). See also Kümmel Werner Georg , Das Neue Testament: Geschichte der Erforschung seiner Probleme (Munich, 1970), 73–87. Not everyone took kindly to the aims of critical scholarship. Almost a century after Michaelis's death the Canon of Westminster lamented that he (Michaelis) had reduced Moses “to a clever statesman who gave utility a religious sanction”, and that Eichhorn “could find no better explanation for the supernatural element in both dispensations than a theory of mistake, hyperbole, and ignorance.” Farrar Frederic W. , History of interpretation (London, 1886), 402.

“Mit begeisterten Freude”, Archiv (ref. 33), Scient, 183, 2, Faszikel 12, no. 7.

Daniel Glyn , The idea of prehistory (London, 1962), Andree Christian , Rudolf Virchow als Prähistoriker (3 vols, Cologne, 1976–86), and Kühn Herbert , Geschichte der Vorgeschichtsforschung (Berlin, 1976) all concentrate on the period after 1850.

Grayson Donald , The establishment of human antiquity (New York, 1983), 2–3, italics in original. Daniel believed the period around 1810 was crucial because he (mistakenly) assumed that this was the time when Diluvial geology first came under scrutiny, Idea of prehistory (ref. 49), 22–41. There were discussions of human antiquity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. De Maillet, for example, believed in the enormous antiquity of human or human-like creatures, see Telliamed (ref. 44). Paolo Rossi's Dark abyss of time: The history of the Earth and the history of nations from Hooke to Vico, transl. by Cochrane Lydia G. (Chicago, 1984) is a rich and insightful account of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century controversies surrounding the age of the Earth, nations and humankind. However, these early debates were not characterized by what Grayson has called “time markers” for the empirical assessment of human antiquity, nor did they attempt to make a boundary between the historical and the pre-historical.

von Schlotheim Ernst Friedrich , Die Petrefactenkunde auf ihrem jetzigen Standpunkte (Gotha, 1821), p. lvi. Grayson points out that Schlotheim later changed his mind about these fossils and decided that the human bones belonged to a much more recent epoch than the fossils of large land animals, Establishment (ref. 50), 97.

Grayson , Establishment (ref. 50), 153–4. Blumenbach , Beyträge (ref. 37), ii.

See “Vorhistorisch”, in Deutsches Wörterbuch , ed. by Jakob and Grimm Wilhelm (16 vols, Leipzig, 1854–1954), xii/1, 1206. Niebuhr's use of vorhistorisch suggests that historical scholarship might have been as important for a science of prehistory as physical anthropology and geology. See “Vorgeschichte” in ibid., xii/1, 1105. Hausmann wrote that a knowledge of those changes in the Earth's surface which have been witnessed by humans offer a “point of reference (Anhalten)” for investigating changes which took place “in a prehistoric time (in einer vorgeschichtlichen Zeit)”. Archiv (ref. 33), Scient, 183, 2, Faszikel 12, no. 7.

Hoff , “Einige Bemerkungen über eine in der Havel entstandene Insel”, Magazin der naturforschenden Gesellschaft, Berlin, i (1807), 233–40.

The eighteenth-century mineralogist J. G. Lehmann warned that anyone who wanted to investigate the strata would have to forsake the comfort of the study, Versuch einer Geschichte der Flötz-Gebürgen (Berlin, 1756), “Vorerinnerung” und “Vorrede”, both unpaginated. Lehmann's warning was repeated by field-workers well into the nineteenth century.

Reich , Karl Ernst (ref. 1), 32.

The notice of award is in the Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1821, 1892–94.

