To See the Fellows Fight: Eye Witness Accounts of Meetings of the Geological Society of London and its Club, 1822–1868

Edited by:
  • John C. Thackray
British Society for the History of Science (Monograph no. 12). 2003. 244 pp. £15, $26

The Geological Society of London, founded in 1807, was one of the first learned societies to be devoted to a specific science, and it was the first in the world to be devoted to geology. The most significant feature of its early meetings was one that nowadays we take for granted: it was agreed to allow discussion of the papers that were read.

This was in stark contrast to what was customary at the Royal Society, and at learned societies generally, where comments were relegated to private conversations after the formal meeting had ended. There was a fear that if discussion were allowed within a meeting it might degenerate into abusive argument, and that this would undermine the public image of the sciences as bodies of factual knowledge, about which there could not properly be divergent opinions.

In the event, however, the Geological Society's decision to allow discussion was vindicated, and other scientific bodies eventually adopted the same custom. It signalled a tacit acceptance of the vital role of argument and disagreement in the process of establishing and improving scientific knowledge. The Geological Society's meetings became famous for their lively arguments. As the editor of the Tory intellectual Quarterly Review commented: “I don't much care for geology, but I do like to see the Fellows fight.”

This memorable quote has been used as the title for the late John Thackray's valuable collection of contemporary reports of the meetings of the Geological Society in its early decades. The brief official record of the titles of the papers read is followed by excerpts from letters and private journals reporting or commenting on the discussions or on the papers themselves. No formal account of the discussions was published, so these are the only evidence of what those present thought of the papers. Some other valuable accounts are of discussions at the society's informal dining club, rather than its formal meetings.

The collection starts in 1822, with an occasion that epitomizes the star-studded period in the history of English geology that had by then begun. William Buckland of Oxford University described at the club's dinner table how he had reconstructed the ecosystem of ‘ante-diluvial’ (Pleistocene) Yorkshire, based on fossils recently found in Kirkdale Cave: “The hyaenas, gentlemen, preferred the flesh of elephants, rhinoceros, deer, cows, horses &c., but sometimes unable to procure these & half starved they used to come out of the narrow entrance of their cave in the evening down to the water's edge of a lake which must once have been there, & so helped themselves to some of the innumerable water-rats in which the lake abounded.” The prosaic young Charles Lyell was baffled: “We could none of us discern how far he believed himself what he said,” he reported to his friend Gideon Mantell, who had not been present. (In fact, Buckland had good evidence for his reconstruction, and the Royal Society gave him a Copley Medal for it.)

The last report comes from 1868, when summaries of the discussions at meetings began to be published in the society's Proceedings. By this time, the brilliance of the earlier period had begun to fade.

Thackray's book should not be read from cover to cover, but random dipping will yield some absorbing and often entertaining vignettes of a lively and argumentative bunch of highly intelligent scientists. And for historians the book is an invaluable aid to further research, as it brings together comments that illustrate the character and development of some important controversies, including those about the Devonian system and the Pleistocene glaciations. We should be grateful to those of John Thackray's friends who have worked hard to bring his anthology to publication; it is a fine memorial to a colleague who was much loved and respected, and is greatly missed.