Everything about Adam Sedgwick totally explained
Adam Sedgwick (
22 March 1785–
27 January 1873) was one of the founders of modern
geology. He proposed the
Devonian period of the
geological timescale and later the
Cambrian period. The latter proposal was based on work which he did on Welsh
rock strata.
Sedgwick was born in
Dent,
Yorkshire, the third child of an Anglican vicar. He was educated at
Sedbergh School and
Trinity College, Cambridge.
He obtained his BA (5th
Wrangler) from the
University of Cambridge in
1808 and his MA in
1811. His academic mentors at Cambridge were
Thomas Jones and
John Dawson.
Sedwick studied the geology of the British Isles and Europe. He founded the system for the classification of Cambrian rocks and with
Roderick Murchison worked out the order of the carboniferous and underlying Devonian strata. He investigated the phenomena of metamorphism and concretion, and was the first to distinguish clearly between
stratification,
jointing, and
slaty cleavage. He was elected to Fellow of the
Royal Society on
1 February 1821.
Opposition to Evolution
While by no means a
fundamentalist or
evangelical by today’s standards, Sedgwick always maintained a fine line between his science and his faith. His geological position was
catastrophist, and he believed in a succession of Divine creative acts throughout the long expanse of history. Any form of development that denied a direct creative action smacked as materialistic and amoral. For Sedgwick,
moral truths (the obtainment of which separates man from beast) were to be distinguished from physical truths, and to combine these or blur them together could only lead to disastrous consequences. In fact, one’s own hope for
immortality may ultimately rest on it.
So, when
Robert Chambers anonymously published his own theory of
evolution, or development, in the book
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (
1844), Sedgwick jumped at the chance to attack the book in the July,
1845 edition of the
Edinburgh Review.
Vestiges "comes before [itsreaders] with a bright, polished, and many-coloured surface, and the serpent coils a false philosophy, and asks them to stretch out their hands and pluck the forbidden fruit," he wrote in his review. Accepting the arguments in Vestiges was akin to falling from grace and away from God’s favor.
He lashed out at the book in a letter to
Charles Lyell, bemoaning the consequences of it conclusions. "...If the book be true, the labours of sober induction are in vain; religion is a lie; human law is a mass of folly, and a base injustice; morality is moonshine; our labours for the black people of Africa were works of madmen; and man and woman are only better beasts!" Later, Sedgwick would add a long preface to the 5th edition of his
Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge (
1850), including a lengthy attack on
Vestiges and theories of development in general.
Charles Darwin was one of his geological students and the two kept up a correspondence while Darwin was aboard the
HMS Beagle. However, Sedgwick never accepted the case for evolution made in the
Origin of Species any more than he did in the
Vestiges. In response to receiving and reading Darwin's book, he wrote to Darwin saying:
» "If I didn't think you a good tempered and truth-loving man I shouldn't tell you that ... I've read your book with more pain than pleasure. Parts of it I admired greatly; parts I laughed at till my sides were almost sore; other parts I read with absolute sorrow; because I think them utterly false and grievously mischievous. You have deserted - after a start in that tram-road of all solid physical truth - the true method of induction ..."
In the same letter, once again, Sedgwick emphasized his distinction between the moral and physical aspects of life, "There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical. A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly." To break this distinction would be to degrade and brutalize humanity. In a letter to another correspondent, Sedgwick was even harsher on Darwin's book, calling it "
utterly false" and writing that "It repudiates all reasoning from final causes; and seems to shut the door on any view (however feeble) of the God of Nature as manifested in His works. From first to last it's a dish of rank materialism cleverly cooked and served up."
Despite this difference of opinion, the two men remained friendly until Sedgwick's death.
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