Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet,FRS (14 November 1797 – 22 February 1875) was a Scottish geologist who demonstrated the power of known natural causes in explaining the earth's history. He is best known today for his association withCharles Darwin and as the author ofPrinciples of Geology (1830–33), which presented to a wide public audience the idea that the earth was shaped by the same natural processes still in operation today, operating at similar intensities. The philosopherWilliam Whewell dubbed thisgradualistic view "uniformitarianism" and contrasted it withcatastrophism, which had been championed byGeorges Cuvier and was better accepted in Europe.[1] The combination of evidence and eloquence inPrinciples convinced a wide range of readers of the significance of "deep time" for understanding the earth and environment.[2]
Lyell's scientific contributions included a pioneering explanation of climate change, in which shifting boundaries between oceans and continents could be used to explain long-term variations in temperature and rainfall. Lyell also gave influential explanations of earthquakes and developed the theory of gradual "backed up-building" ofvolcanoes. Instratigraphy his division of theTertiary period into thePliocene,Miocene, andEocene was highly influential. He incorrectly conjectured that icebergs were the impetus behind the transport ofglacial erratics, and that siltyloess deposits might have settled out of flood waters. His creation of a separate period for human history, entitled the 'Recent', is widely cited as providing the foundations for the modern discussion of theAnthropocene.[3]
Building on the innovative work ofJames Hutton and his followerJohn Playfair, Lyell favoured an indefinitely long age for the earth, despite evidence suggesting an old but finite age.[4] He was a close friend ofCharles Darwin, and contributed significantly to Darwin's thinking on the processes involved in evolution. As Darwin wrote inOn the Origin of Species, "He who can read Sir Charles Lyell's grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having produced a revolution in natural science, yet does not admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume."[5] Lyell helped to arrange the simultaneous publication in 1858 of papers by Darwin andAlfred Russel Wallace onnatural selection, despite his personal religious qualms about the theory. He later published evidence from geology of the time man had existed on the earth.
Lyell was born into a wealthy family, on 14 November 1797, at the family'sestate house,Kinnordy House, nearKirriemuir in Forfarshire. He was the eldest of ten children. Lyell's father, also namedCharles Lyell, was noted as a translator and scholar ofDante. An accomplished botanist, it was he who first exposed his son to the study of nature. Lyell's grandfather, also Charles Lyell, had made the family fortune supplying theRoyal Navy atMontrose, enabling him to buy Kinnordy House.
The main geographical divisions of Scotland
Thefamily seat is located inStrathmore, near theHighland Boundary Fault. Round the house, in thestrath, is good farmland, but within a short distance to the north-west, on the other side of the fault, are theGrampian Mountains in theHighlands. His family's second country home was in a completely different geological and ecological area: he spent much of his childhood atBartley Lodge in theNew Forest, in Hampshire in southern England.
Lyell enteredExeter College, Oxford, in 1816, and attendedWilliam Buckland's geological lectures. He graduated with a BA Hons. second class degree in classics, in December 1819, and gained hisM.A. 1821.[6][7] After graduation he took up law as a profession, enteringLincoln's Inn in 1820. He completed a circuit through rural England, where he could observe geological phenomena. In 1821 he attendedRobert Jameson's lectures in Edinburgh, and visitedGideon Mantell atLewes, inSussex. In 1823 he was elected joint secretary of theGeological Society. As his eyesight began to deteriorate, he turned to geology as a full-time profession.[7] His first paper, "On a recent formation of freshwater limestone in Forfarshire", was presented in 1826.[7] By 1827, he had abandoned law and embarked on a geological career that would result in fame and the general acceptance of uniformitarianism, a working out of the ideas proposed byJames Hutton a few decades earlier.
Charles Lyell at theBritish Association meeting in Glasgow 1840. Painting by Alexander Craig.
In 1832, Lyell marriedMary Horner in Bonn, daughter ofLeonard Horner (1785–1864), also associated with theGeological Society of London. The new couple spent their honeymoon in Switzerland and Italy on a geological tour of the area.[8]
During the 1840s, Lyell travelled to the United States and Canada, and wrote two popular travel-and-geology books:Travels in North America (1845) andA Second Visit to the United States (1849). In 1866, he was elected a foreign member of theRoyal Swedish Academy of Sciences. After theGreat Chicago Fire in 1871, Lyell was one of the first to donate books to help found theChicago Public Library.