The fact that Hoff's prize essay (submitted in November 1821) was originally written in German precipitated some debate within the Society over its rule that all entries be in Latin. Blumenbach argued for a plurality of languages, pointing out that the Latin requirement probably had something to do with the fact that the Society had not awarded the prize in the last fourteen years, and Gauss agreed, Archiv (ref. 33), Scient. 183, 2, Faszikel 12, nos 4–7. Eventually a compromise was reached, for the essay deposited in the Society's archives is the Latin “De solidae superficies orbis terrarum mutationibus quae documentis ex ipso historia …” in Archiv (ref. 33), Scient. 183, 2, Faszikel 12, no. 2. “De solidae” consists of 144 pages of manuscript subdivided in 55 numbered paragraphs whose headings indicate it is essentially a very brief version of Geschichte, i, which appeared in 1822.

He refers to his “geologischer Schwanengesang” in a letter to Leopold von Buch, 13 July 1834, in uncatalogued collections of the Geologisch-Paläontologische Sektion, Naturkunde Museum, Humboldt University, Berlin.

Lyell to Scrope G. P. , 14 June 1830, in Life, letters and journals (ref. 6), i, 269.

Geschichte, i, 19.

One possible exception is Berger Ernst Hugo , Geschichte der wissenschaftliche Erdkunde der Griechen, 2nd edn (Leipzig, 1903).

“Systeme, bey welchen man gewöhnlich Sparsamkeit nur übt an den ohne Maas zu Gebote stehenden Zeiträumen der Vergangenheit, und dagegen die überall in der Natur nach strengen Gesetzen gemessenen und gewogenen Kräfte, und ihre nicht minder gemessenen Wirkungen mit verwegenen Händen zu steigern bemüht ist, und sie ohne Maas vergeudet”, Geschichte, i, 7.

Hoff's reference to granite and its equivalents (“Granit oder seines Gleichen”) was an allusion to eighteenth-century theories in which the world's geology was built on the base of a Ur-formation of granite or some similar crystalline rock, Geschichte, i, 8. Goethe particularly liked this part of Hoff's discussion because he had once held such a view of granite, Goethe to Hoff, 6 Sept. 1822, Goethe , Werke (ref. 25), IV: Xxxvi, 152–3. Both sides of the Goethe-Hoff correspondence are in Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Correspondenz , ed. by Bratranek F. T. (Neue Mittheilungen aus Johann Wolfgang von Goethes handschriftlichen Nachlasse, i–ii; Leipzig, 1874), i, 201–18. For a discusssion of Goethe's views on granite and other geological entities see Hamm Ernst P. , “Goethe on granite” (unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1990).

Geschichte, i, 9. Whatever Hoff's view of experiment may have been, the point here is simply his belief that physical and chemical science was inconceivable without experimental practice.

Geschichte, i, 9.

Geschichte, i, 10.

“Einleitung und Bemerkungen …” (ref. 14).

Geschichte, i, 99.

Goethe read History with absorbed fascination, and said the work “led [him] from a deep winter's loneliness into the wide world”, Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaften, ed. by Kuhn Dorothea (Weimar, 1947–), I: Xi, 223. For Goethe's views on catastrophe's, revolutions and other violent events see Hamm, “Goethe on granite” (ref. 64), chs 2 and 5.

Geschichte, ii, pp. iii–iv. One could say that the second volume takes up the problems of what Rachel Laudan has called “causal geology”.

Geschichte, ii, 1–97.

Geschichte, ii, 367–71. Hooykaas R. has explained Hoff's understanding of uniformity and distinguished it from Lyell's uniformitarianism in Principle of uniformity (ref. 1) and Catastrophism (ref. 4).

“Das Zusammenwirken und das Wechselwirken des vulcanischen Processes an sehr entfernten Puncten mehrerer Vulcanzüge … beweisst ebenfalls unwidersprechlich, dass der Sitz der vulcanischen Erscheinungen nicht in den einzelnen sogenannten Herden, die einzelnen Bergen, oder einzelnen Gebirgsketten angehören, sondern in grosser Tiefe in der Erdrinde gesucht werden muss, — in einer Tiefe, deren geognostische Beschaffenheit noch unerforscht ist, und durchaus nicht nach den Verhältnissen beurtheilt werden kann, welche wir in den oberen vor Augen liegenden Bestandtheilen der Erdrinde wahrnehmen”, Geschichte, ii, 549.

