People of Science with Brian Cox - Richard Fortey on Charles Lyell
Transcript
- Brian: Hello, I’m Professor Brian Cox. Welcome to People of Science.
- Richard, could you describe first
- who you are and what’s your area of scientific expertise?
- Richard: Well I’m Richard Fortey
- I'm a geologist and palaeontologist
- so I’m an expert on and study
- evolution of animals from fossils.
- Brian: This is a series about inspirational scientists from history
- so who have you chosen?
- Richard: I’ve chosen Charles Lyell
- who was a 19th century British geologist
- who transformed the scientific credibility of geology.
- He gave geology, as a science, a real scientific basis.
- The method of how we can understand the earth and its history.
- Brian: And we go back to 18…
- well the start of the 1800’s.
- What was the general picture of geology at the time
- and how did Lyell transform it?
- Richard: There was a previous view of the Earth as fixed
- the continents as fixed.
- The frontispiece of Lyell’s book
- shows the Temple of Serapis on the Bay of Naples.
- I’ve been there to have a look at it
- it’s one of the holy places in geology.
- The columns of the temple are limestone
- and they’ve been bored by a marine clam
- which makes a brown line all the way around.
- And Lyell could see that this indicated
- that that temple built perhaps at sea level or near sea level
- must have been both depressed for the clams to do their work
- and then elevated again to where it was today.
- In other words, the Earth wasn’t fixed
- it was capable of up and down motion.
- And nobody up to that point had begun to think about how
- in scientific terms, how mountain ranges could be formed.
- These are letters of recommendation for publication in the
- Transactions of the Society.
- This is a Babbage paper, refereed by Lyell
- and he says, this is the thing I liked about it when I first saw this:
- ‘‘There are no less than 8 drawings, all of them hypothetical and…’’
- well basically, ‘‘I don’t think they should be published.’’
- <font color=#000000FF>Which is typical Lyell because he liked...</font>
- he didn’t like hypothetical drawing, he liked to get out there
- and see what was really going on.
- Brian: It was difficult to travel and difficult to go to these places.
- So you had to have a certain commitment and
- a certain, I suppose, frame of mind; fearlessness.
- Richard: He was working at a very interesting time.
- Places in the 19th century were being explored geologically
- for the very first time
- and demanded a geological explanation.
- Things like the Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon was only
- being mapped in the 19th century.
- Brian: So if a well read person, let’s say Darwin, in 1830
- sits down and picks up the Principles of Geology
- Volume One, the first Principles of Geology.
- What sort of experience would that have been?
- Is it a revelatory text in a sense?
- Is it radically different?
- Richard: Lyell saw sedimentary processes now
- and he saw how much sediment accumulated in a given time
- and he realised just how much sediment there was
- if you piled all the geological successions
- that were known one on top of another
- and you could do a crude estimate of how old the world was
- and you would immediately go into millions.
- Which is what Darwin needed in terms of time
- for animal evolution and plant evolution to occur.
- So Lyell made time available to Darwin if you like
- so that he could understand how organismic evolution could happen.
- Brian: Darwin wrote, ‘‘The great merit of the Principles
- was that it altered the whole tone of one’s mind
- and therefore that when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell
- one yet saw it partially through his eyes.’’
- Richard: Which is a very, very good description of a shift in perception
- which is what science is all about.
- Geology when it was new was not
- as highly regarded by the Society as it would be today
- and they would have regarded themselves as rather radical free thinkers.
- As a promulgator of this comparatively new science
- he was without peer and had an enormous influence.
Richard Fortey talks to Brian Cox about pioneering geologist, Charles Lyell, whose work on extending geological time provided credibility to Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
Find out more about Charles Lyell in our Google Arts and Culture exhibit:
With special thanks to the Geological Society of London.
About the Royal Society
91TV is a Fellowship of many of the world's most eminent scientists and is the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence.
/
Subscribe to our YouTube channel for exciting science videos and live events.
Find us on:
Bluesky:
Facebook:
Instagram:
LinkedIn:
TikTok: