Here is some more on William Buckland (from ODNB)
By all accounts Buckland's lectures were anything but dull: they were enlivened by his benevolent good humour, by jokes, and even by impersonations of the gait of extinct animals.
While most of his audiences were charmed, amused, and instructed, some of his peers were critical of his pre-Victorian, sometimes scatological, sense of humour and lack of the gravitas deemed appropriate for a scientific savant of the time. These included Darwin, who was definitely not amused by Buckland's showmanship and buffoonery. The affection in which Buckland was held by his contemporaries, however, is attested in numerous humorous satirical poems and cartoons by his friends such as De la Beche and Sopwith.
Wherever possible, Buckland employed experimental methods. One night, puzzling over some newly discovered and problematic fossil footprints, he roused his sleeping wife and asked her to prepare a slab of dough in her kitchen at Christ Church. Then he caused his pet tortoise to walk across it, the results convincing him that the fossil footprints had been made by a long extinct relative. This demonstration was repeated at a party in Roderick Murchison's house for a group of ‘geologists and savants’; before a proper consistency was attained, the dough had to be kneaded afresh and it was ‘a glorious scene to behold all the philosophers, flour-besmeared, working away with tucked up sleeves’
In 1850 (and probably for several years before) signs of a severe mental breakdown (possibly resulting from a fall from a coach) became apparent, and prevented Buckland from performing his duties as dean or professor. He retired to Islip, but later was placed in The Retreat, John Bush's mental asylum at Clapham, where he died on 14 August 1856. He was buried at Islip church.For a century after his death Buckland's reputation suffered a decline: he was largely remembered as an eccentric figure who tried unsuccessfully to reconcile geology with Old Testament accounts, and as a champion of ‘diluvialism’ and an outmoded catastrophism which was destroyed and superseded by the ‘uniformitarianism’ of Lyell. However, recent reappraisals, in particular those by Rupke (1983) and Boylan (1997), have shown that, on the contrary, Buckland was one of the leading figures in the golden age of geology. It could be argued that more than anyone else he was responsible for making geology, and in particular the concept of ‘deep time’, acceptable to the Anglican establishment centred on Oxford, and so for paving the way for the Darwinian revolution.
While most of his audiences were charmed, amused, and instructed, some of his peers were critical of his pre-Victorian, sometimes scatological, sense of humour and lack of the gravitas deemed appropriate for a scientific savant of the time. These included Darwin, who was definitely not amused by Buckland's showmanship and buffoonery. The affection in which Buckland was held by his contemporaries, however, is attested in numerous humorous satirical poems and cartoons by his friends such as De la Beche and Sopwith.
Wherever possible, Buckland employed experimental methods. One night, puzzling over some newly discovered and problematic fossil footprints, he roused his sleeping wife and asked her to prepare a slab of dough in her kitchen at Christ Church. Then he caused his pet tortoise to walk across it, the results convincing him that the fossil footprints had been made by a long extinct relative. This demonstration was repeated at a party in Roderick Murchison's house for a group of ‘geologists and savants’; before a proper consistency was attained, the dough had to be kneaded afresh and it was ‘a glorious scene to behold all the philosophers, flour-besmeared, working away with tucked up sleeves’
In 1850 (and probably for several years before) signs of a severe mental breakdown (possibly resulting from a fall from a coach) became apparent, and prevented Buckland from performing his duties as dean or professor. He retired to Islip, but later was placed in The Retreat, John Bush's mental asylum at Clapham, where he died on 14 August 1856. He was buried at Islip church.For a century after his death Buckland's reputation suffered a decline: he was largely remembered as an eccentric figure who tried unsuccessfully to reconcile geology with Old Testament accounts, and as a champion of ‘diluvialism’ and an outmoded catastrophism which was destroyed and superseded by the ‘uniformitarianism’ of Lyell. However, recent reappraisals, in particular those by Rupke (1983) and Boylan (1997), have shown that, on the contrary, Buckland was one of the leading figures in the golden age of geology. It could be argued that more than anyone else he was responsible for making geology, and in particular the concept of ‘deep time’, acceptable to the Anglican establishment centred on Oxford, and so for paving the way for the Darwinian revolution.
1 comment:
Interested to discover the titles of the books you mention by Rupke [1983] and Boylan [1997] Can you add them to your article?
William Buckland's final illness, probably triggered by the carriage accident, was tubercular - his skull was preserved as an example of the damage caused to the spinal column and to the cranium.
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