Geschichte, iii, 200–1. For an explanation of contemporary theories of uplift, see Greene , Geology in the nineteenth century (ref. 9).

Geschichte, iii, p. v.

Geschichte, iii, 206–7. These rocks, or “erratics”, are now attributed to ice age glaciation.

“Weder Ueberlieferung noch Beobachtung der Natur in ihren Erscheinungen geben Beweise für eine einmal erfolgte oder wiederholte allgemeine Umwandelung (Katastrophirung) der Erdoberfläche”, Geschichte, iii, 252.

Geschichte, iii, 252. Hooykaas has also noted that in the “pre-Lyellian” volumes Hoff was not a strict uniformitarian, Principle of uniformity (ref. 1), 10.

Geschichte, iii, 241. Hoff presented this argument in 1801 in “Über die Ornitholithen”, Magazin für die gesammte Mineralogie, i (1801), 283–302. The principle of correlation has dominated the literature in the history of palaeontology, at the expense of other issues, such as the kinds of fossils that were being looked for.

Geschichte, iii, 242–51, esp. p. 243.

Geschichte, ii, pp. v, vi.

The most detailed study of the relation between geology and historicism is Oldroyd David , “Historicism and the rise of historical geology”, History of science, xvii (1979), 192–217, 227–57. The literature on eighteenth-century historical studies is vast, but for recent accounts focusing on Göttingen see Reill , German Enlightenment (ref. 46), and Iggers Georg G. , The University of Göttingen 1760–1800 and the transformation of historical scholarship (Special Studies on the Council on International Studies, State University of New York at Buffalo, cxxix; 1980).

Cuvier , Essay (ref. 36), 1.

ibid., 44.

von Selle Götz , Die Georg-August Universität zu Göttingen, 1737–1937 (Göttingen, 1937), 131–43.

Geschichte, ii, p. v.

Schlözer A. L. , Stats Gelahrtheit nach ihren Haupt-Theilen, im Auszug und Zusammenhang, Part 2: Allgemeine Statistik, no. 1, Theorie der Statistik. Nebst Ideen über das Studium der Politik überhaupt (Göttingen, 1804), 85–86, transl. in Hacking, Taming (ref. 2), 24.

See Selle , Georg-August Universität (ref. 87), 111–12, 132–3.

The organization of Pütter's Historische Entwickelung der heutigen Staatsverfassung des Teutschen Reichs (3 vols, Göttingen, 1798–99) is basically the same as that of his massive bibliography, Litteratur des Teutschen Staatsrechts (3 vols, Göttingen, 1776–83). See also Ebel Wilhelm , Der Göttinger Professor Johann Stephan Pütter aus Iserlohn (Göttingen, 1975), esp. the discussion of “die richtige Ordnung”, 61–71.

“[Die] chronologische Ordnung, welche allezeit der richtigste Leitfaden jeder Historie bleibt”, Grundriß der Staatsveränderungen des Teutschen Reichs, 5th edn (Göttingen, 1776), unpaginated “vorrede” to 2nd edn.

Bluntschli Johann Kaspar , Geschichte der neueren Staatswissenschaft, allgemeines Staatsrecht und Politik , 3rd edn (Munich and Leipzig, 1881), 452. Or perhaps there is just a faceless, bureaucratic, statistical world lurking behind the historically ideal state. The justly renowned and massively learned histories of historical studies written in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany give no indication that Gatterer and Schlözer, when they mention them at all, were deeply rooted in the tradition of Statistik. See: Troeltsch Ernst , “Aufklärung”, in Gesammelte Schriften , ed. by Baron Hans (4 vols, Tübingen, 1912–25), iv, 338–74, esp. pp. 352–3; Wach Joachim , Das Verstehen (3 vols, Tübingen, 1926–33), iii, 32–42, and Dilthey Wilelm , “Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert und die Geschichtliche Welt”, in Gesammelte Schriften (12 vols, Leipzig, 1914–58), vii, 210–68, esp. pp. 261–4. Georg Iggers has argued that idealist historiography (more characteristic of Wach and Dilthey than Troeltsch) masked the political function of historical scholarship in Germany , “The tragic course of German historiography: The political function of historical scholarship in Germany in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries”, German life and letters, xxxiv (1981), 223–33.