Lyell's wife died in 1873, and two years later (in 1875) Lyell himself died as he was revising the twelfth edition ofPrinciples.[8][10] He is buried inWestminster Abbey where there is a bust to him byWilliam Theed in the north aisle.[11]
Lyell was knighted (Kt) in 1848,[12] and later, in 1864, made a baronet (Bt),[13] which is an hereditary honour. He was awarded theCopley Medal of theRoyal Society in 1858 and theWollaston Medal of theGeological Society in 1866.Mount Lyell, the highest peak inYosemite National Park, is named after him; the craterLyell on theMoon and acrater onMars were named in his honour;Mount Lyell in western Tasmania, Australia, located in a profitable mining area, bears Lyell's name; and the Lyell Range in north-west Western Australia is named after him as well. In Southwest Nelson in the South Island of New Zealand, the Lyell Range, Lyell River and the gold mining town ofLyell (now only a camping site) were all named after Lyell.[14]Lyall Bay in Wellington, New Zealand was possibly named after Lyell.[15][16] The jawless fishCephalaspis lyelli, from theOld Red Sandstone of southern Scotland, was named byLouis Agassiz in honour of Lyell.[17]
Lyell had private means, and earned further income as an author. He came from a prosperous family, worked briefly as a lawyer in the 1820s, and held the post of Professor of Geology atKing's College London in the 1830s. From 1830 onward his books provided both income and fame. Each of his three major books was a work continually in progress. All three went through multiple editions during his lifetime, although many of his friends (such as Darwin) thought the first edition of thePrinciples was the best written.[19][20] Lyell used each edition to incorporate additional material, rearrange existing material, and revisit old conclusions in light of new evidence.
A page from one of Lyell's notebooks, held in theUniversity of Edinburgh's Heritage Collections
Throughout his life, Lyell kept a remarkable series of nearly three hundred manuscript notebooks and diaries. These span Lyell's long scientific career (1825–1874), and offer an unrivalled insight into personal influences, field observations, thoughts and relationships. They were acquired in 2019 by theUniversity of Edinburgh's Heritage Collections, thanks to a fundraising campaign, with many generous individual and institutional donors from the UK and overseas. Highlights include his travels throughout Europe and the United States of America, the drafts of his correspondence with the likes of Charles Darwin, his geological and landscape sketches and his constant gathering of evidence and refinement of his theories.[21] Lyell's collection held at the University of Edinburgh, including digital images of his five series of notebooks, and with links to other Lyell material held elsewhere, is now available on adedicated website.
Principles of Geology, Lyell's first book, was also his most famous, most influential, and most important. First published in three volumes in 1830–33, it established Lyell's credentials as an important geological theorist and propounded the doctrine ofuniformitarianism.[22] It was a work of synthesis, backed by his own personal observations on his travels.
The central argument inPrinciples was thatthe present is the key to the past – a concept of theScottish Enlightenment whichDavid Hume had stated as "all inferences from experience suppose ... that the future will resemble the past", andJames Hutton had described when he wrote in 1788 that "from what has actually been, we have data for concluding with regard to that which is to happen thereafter."[23] Geological remains from the distant past can, and should, be explained by reference to geological processes now in operation and thus directly observable. Lyell's interpretation of geological change as the steady accumulation of minute changes over enormously long spans of time was a powerful influence on the youngCharles Darwin. Lyell askedRobert FitzRoy, captain ofHMSBeagle, to search for erratic boulders on thesurvey voyage of theBeagle, and just before it set out FitzRoy gave Darwin Volume 1 of the first edition of Lyell'sPrinciples. When theBeagle made its first stop ashore atSt Jago in theCape Verde islands, Darwin found rock formations which seen "through Lyell's eyes" gave him a revolutionary insight into the geological history of the island, an insight he applied throughout his travels.
While in South America Darwin received Volume 2 which considered the ideas ofJean-Baptiste Lamarck in some detail. Lyell rejected Lamarck's idea of organicevolution, proposing instead "Centres of Creation" to explain diversity and territory of species. However, as discussedbelow, many of his letters show he was fairly open to the idea of evolution.[24] In geology Darwin was very much Lyell's disciple, and brought back observations and his own original theorising, including ideas about the formation ofatolls, which supported Lyell's uniformitarianism. On the return of theBeagle (October 1836) Lyell invited Darwin to dinner and from then on they were close friends.
The frontispiece fromElements of Geology
Although Darwin discussed evolutionary ideas with him from 1842, Lyell continued to reject evolution in each of the first nine editions of thePrinciples. He encouraged Darwin to publish, and following the 1859 publication ofOn the Origin of Species, Lyell finally offered a tepid endorsement of evolution in the tenth edition ofPrinciples.
