CHAPTER EIGHT

ADAM SEDGWICK: HOW MUCH GOOD MIGHT HE DO?

Although Sedgwick was Lyell' s senior by twelve years, their geological careers run contemporary. Both dedicated themselves to the science towards the end of the second decade of the century.1 Both had reached their fundamental ideas about the earth's crust by the end of the 1820s, and from that moment onwards both were major figures on the geological stage until their deaths in the 1870s. Both criticized Chambers' Vestiges and both lived through and commented on the controversy around Darwin's epoch making book. Still, they were very different men, and often opposed each other critically. Sedgwick held that Lyell lacked the quality of a true field-observer; Lyell lamented Sedgwick's inability to put his geological knowledge together in a great geological system. No friendshiplik e the numerous ones between the members of the Geological Society ever sprang up between Sedgwick and Lyell although they had a great number of friends in common. They treated each other with respect, but Lyell' s customary humour does not show in his letters to Sedgwick, and the latter's usual affection for his correspondents does not come through in his letters to Lyell. They were not congenial minds. They came from entirely different social environments. And, of course, Sedgwick was a clergyman-. Sedgwick's place in the history of is at least as important as Lyell' s. In the catastrophist-uniformitarian question, he became the bulwark of orthodox directionalism against Lyell's in the 1830s, against Chambers' transmutation in the 1840s, and against Darwin's in the 1860s. His was also a permanent contribution to nineteenth-century natural theology. Sedgwick's thorough inductive methods and the fact that he was not blind to errors of such advocates of natural religion as Paley or Buckland carried conviction. His geological discoveries came first and foremost; theology was not allowed to obscure or discredit scientific truth. That his conclusions in geology were different from Lyell's can be explained by their different methods. The incomplete knowledge of the fossil record, moreover—a fact which both authors often emphasized—did not allow either to be decisive. It is in later life, however, that we cannot help suspecting a profound influence of Sedgwick's religious duties on his scientific viewpoints. In fact, much of his

1 Sedgwick was elected a member of the Geological Society of London in 1818,Lyell in 1819; see Gillispie, Genesis and Geology, p.85. ADAM SEDGWICK: HOW MUCH GOOD MIGHT HE DO? 103 later career seems spent in an almost fanatical reaction to transmutation; Sedgwick's amazing aggression on this point well overshot its mark.

*

Sedgwick was born in Yorkshire in 1785. His father was the rector of the small town of Dent, where the boy grew up. The mathematician prepared him for University, and in 1807 he won a sizarship for Trinity College, which was followed by a fellowship three years later. Originally Sedgwick wanted to read for the bar, but his acceptance of the fellowship meant a clerical profession. He obtained his Master of Arts in 1811. That he was not very much inclined to the clerical profession becomes clear from his slowness in, and reluctance to follow theological studies. In a letter to his friend and fellow student William Ainger, written in 1811, he admits that he "has not taken the trouble to look for" questions in divinity, and as much as four years later it appears that he had not started yet, as he announces to the same: "on Monday I shall begin to read divinity."2 In the meantime he had been offered a curacy, which he declined. The statutes of Trinity College, however, decreed that all fellows had to be ordained within seven years after obtaining their Master of Arts. This left Sedgwick no possibility but to enter the Church. He was ordained deacon by Bishop Bathurst of Norwich in 1817, but remained at Cambridge as a tutor. The tuition system of Cambridge exhausted Sedgwick—"I am most heartily sick of my connexion with the tuition"3—and when the Woodwardian chair of geology fell vacant upon the resignation of John Hailstone, he aspired to the professorship. His frequent attacks of ill-health dictated a life spent as much out of doors as possible. The Woodwardian Chair seemed to offer this. Another candidate was George Cornelius Gorham, who seems to have had all the qualifications for the post; he had "been studying Geology for a long time" while Sedgwick had hardly any geological knowledge at all. Sedgwick, however, was nominated. Gorham commented bitterly on Sedgwick's likely nomination: "I feel a conviction that few persons in the University have followed up the Science more sedulously than I have. If, therefore, the Electors choose to dispose of Woodward's funds upon the shameful principle of influence against quality.."* As a boy Sedgwick had spent most of his time out of doors, and in his early

2 June 10,1811, in ZXSi.111; March 30,1815,ΐη£££Π34. 3 Letter to William Ainger, March 19,1818, in LISI 153. 4 Gorham to his father, May 17th, 1818,ίηΖΖ,£Ι.157. Sedgwick, however, never saw Gorham as a serious rival. In the MS of his contemplated autobiography he records that when Evans, another candidate, retired, he "left the fieldvirtuall y open forme." (Cambridge University Library: Class Mark Add. 7652 III.H.2, p.3 8; quoted with permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library).