von Hoff Karl , Das Teutsche Reich vor der französischen Revolution und nach den Frieden zu Lunéville: Eine geographish-statistische Parallele (2 vols, Gotha, 1801–5).

von Hoff Karl and Jacobs Christian Wilhelm , Der Thüringer Wald besonders für Reisende geschildert (2 vols in 4, Gotha, 1807–12); Teutschland nach seiner natürlichen Beschaffenheit und seiner früheren und jetzigen politischen Verhältnissen (Gotha, 1838).

“Es will mir scheinen, das man bis jetzt noch kein so reiche Sammlung von Höhen einer Gegend von dem Umfang Thüringens gehabt hat, und in dieser Hinsicht dürfte vielleicht mein Arbeit vielen Freunden der natürlichen Erdbeschreibung willkommen seyn. Mein verdienst bei derselben war übrigens kein anderes als der den Geduld.” Hoff to A. von Humboldt, 25 December 1833, in Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, A. von Humboldt Nachlass, K. 2, Mappe 3, no. 62.

See von Hoff Karl , Höhen-Messungen in und um Thüringen (Gotha, 1833).

The connection between geography and Statistik lasted into the twentieth century in Germany, see Flaskämper Paul , “Geographie und Statistik”, in Festschrift zur Hundertjahrfeier des Vereins für Geographie und Statistik zu Frankfurt am Main , ed. by Hartke Wolfgang (Frankfurt am M., 1936), 37–51, and Lutz Gerhard , “Geographie und Statistik im 19. Jahrhundert: Zu Neugliederung und Inhalten von ‘Fächern’ im bereich der historischen Wissenschaften”, in Statistik und Staatsbeschreibung in der Neuzeit, ed. by Rassem Mohammed (Paderborn, 1980), 249–76.

For example: “Beschreibung des Thonschiefer- und Grauwackengebirges in Thüringer- und Frankenwalde”, Leonhards Taschenbuch für die gesammte Mineralogie, vii (1813), 135–86; “Beschreibung des Trümmergebirgs und des älteren Flözgebirgs, welche den Thüringer Wald umgeben”, ibid., vii (1814), 319–437; “Der See bei Salzungen und Einiges von Erderschütterungen in Thüringen”, Poggendorfs Annalen der Physik und Chemie, xix (1830), 449–73; “Etwas über das Vorkommen des älteren Flözkalksteins an dem nördlichen Fusse des Thüringer Waldgebirges”, Leonhards Taschenbuch für die gesammte Mineralogie, iv (1810), 97–131; Gemälde der physischen Beschaffenheit, insbesondere der Gebirgsformationen von Thüringen (Erfurt, 1812); and Geognostische Bemerkungen über Karlsbad (Gotha, 1825). For Hoff's work on basalts see ref. 15.

Hoff , “Einleitung und Bemerkungen” (ref. 14), 17.

The metaphor and the adjectives, with the exception of “mineralogical”, are from Hacking , Taming (ref. 2), 24. On the whole, the history of mineralogy-geology has rarely been discussed in the framework of enlightenment Statistik, a fact which undoubtedly reflects the narrow, disciplinary orientation, or “tunnel history”, of much history of geology. There are exceptions. Andrée recognized that History was in the historisch-statistisch tradition, though the main thrust of his interpretation is concerned with a story about the founding of geology, see Karl Ernst Adolf von Hoff als Schriftgelehrter (ref. 1), 10. More notable is Janet Browne's important essay on natural history and Statistik in early nineteenth-century Göttingen , The secular ark: Studies in the history of biogeography (New Haven, 1983), 58–85. Martin J. S. Rudwick has also pointed out the relation between Statistik and history in “Historical analogies in the geological work of Charles Lyell”, Janus, lxiv (1977), 89–107, pp. 100–2 and “Lyell's dream of a statistical palaeontology”, Palaeontology, xxi (1978), 225–44, p. 236. More generally, Cannon Susan F. has drawn attention to the explosion of data collecting in early Victorian and Humboldtian science, Science in culture (New York, 1978).

