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The 'Piddling School' of Geology

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The 'Piddling School' of Geology correspondence immense period of time. It is this type of following the introduction of the ‘glacial stream that De la Beche illustrates. theory’ to Britain by Buckland and Agassiz The ‘piddling school’ He evidently drew his picture at the time in 1840. Many geologists, however, found of geology of the publication of Lyell’s epoch-making the idea that much of the Northern Principles of Geology (1830–33), and it Hemisphere had been covered by immense Sir — As a contribution to the heated probably had wide circulation among ice sheets too fantastic, and Lyell, for one, controversies that enlivened geology in its geologists, although it was never published, never came to terms with such a golden age in the first half of the nineteenth perhaps being regarded as too improper for neo-catastrophic event, which had no century, a number of satirical sketches and the time; doubtless Buckland made great provable cause. cartoons were drawn by Henry De la Beche play with it in his well-attended Oxford Why bother with such ancient (1796–1855), one of the leading geologists lectures. It evidently delighted Roderick controversies: are they not now dead and of his day and the founder of the Geological Murchison, a stringent critic of Lyell; buried, and do we not understand the truth Survey of Great Britain. Several of these twenty years later, Murchison about the arguments? Apart from the have been reproduced by Paul McCartney complimented De la Beche (whom he was interest in studying how our forebears, by in his informative short biography1 of De la soon to succeed as director-general of the painstaking data collection and flashes of Beche, but he believed that the one Geological Survey) on the appearance of his inspiration and lateral thinking, laid the reproduced here had not survived. Happily, massive volume The Geological Observer, foundations of our modern world view, however, it has been preserved in the but he added: “I could only have wished echoes of these (only) 150-year-old disputes archives of the University Museum, Oxford, that it did not seem to me that you favoured are still with us. Although the Quaternary among the papers of William Buckland, the the ‘piddling’ school more than of old, ice ages are accepted facts, there is still no first Professor of Geology at Oxford. when you drew Frank Buckland as a baby universally accepted explanation of their The sketch (entitled “Cause and Effect”) denuding a valley. We shall hear a good deal origin; after a long period of fundamentalist shows a toddler (said to represent Frank more made of the book [The Geological uniformitarianism (the ‘piddling school’ of Buckland, William’s eldest son) urinating at Observer] tomorrow night; so I reserve my Murchison), invocation of impacts by the head of a huge valley, with the nurse’s say except to hope that you have not comets and meteorites to explain global comment “Bless the baby! What a walley he actually become an inch by inch geologist.” extinctions are now respectable; and have a-made!”. This was intended as an Murchison’s comments of 1851 show that punctuated evolution versus gradualism is ironic comment on the uniformitarian (unlike De la Beche) he had failed to come still an issue. While we may not regret the outlook of Charles Lyell (a former pupil of to terms with the concepts of deep-time decline in polemical quarrels over scientific Buckland, and Darwin’s geological (indications that the Earth is millions theories, it seems a pity that we do not see mentor), who championed the idea (now instead of thousands of years old) more today of the satire and pictorial accepted for most valleys) that slow-acting permitting the explanation of features of humour such as that from De la Beche and erosion by rivers has formed the valleys they the Earth’s surface by the cumulative effects his contemporaries. occupy, as opposed to pre-formation by of slow-acting processes as observed today, N. S. Haile earthquakes, faults, catastrophic floods or rather than by catastrophic events. The tiny 13 Talbot Road, marine action. One of the objections to this stream in the huge U-shaped valley Oxford OX2 8LL, UK so-called fluviatile theory was provided by depicted by De la Beche suggests (with e-mail: [email protected] ‘mis-fit’ streams — huge valleys occupied hindsight) excavation by a former by small rivers that it would seem could not mountain glacier — and by 1851 this 1. McCartney, P. J. Henry De la Beche: Observations on an Observer. have excavated them, even given an possibility was already being accepted, Friends of the National Museum of Wales, 1977. 650 NATURE | VOL 387 | 12 JUNE 1997 Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1997.
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