Elements of Geology began as the fourth volume of the third edition ofPrinciples: Lyell intended the book to act as a suitable field guide for students of geology.[6] The systematic, factual description of geological formations of different ages contained inPrinciples grew so unwieldy, however, that Lyell split it off as theElements in 1838. The book went through six editions, eventually growing to two volumes and ceasing to be the inexpensive, portable handbook that Lyell had originally envisioned. Late in his career, therefore, Lyell produced a condensed version titledStudent's Elements of Geology that fulfilled the original purpose.
Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man brought together Lyell's views on three key themes from the geology of theQuaternary Period of earth history: glaciers, evolution, and theage of the human race. First published in 1863, it went through three editions that year, with a fourth and final edition appearing in 1873. The book was widely regarded as a disappointment because of Lyell's equivocal treatment ofevolution. Lyell, a highly religious man with a strong belief in the special status of human reason, had great difficulty reconciling his beliefs withnatural selection.[25]
From 1830 to 1833 his multi-volumePrinciples of Geology was published. The work's subtitle was "An attempt to explain the former changes of the earth's surface by reference to causes now in operation", and this explains Lyell's impact on science. He drew his explanations from field studies conducted directly before he went to work on the founding geology text.[7] He was, along with the earlierJohn Playfair, the major advocate ofJames Hutton's idea ofuniformitarianism, that the earth was shaped entirely by slow-moving forces still in operation today, acting over a very long time. This was in contrast tocatastrophism, an idea of abrupt geological changes, which had been adapted in England to explain landscape features—such as rivers much smaller than their associated valleys—that seemed impossible to explain other than through violent action. Criticizing the reliance of his contemporaries on what he argued weread hoc explanations, Lyell wrote,
Lyell between 1865 and 1870
Never was there a doctrine more calculated to foster indolence, and to blunt the keen edge of curiosity, than this assumption of the discordance between the former and the existing causes of change... The student was taught to despond from the first. Geology, it was affirmed, could never arise to the rank of an exact science... [With catastrophism] we see the ancient spirit of speculation revived, and a desire manifestly shown to cut, rather than patiently untie, the Gordian Knot.-Sir Charles Lyell,Principles of Geology, 1854 edition, p. 196; quoted byStephen Jay Gould.[27]
Lyell saw himself as "the spiritual saviour of geology, freeing the science from the old dispensation of Moses."[28] The two terms,uniformitarianism andcatastrophism, were both coined byWilliam Whewell;[29] in 1866 R. Grove suggested the simpler termcontinuity for Lyell's view, but the old terms persisted. In various revised editions (12 in all, through 1872),Principles of Geology was the most influential geological work in the middle of the 19th century and did much to put geology on a modern footing.
Lyell noted the "economic advantages" geological surveys could provide, citing their felicity in mineral-rich countries and provinces. Modern surveys, like theBritish Geological Survey (founded in 1835), and theUS Geological Survey (founded in 1879), map and exhibit the natural resources within their countries. Over time, these surveys have been used extensively by modern extractive industries, such as nuclear, coal, and oil.
Lyell argued that volcanoes likeVesuvius had built up gradually.
Before Lyell's work, phenomena's such as earthquakes were understood by the destruction that they brought. One of the contributions that Lyell made inPrinciples was to explain the cause of earthquakes.[30] Lyell, in contrast, focused on more recent earthquakes (150 yrs), evidenced by surface irregularities such as faults, fissures, stratigraphic displacements and depressions.[30]
Lyell's work on volcanoes focused largely onVesuvius andEtna, both of which he had earlier studied. His conclusions supported gradual building of volcanoes, so-called "backed up-building",[6] as opposed to the upheaval argument supported by other geologists.
Lyell was a key figure in establishing the classification of more recent geological deposits, long known as theTertiary period. From May 1828, until February 1829, he travelled withRoderick Impey Murchison (1792–1871) to the south of France (Auvergne volcanic district) and to Italy.[6][8][31] In these areas he concluded that the recent strata (rock layers) could be categorised according to the number and proportion of marine shells encased within. Based on this the third volume of hisPrinciples of Geology, published in 1833, proposed dividing theTertiary period into four parts, which he named theEocene,Miocene,Pliocene, and Recent. In 1839, Lyell termed thePleistocene epoch, distinguishing a more recent fossil layer from the Pliocene.[32] The Recent epoch – renamed theHolocene by French paleontologistPaul Gervais in 1867 – included all deposits from the era subject to human observation. In recent years Lyell's subdivisions have been widely discussed with debates about theAnthropocene.