For a general discussion of bureaucratic culture and the state in German lands see Raeff Marc , The well-ordered police state: Social and institutional change through law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600–1800 (New Haven, 1983). William Clark has shown how bureaucratic organization permeated and eventually sublated the German professoriate in “On the dialectical origins of the research seminar”, History of science, xxvii (1989), 111–54, and “On the ironic specimen of the Doctor of Philosophy”, Science in context, v (1992), 97–137. See also Anthony La Vopa's masterly account of the relationship between the public discourse of education and the realities of corporate culture in eighteenth-century Germany, Grace, talent and merit: Poor students, clerical careers and professional ideology in eighteenth century Germany (Princeton, 1988).

Goethe's dilemma is given admirable treatment in Boyle Nicholas , Goethe, the poet and the age (Oxford, 1991), see esp. pp. 245–51.

Goethe to Ernst II, 27 December 1780, in Werke (ref. 25), IV: V, 20–28, p. 26.

For an insightful account of how Biblical criticism, which had the potential for being dangerous, could and did serve the interests of German states see Boyle Nicholas , “Lessing, Biblical criticism and the origins of German classical culture”, German life and letters, xxxiv (1981), 196–213, esp. pp. 210–11.

Hoff, a fervent supporter of the defunct Empire, showed considerable insight into Prussian imperialism, or what he called the Prussian “Vergrößerungs-System”. Prussia is generally associated with eastward expansion; Hoff saw that she was actively pursuing a policy of westward expansion in a pincer movement to the north- and southwest that would doom tiny states like Gotha and make all of northern Germany a Prussian dependency, Teutsche Reich (ref. 93), ii, 46–47, 106, 151.

Prussian statistics are treated in Hacking , Taming (ref. 2), ch. 4.

“Die Theorie springt von selbst aus den Beobachtungen hervor, sobald sie nur in gehörigen Menge und mit der gehörigen Genauigkeit angestellt sind.” Buch to Karl Freiherr von Stein zum Altenstein, 8 July 1825, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, Sammlung Darmstaedter.

“… nur ein mühsames Compilation vieler Thatsachen”, Hoff to [Bertuch?], 1 December 1824, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, Sammlung Darmstaedter. The theory Hoff referred to in this letter was none other than Buch's theory of elevation craters.

Geschichte, ii, 97. Steffens first hinted at these ideas in his Beyträge zur innern Naturgeschichte der Erde (Freyberg, 1801) and elaborated them in Geognostisch-geologsiche Aufsätze, als Vorbereitung zu einer innern Naturgeschichte der Erde (Hamburg, 1810), esp. pp. 172–99.

See for example Humboldt's “Ueber den Bau und die Wirkungsart der Vulcane in verschiedenen Erdstrichen”, Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1822–23 (Berlin, 1825), 137–56. Elie de Beaumont's theory of mountain chains, the first truly global tectonics, is another outstanding example of this sort of causal geology, see Laudan , From mineralogy (ref. 1), ch. 8.

“A wholly new natural history” is from Schelling F. W. J. , Von der Weltseele, in Werke, ed. by Schröter Manfred (6 vols, Munich, 1927), i, 633. The phrase occurs in a discussion of the life sciences, but it can be applied to the mineral kingdom as well. See the valuable discussion of Schelling in Jardine Nicolas , The scenes of inquiry (Oxford, 1991), esp. pp. 43–50. Rudwick has recently adopted the phrase “deep past”, perhaps to avoid the anachronism of “prehistory,” see Scenes from deep time: Early pictorial representations of the prehistoric world (Chicago, 1992).