Geology and the Emergence of Science as a Profession in the United States

Southern Polytechnic State University, Marietta GA

Investigators

Abstract

Project Abstract Julie R. Newell, Southern Polytechnic State University Geology and the Emergence of Science as a Profession in the United States In the secondary literature on the history of science in America, geology has long been recognized as the first science to develop an extensive professional community. Further, geologists developed the support structures and institutions that made professional science in the United States possible. Among the critical institutions founded by geologists were the first general scientific journal, The American Journal of Science (1818), and the Association of American Geologists (1840), which would become the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1848). These achievements were critical to the emergence of professional scientists in other disciplines in the United States. No published history of science in America has, however, rooted these generalizations about the importance of geology in primary documents and archival evidence. Nor has it been explained why geology, rather than some other science, should have played this pivotal role. This project focuses on one central question with a multitude of ramifications: Why geology? Why were geologists able to garner public, political, and most importantly financial support for their scientific endeavors? What was it about the science of geology in the period before 1865 that particularly suited the cultural, political, and physical environment in the United States? Dr. Newell's thesis is that geology was a relatively new science uniquely well suited to the values and goals of the early United States and for which the United States provided unique materials for study and for the generation of truly American geological theories. Working from her earlier manuscript, Dr. Newell is conducting extensive additional archival research in order to unravel the personal and institutional relationships that underlie the development of geology in the United States and its impact on the broader history of science. The ultimate goal is an book-length manuscript that provides an integrated account of the early history of geology in the United States, including the content of the science, the goals and methods of the scientists, and the contexts that shaped, and were shaped by, American geologists and their geology. No such account exists in the published literature of the history of American geology. In addition, because of the centrality of geology to the emergence of science as a profession in the United States, this study should interest scholars concerned with the general history of science in the United States or in American intellectual history.