InPrinciples of Geology (first edition, vol. 3, ch. 2, 1833)[8] Lyell proposed thaticebergs could be the means of transport forerratics. During periods of global warming, ice breaks off the poles and floats across submerged continents, carrying debris with it, he conjectured. When the iceberg melts, it rains down sediments upon the land. Because this theory could account for the presence of diluvium, the worddrift became the preferred term for the loose, unsorted material, today calledtill. Furthermore, Lyell believed that the accumulation of fine angular particles covering much of the world (today calledloess) was a deposit settled from mountain flood water.[33] Today some of Lyell's mechanisms for geological processes have been disproven, though many have stood the test of time.[7] His observational methods and general analytical framework remain in use today as foundational principles in geology.[7]
Portrait of Charles Lyell, Scottish geologist, c. 1863
Lyell initially accepted the conventional view of other men of science, that the fossil record indicated a directional geohistory in which species went extinct. Around 1826, when he was on circuit, he readLamarck'sZoological Philosophy and on 2 March 1827 wrote toMantell, expressing admiration, but cautioning that he read it "rather as I hear an advocate on the wrong side, to know what can be made of the case in good hands".:[34]
I devoured Lamarck... his theories delighted me... I am glad that he has been courageous enough and logical enough to admit that his argument, if pushed as far as it must go, if worth anything, would prove that men may have come from theOurang-Outang. But after all, what changes species may really undergo!... That the earth is quite as old as he supposes, has long been my creed...[35]
He struggled with the implications for human dignity, and later in 1827 wrote private notes on Lamarck's ideas. Lyell reconciledtransmutation of species withnatural theology by suggesting that it would be as much a "remarkable manifestation of creative Power" as creating each species separately. He countered Lamarck's views by rejecting continued cooling of the earth in favour of "a fluctuating cycle", a long-term steady-state geohistory as proposed byJames Hutton. The fragmentary fossil record already showed "a high class of fishes, close to reptiles" in theCarboniferous period which he called "the first Zoological era", and quadrupeds could also have existed then. In November 1827, afterWilliam Broderip found aMiddle Jurassic fossil of the early mammalDidelphis, Lyell told his father that "There was everything but man even as far back as the Oolite."[34] Lyell inaccurately portrayed Lamarckism as a response to the fossil record, and said it was falsified by a lack of progress. He said in the second volume ofPrinciples that the occurrence of this one fossil of the higher mammalia "in these ancient strata, is as fatal to the theory of successive development, as if several hundreds had been discovered."[36]
Charles Darwin
In the first edition ofPrinciples, the first volume briefly set out Lyell's concept of a steady state with no real progression of fossils. The sole exception was the advent of humanity, with no great physical distinction from animals, but with absolutely unique intellectual and moral qualities. The second volume dismissed Lamarck's claims of animal forms arising from habits, continuousspontaneous generation of new life, and man having evolved from lower forms. Lyell explicitly rejected Lamarck's concept of transmutation of species, drawing on Cuvier's arguments, and concluded that species had been created with stable attributes. He discussed the geographical distribution of plants and animals, and proposed that every species of plant or animal was descended from a pair or individual, originated in response to differing external conditions. Species would regularly go extinct, in a "struggle for existence" between hybrids, or a "war one with another" due to population pressure. He was vague about how replacement species formed, portraying this as an infrequent occurrence which could rarely be observed.[37]
The leading man of science SirJohn Herschel wrote fromCape Town on 20 February 1836, thanking Lyell for sending a copy ofPrinciples and praising the book as opening a way for bold speculation on "that mystery of mysteries, the replacement of extinct species by others" – by analogy with otherintermediate causes, "the origination of fresh species, could it ever come under our cognizance, would be found to be a natural in contradistinction to a miraculous process".[38] Lyell replied: "In regard to the origination of new species, I am very glad to find that you think it probable that it may be carried on through the intervention of intermediate causes. I left this rather to be inferred, not thinking it worth while to offend a certain class of persons by embodying in words what would only be a speculation."[39]Whewell subsequently questioned this topic, and in March 1837 Lyell told him:[24]
Alfred Russel Wallace in 1862.If I had stated... the possibility of the introduction or origination of fresh species being a natural, in contradistinction to a miraculous process, I should have raised a host of prejudices against me, which are unfortunately opposed at every step to any philosopher who attempts to address the public on these mysterious subjects...[40]
As a result of his letters and, no doubt, personal conversations,Huxley andErnst Haeckel were convinced that, at the time he wrotePrinciples, he believed new species had arisen by natural methods.Adam Sedgwick wrote worried letters to him about this.[41]
By the timeDarwin returned from theBeagle survey expedition in 1836, he had begun to doubt Lyell's ideas about the permanence of species. He continued to be a close personal friend, and Lyell was one of the first scientists to supportOn the Origin of Species, though he did not subscribe to all its contents. Lyell was also a friend of Darwin's closest colleagues,Joseph Dalton Hooker andHuxley, but unlike them he struggled to square his religious beliefs with evolution. This inner struggle has been much commented on. He had particular difficulty in believing innatural selection as the main motive force in evolution.[42][43][44]
Lyell and Hooker were instrumental in arranging the peaceful co-publication of the theory of natural selection by Darwin andAlfred Russel Wallace in 1858: each had arrived at the theory independently. Lyell's views on gradual change and the power of a long time scale were important because Darwin thought that populations of an organism changed very slowly.
