The bicentenary of Georg Hartung, a German pioneer geologist, explorer, and illustrator

We present a tribute to Georg Friedrich Karl Hartung (1821–1891), a less-known, non-academic German geologist, on his 200th birthday anniversary. Influenced by eminent 19th century scientific personalities, such as Oswald Heer, Charles Lyell, and Alexander von Humboldt, he performed pioneer geological observations and sampling in the Azores, Madeira, and Canary Islands volcanic archipelagos. Later in his life, he travelled to the USA and explored the Scandinavian countries. His scientific endeavours were published in several books and papers, many of them co-authored by academic German geologists and palaeontologists. His works on Macaronesia are deemed as classics, and many have been enriched by his detailed geological illustrations.

Aspectos filosóficos da obra "Princípios de Geologia" de Charles Lyell

A obra “Princípios de Geologia” do geólogo e naturalista inglês Sir Charles Lyell [1797-1875] mudou para sempre a forma como a natureza é vista, elevando a Geologia ao status de ciência e estabelecendo várias das principais bases epistemológicas presentes nesse campo do conhecimento até os dias de hoje. Este artigo analisa alguns dos principais aspectos filosóficos que fundamentam o trabalho, com foco nas influências percebidas a partir da obra do filósofo Sir Francis Bacon [1561-1626], cujo pensamento marcou profundamente a compreensão sobre o que é e como fazer ciência experimental. Dentre as influências em “Princípios”, destacam-se o fundamento teológico, a importância da história natural e da experimentação, bem como a valorização do raciocínio indutivo na construção do conhecimento científico. Deste modo, identifica-se uma base epistemológica marcadamente experimental na obra de Lyell.

La Ruta Lyell: una proposta geoturística per a la divulgació i la didàctica del patrimoni geològic de Catalunya

In the summer of 1830 Charles Lyell carried out an expedition through Catalonia with the aim of learning about Olot volcanism. The most important route starts in Barcelona and reaches Ceret (Vallespir, Northern Catalonia), passing through high-value of geological and landscape such as Montjuïc, Montserrat, Súria, Cardona, the Lluçanès, the Vic plain, the Cabrerès, the Garrotxa volcanic area and the Salines massif. The implementation of a long-distance route similar to other thematic paths and focused on the teaching of geology and the interpretation of the landscape while following in the footsteps of this expedition (Lyell Route) can generate an original product in the line of sustainable tourism. This itinerary would bring socio-economic and scientific-cultural benefits to the territories through which it passes and to society as a whole. Finally, it is clear that to carry out this project optimally requires solid and assertive collaboration between different geological and environmental actors, especially those who develop their activity on the territory of the Lyell Route.

Geology Emerges as a Science

This chapter and the next one cover the way in which geology came to be a science in its own right, spanning the early centuries of geology. Lives of crucial individual scientists from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century are discussed by relating the stories and discoveries of each, commencing with Leonardo da Vinci and continuing with the European geologists, including Nicholaus Steno, Abraham Werner, James Hutton, Charles Lyell, and early fossilists such as Etheldred Benet. Steno, Werner, Hutton and Lyell, and other early geologists revealed and wrote about the basic principles of geology, painstakingly untangling and piecing together the threads of the Earth’s vast history. They made sense of jumbled sequences of rocks, which had undergone dramatic changes since they were formed, and discerned the significance of fossils, found in environments seemingly incongruous to where the creatures once lived, as ancient forms of life. They set the stage for further research on the nature of the Earth and life on it, providing subsequent generations of geologists and those who study the Earth the basis on which to refine and flesh out the biography of the Earth.

Geologic Time

The time scale of geology—the first overarching precept in geology—and its development are the focus of this chapter. How did geologists determine the great age of the Earth through the spatial nature of geologic units and changes in fossils over time? There was no guidebook to the process of unraveling the Earth’s biography, and the discoveries proceeded step by step using observation and the development of hypotheses. Scientists such as Abraham Werner established principles to place rocks in order relative to one another, providing the beginning of understanding strata, their composition, sources, and life within them. Early estimates of the age of the Earth were on the order of thousands of years, carefully calculated based on the generations in the Bible. However, geologists such as James Hutton and Charles Lyell realized that the probable age of the Earth was much greater by examining the time it would take for processes, like sedimentation rates for a layer of sand or mud to be deposited to occur. From these observations, they deduced it would take orders of magnitude more time to build up great masses of rock layers, and the time scale of geology was extended millions of years.

The bicentenary of Georg Hartung, a German pioneer geologist and explorer

We present a tribute to Georg Friedrich Karl Hartung (1821–1891), a less-known non-academic German geologist, on his 200th anniversary. Influenced by eminent 19th century scientific personalities such as Oswald Heer, Charles Lyell, and Alexander von Humboldt, he performed pioneer geological observations and sampling in the Azores, Madeira, and Canaries volcanic archipelagos. Later in his life he travelled to the USA and explored the Scandinavian countries. His scientific endeavours were published in several books and papers, many of them co-authored by academic German geologists and palaeontologists. His works on the macaronesian islands are deemed as classics, many enriched by his own detailed geological illustrations.

‘Shattering’ and ‘Violent’ Forces: Gender, Ecology, and Catastrophe in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss

This article argues that George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (1860) aligns natural catastrophe with the image of the disastrous female body in order to challenge contemporary geological readings of nature as a balanced, self-regulating domain. Both incorporating and revising the work of Charles Lyell, Oliver Goldsmith, and Georges Cuvier, Eliot emphasises the interconnectedness of human and planetary processes, feminises environmental catastrophe, and blends human and ecological history. She does so in order to write the human presence back into geological histories that tended to evacuate the human, and to invite readers to account for the effects their lifestyles and industries have upon the supposedly balanced and orderly processes of nature.

‘Short-Spanned Living Creatures’: Evolutionary Perspectives in Rhoda Broughton’s Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867)

In Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Charles Lyell appraised the distinct contribution made by his protégé, Charles Darwin (On the Origin of Species (1859)), to evolutionary theory: ‘Progression … is not a necessary accompaniment of variation and natural selection [… Darwin’s theory accounts] equally well for what is called degradation, or a retrogressive movement towards a simple structure’. In Rhoda Broughton’s first novel, Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867), written contemporaneously with Lyell’s book, the Crystal Palace at Sydenham prompts precisely this sort of Darwinian ambivalence to progress; but whether British civilization ‘advance[s] or retreat[s]’, her narrator adds that this prophesized state ‘will not be in our days’ – its realization exceeds the single lifespan. This article argues that Not Wisely, but Too Well is attentive to the irreconcilability of Darwinism to the Victorian ‘idea of progress’: Broughton’s novel, distinctly from its peers, raises the retrogressive and nihilistic potentials of Darwin’s theory and purposes them to reflect on the status of the individual in mid-century Britain.