Abstract
Beginning the nineteenth-century and continuing down to the present, many authors writing on the history of geology and paleontology have attributed the theory that fossils were inorganic formations produced within the earth, rather than by the deposition of living organisms, to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Some have even gone so far as to claim this was the consensus view in the classical period up through the Middle Ages. In fact, such a notion was entirely foreign to ancient and medieval thought and only appeared within the manifold of ‘Renaissance episteme,’ the characteristics of which have often been projected backwards by some historians onto earlier periods. This paper endeavors to correct this error, explain the development of the Renaissance view, describe certain ancient precedents thereof, and trace the history of the misinterpretation in the literature.
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Notes
‘DK’ refers to the Diels-Kranz numbering of the fragments of the Presocratics.
Like many prevalent beliefs of antiquity that strike modern ears as ludicrous, the notion of spontaneous generation had strong (but incomplete) evidence in its favor. Aristotle, for example, was aware of fishermen’s testimony that they had never seen a juvenile eel, nor one carrying eggs; and he noticed in his own dissections that eels lack sex organs. From this he reasonably inferred that eels can thus be “neither male nor female, and can engender nothing,” and concluded that they “are derived from the so-called ‘earth’s guts’ that grow spontaneously in mud and in humid ground.” (Hist. An. 538a3, 570a16–17; cf. Plutarch, Moralia 637e). It was not until 1859 that Louis Pasteur finally buried the notion of spontaneous generation, and it wasn’t until the twentieth century that it was discovered that European eels migrate thousands of miles to breed in the Sargasso Sea, developing their sex organs along the way. The adult eels spawn and die there and the young undergo several metamorphoses before returning to European waters.
Lister says: “we will easily believe, that in some Countries, and particularly along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, there may be found all manner of Sea shells promiscuously included in Rocks or Earth, and at good distances from the Sea.” (Lister 1671, VI. 2282) John Ray concurred on this point with Lister, noting the fossils found in England and Flanders vary so much from place to place, both in type and in quantity, that is seems more liked that they are formed in situ by conditions specific to the place, rather than mixed up and laid down generally, as one would otherwise expect in an oceanic environment.
In a similar manner, Renaissance mineralogy was grounded in a sexual rather than mechanical conceptual framework, much of which derived from the Stoic notion of logoi spermatikoi as transmitted by Plotinus. See Enneads, IV.3.10. Cf. Oldroyd 1974, 130–3.
Rudwick claims that “Steno felt no sense of strain in accommodating his six-phase geological history of Tuscany within the bounds of conventional chronology…So far was he from feeling he had to compress his history into an embarrassingly short time-scale, that his arguments show precisely the opposite concern, namely that he might be ridiculed for placing his events at such a great antiquity.” (Rudwick 1976, p. 72. Cf. Rudwick 2014, pp. 45f–6) I am unsure of how to interpret this passage in the manner Rudwick suggests, as Steno here is clearly concerned with the potential excess of time fossil bearing beds imply. Oldroyd concurs with this assessment. (Oldroyd 1996, p. 67).
Pliny mentions glossopetrae. (Nat. hist. xxxvii.10) Steno was not the first to recognize the true origin of glossopetrae; the claim had been made earlier by Fabio Colonna and by Conrad Gessner; see Adams 1938, p. 117; Rudwick 1976, pp. 30–1, 42–3. He was, however, the first to prove it by detailed analysis. Among many arguments, Steno showed that the fossilized teeth often showed signs of decay (Rudwick 1976, p. 50; Oldroyd 1996, p. 63). Steno’s work on fossils quickly attracted noticed and appeared in English translation in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. (Rudwick 1976, 53) Cf. V. A. Eyles, “The Influence of Nicholaus Steno on the Development of Geological Science in Britain,” in Nicholaus Steno and His Indice, ed. G. Sherz (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1958): 167–188. Hooke also examined fossilized wood under the newly invented microscope and noted that it showed a mineralized lattice of cells similar to that seen in living plants. (Rudwick 2014, p. 40).
This full title of the treatise is De juventute et senectute, De vita et morte, De respiratione. The division into sections is not given in the manuscript, but the latter part, De respiratione, is commonly regarded as pseudo-Aristotelian, while the former is regarded as authentic.
Adams’ spurious reference to De respiration has proliferated on the literature; see Tom McCann, The Geology of Central Europe. (Bath: The Geological Society Publishing House, 2008), 1.
In spite of his claim that most ancient writers supported the endogenic theory, Adams correctly interprets this passage. (Adams 1938, pp. 17, 81).
I’d like to thank Staffan Müller-Wille for noting this point.
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Jordan, J.M. ‘Ancient episteme’ and the nature of fossils: a correction of a modern scholarly error. HPLS 38, 90–116 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-015-0094-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-015-0094-6