Robert Jameson's approach to the Wernerian theory of the earth, 1796

Sweet, Jessie M.; Waterston, Charles D.

doi:10.1080/00033796700203226

Cited by 9 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…However, Walker made no direct reference to either Hutton's or Werner's theories in his lectures (Scott 1966). In two previous attempts to resolve this question both Sweet and Waterston (1967) and Scott (1966) could find no unequivocal evidence that Walker was either a strict Neptunist or that he had encouraged Jameson to be one. Walker's main influence on the way Jameson thought is most likely to have been one of instilling strict scientific discipline in his pupil.…”

Section: To Be a Neptunist Or A Plutonist?mentioning

confidence: 95%

Robert Jameson on the Isle of Arran, 1797–1799: in search of Hutton's ‘Theory of the Earth’

Nicholas

Pearson

2007

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The Isle of Arran lies off the Ayrshire coast in the Firth of Clyde, SW Scotland. James Hutton visited Arran in August 1787 with his companion, John Clerk, and together they made the first geological investigation of the island. Hutton returned to Edinburgh satisfied that he had at last found the critical field evidence he had been searching for in support of his ‘Theory of the Earth’. In June 1797, ten years after Hutton's first survey of Arran, Robert Jameson arrived on the island to investigate its geology and mineralogy. Jameson was still only 22 but had already become one of Hutton's most ardent critics. The previous year he had read two papers to the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh refuting critical elements of Hutton's ‘Theory’.Based at Kilmichael, near Brodick, on the east coast, Jameson spent most of June, July and August systematically exploring Arran entirely on foot. On returning to Edinburgh, he combined a narrative of his observations on Arran with an earlier trip to his parents' native Shetland Islands, in what became the earliest published account of the geology of Arran; An Outline of the Mineralogy of the Shetland Islands, and of the Island of Arran (1798). Jameson returned to Arran for a second, shorter visit in August 1799 and subsequently published a second book, The Mineralogy of the Scottish Isles … (1800), which presented a revised and updated geological description of Arran.Jameson's handwritten journals for both his 1797 and 1799 tours of Arran survive. In this paper we draw on these first-hand accounts of Jameson's field observations and discuss them alongside his two subsequent books describing Arran's geology. The journals clearly show that Jameson was an acute observer in the field and consistently made his interpretations in accordance with Wernerian principles. Although he had read the published Volumes I and II of Hutton's ‘Theory’, it appears that he had not seen the unpublished Volume III manuscript prior to either tour. Nevertheless, Jameson's exploration of the island closely follows that of Hutton's and they visited many of the same field localities. Here, we use Jameson's Arran journals to retrace his field investigations and discuss them in the light of Hutton's previous work on the island and in relation to Jameson's own Wernerian views. The difference of approach and interpretation between the two in the field on Arran mirrors the wider conflict between Plutonists and Neptunists at this time.

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Section: To Be a Neptunist Or A Plutonist?mentioning

confidence: 95%

Robert Jameson on the Isle of Arran, 1797–1799: in search of Hutton's ‘Theory of the Earth’

Nicholas

Pearson

2007

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“…Jessie M. Sweet (1901-79) served on the staff as curator of the mineral collection in the Department of Mineralogy for many years from the 1930s. She is perhaps best known for her suite of papers on 18th-century mineralogists and geologists, published in Annals of Science, the most notable of which concerned Robert Jameson (Sweet 1963(Sweet , 1967Sweet & Waterston 1967). Jessie Sweet was awarded the MBE in 1961 and is commemorated in the mineral name 'Sweetite', a zinc hydroxide from Derbyshire (Clark et al 1984).…”

Section: The Museum Research Scientistmentioning

confidence: 99%

The quiet workforce: the various roles of women in geological and natural history museums during the early to mid-1900s

Jackson

Jones

2007

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When examining the work of women in geology during the 18th and 19th centuries, one can broadly, and perhaps crudely, divide those women with geological interests into two broad groups: firstly, the geological wife, sister, or daughter, and the museum assistant; and secondly the museum user, the academic and the museum research scientist. It was not until the close of the 19th century that women began to have a role, albeit minor, in museum education. Women typically were employed in the major national or university museums as preparators, illustrators or assistants, and this trend continued until the 1930s. These women received little academic credit for their research as it was frequently incorporated into the publications of the men for whom they worked. Adelaide

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Neptunism and Transformism: Robert Jameson and other Evolutionary Theorists in Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland

Jenkins

2015

J Hist Biol

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Abstract. This paper sheds new light on the prevalence of evolutionary ideas in Scotland in the early nineteenth century and explores the connections between the espousal of evolutionary theories and adherence to the directional history of the earth proposed by Abraham Gottlob Werner and his Scottish disciples. A possible connection between Wernerian geology and theories of the transmutation of species in Edinburgh in the period when Charles Darwin was a medical student in the city was suggested in an important 1991 paper by James Secord. This study aims to deepen our knowledge of this important episode in the history of evolutionary ideas and explore the relationship between these geological and evolutionary discourses. To do this it focuses on the circle of natural historians around Robert Jameson, Wernerian geologist and professor of natural history at the University of Edinburgh from 1804 to 1854. From the evidence gathered here there emerges a clear confirmation that the Wernerian model of geohistory facilitated the acceptance of evolutionary explanations of the history of life in early nineteenth-century Scotland. As Edinburgh was at this time the most important center of medical education in the English-speaking world, this almost certainly influenced the reception and development of evolutionary ideas in the decades that followed.

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Robert Jameson's approach to the Wernerian theory of the earth, 1796

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Robert Jameson on the Isle of Arran, 1797–1799: in search of Hutton's ‘Theory of the Earth’

Robert Jameson on the Isle of Arran, 1797–1799: in search of Hutton's ‘Theory of the Earth’

The quiet workforce: the various roles of women in geological and natural history museums during the early to mid-1900s

Neptunism and Transformism: Robert Jameson and other Evolutionary Theorists in Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland

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