Although Lyell rejected evolution at the time of writing thePrinciples,[45] after the Darwin–Wallace papers and theOrigin Lyell wrote in one of his notebooks on 3 May 1860:
Mr. Darwin has written a work which will constitute an era in geology & natural history to show that... the descendants of common parents may become in the course of ages so unlike each other as to be entitled to rank as a distinct species, from each other or from some of their progenitors...[46]
Lyell's acceptance of natural selection, Darwin's proposed mechanism for evolution, was equivocal, and came in the tenth edition ofPrinciples.[7][47]The Antiquity of Man (published in early February 1863, just before Huxley'sMan's place in nature) drew these comments from Darwin to Huxley: "I am fearfully disappointed at Lyell's excessive caution" and "The book is a mere 'digest'".[48]
Quite strong remarks: no doubt Darwin resented Lyell's repeated suggestion that he owed a lot toLamarck, whom he (Darwin) had always specifically rejected. Darwin's daughter Henrietta (Etty) wrote to her father: "Is it fair that Lyell always calls your theory a modification of Lamarck's?"[49][50]
In other respectsAntiquity was a success. It sold well, and it "shattered the tacit agreement that mankind should be the sole preserve of theologians and historians".[51] But when Lyell wrote that it remained a profound mystery how the huge gulf between man and beast could be bridged, Darwin wrote "Oh!" in the margin of his copy.[25]
^Whewell, William 1837.History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. IV of the Historical and Philosophical Works of William Whewell. Chapter VIII The two antagonistic doctrines of geology. [reprint of 3rd edition of 1857, publ. Cass 1967].
^Lyell, Charles (1881)."XXIV".Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell.John Murray. p. 110. You hint at icebergs and northern waves. The former has no doubt had its influence, and when icebergs turn over, or fall to pieces, huge waves are caused not merelyfrom the north. But it has always seemed to me that much more influence ought to be attributed to simple denudation where beds of loose sand, gravel, or mud were upheaved, and sometimes alternately depressed and upraised in an open sea. The exposure of such destructible materials must have led to the confusion you allude to, but much less so where the beds were protected in fiords, &c. The broken fossils found in these strata would agree with my denudation hypothesis, which I think strengthened by the frequent regular re-stratification of the beds containing the deep and shallow water species.
^Desmond (1982), p. 179: "Even Charles Lyell agreed... that 'natural selection was a force quite subordinate to that variety-making or creative power to which all the wonders of the organic world must be referred.' "
^Burkhardt F. and Smith S. 1982–present.The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Cambridge, vol. 11, pp. 173, 181.
^Burkhardt F. and Smith S. 1982–present.The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Cambridge, vol. 11, p. 223.
Cannon, Walter F. (27 June 1961). "The Impact of Uniformitarianism: Two Letters from John Herschel to Charles Lyell, 1836-1837".Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.105 (3). American Philosophical Society:301–314.JSTOR985457.
Wilson, Leonard G. (1973). "Charles Lyell". In Gillispie, Charles Coulston (ed.).Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. VIII. Pennsylvania: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Image source
Portraits of Honorary Members of theIpswich Museum (Portfolio of 60 lithographs by T.H. Maguire) (George Ransome, Ipswich 1846–1852)
Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform (2008), a major overview of Lyell's work in its scientific context byMartin J. S. Rudwick
Principles of Geology: Penguin Classics (1997), the key chapters of Lyell's most famous work with an introduction byJames A. Secord
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