zoologzcal 3ournal oJthe Lznnean Soczety (l984), 82 7-16
Interpreting the origin of mammals:
new approaches to the history of
palaeontology
ADRIAN DESMOND
8 Albert Terrace Mews, London N W l 7TA
RPreiwd .IVuaember 1983, accepted f o r publication Decrmber 198.7
New sociological techniques in the history of rcieiicr are described. Their value i s illustrated by
rrinterpreting the diagnostic disputes which occurr.ed Lbllowing the first discovery ol’the Stonesfield
mammals. It is concluded that contextual explanations are more sympathetic to early sa\ ants and
more conducive to the integration of science and social history.
KEY WORDS:-History
of palaeontology
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‘sociology of’ knowledge
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Amphithenurn
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Mesozoic
mammals.
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Introduction .
Interpreting the earliest mammals: the
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Discussion .
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Acknowledgements
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Refercnces.
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14
INTRODLC‘I‘ION
T h e study of science history is currently passing through a p,articularly
vigorous phase, with historians testing a number of new sociological tlechniques.
Thcse developments should be of interest to palaeontologists-not
because
historiography can necessarily help in creationist or cladist disputes, but because
an understanding of the cultural forces involved in the production of scientific
knowledge can be of immense value in gauging the wider significance of
scientific theories. What follows, then, is a short account of one of these new
approaches; and, since this volume is dedicated to Kenneth Kerrnack, it is only
fitting that I consider its application to the historical problem of the origin of
mammals.
Only a decade ago, Berman (1974) deplored the lack of theoretical constructs
in the history of science, arguing that the discipline should be sub-ject to the kind
of conceptual ordering found in the ‘best’ historical writing. That is, it should
seek to explain the direction of science in terms, for instance, of the political
needs, class allegiance, or ‘psychological motivation’ of the groups advancing
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A. DESMOND
particular theories. (For a critique see Inkster & Morrell, 1983.) By the 1970s
there was already widespread dissatisfaction with the ‘Whig’ emphasis on past
‘heroes’ and a positivist historiography of increasing ‘enlightenment’, which
combined to produce an ‘orthogenetic’ image of science history. But since
Berman’s critique sociologists of knowledge have grasped the nettle and begun
to tackle the problem of the social foundations of science. With these changes,
historians have come to think more in terms of historical context. They picture
scientific formulations as cultural creations, generated and appraised by social
groups whose perceptions are affected by contingent circumstances, includingat a macro-level-class, religious, or national factors (Barnes, 1977, 1982). So a
savant’s behaviour in, say, early Victorian times, might be studied to
understand how social interests influenced his perception of nature and the
degree to which his ensuing construction of scientific theory was of ideological
value to his group. These interests are not of course obvious surface phenomena,
but mediated through complex professional, religious, and class levels. Thus
Victorian gentlemen ‘careerists’ (Porter, 1978)-they
might be Oxbridge
Anglicans concerned with social stability or provincial Unitarian progressives
urging reform-would endorse rival scientific formulations because they were
serviceable in different class contexts at times of civil strife. Each formulation
had a ‘meaning’ tied to a particular locus. I t met the needs of a specific
community and was congruent with that group’s perceptions of its world. Such
theories could be used to legitimize political claims, endorse religious beliefs, or
raise professional standing. [In his influential Meaning of Fossils, Rudwick (1972)
understood ‘meaning’ in a parallel KoyrCan sense, in which science was seen to
conform to a contemporary philosophical, rather than strictly social, ethos.]
Shapin (1982: 197) has shown the productivity of an ‘instrumental’ model of
cognitive sociology, in which “knowledge is not regarded . . . as contemplatively
produced by isolated individuals [but] is produced and judged to further
particular collectively sustained goals”.
Combining broader prosopographical techniques (Shapin & Thackray, 1974)
(i.e. statistical analyses of common interests culled from collective biographies)
with detailed personal studies to highlight the range and subtlety of individual
beliefs, we can piece together community interests and appreciate the work
theories were expected to do. This approach, notice, shuns all talk of conscious
bias or deliberate distortion; and by seeing scientific theories meet cultural
expectations, it refrains from scoring the past on the criteria of the present. Thus
it avoids the chauvinism of histories which raise past ‘heroes’ in order to sustain
modern mores and beliefs. Nor are earlier scientists dismissed as merely
precursors; rather, their theories are treated as mature expressions of the
contemporary political and social culture.
Already studies have begun to appear which exploit these new approaches. I n
a seminal work, Morrell & Thackray (1981) have investigated the Anglican
Oxbridge interests of the Gentlemen of Science who dominated the early British
Association for the Advancement of Science. Secord (1982) has interpreted the
imperialist geology of the wealthy Tory R. I. Murchison. And I have examined
the scientific strategies of the socially-aspiring morphologist Richard Owen and
rival ‘plebeian’ science of the evolutionist T . H . Huxley (Desmond, 1982). I n
geology and palaeontology we also have recent studies which provide an
essential base-line for any social analysis. I am thinking of works on scientific
I N 1 LRPKE r I N G 1 H b ORIGIN OF MAMMALS
9
organization and professionalization (Porter, 1978; Laudan, 19’77; Weindling,
1979), as well as internalist (Bowler, 1976) and biographical studies (Sarjeant,
1980).
But rather than discuss theory here, I want briefly to show the new techniques
at work. I must stress that the following account is highly condensed, with the
consequent loss of much of the fine-texture which is so essential for
understanding history ‘in depth’. I t is intended merely as a summary pending a
fuller exposition, with more complete documentation, which will appear in due
course. It does, however, illustrate one way in which contemporary disputes can
be reinterpreted in cultural terms. As an explanation, it proves more equitable
as far as scientific reputations are concerned; it proffers no judgement
concerning ‘truth’ or ‘falsity’ using the fickle vantage point of hindsight (on
which see Barnes & Bloor, 1982); and since it operates at the level of political,
class, and religious interests, it allows even esoteric aspects of scientific
knowledge to be treated as social products.
INTERPRETING T H E EAK1,IEST MAMMALS:
THE FOSSIL ‘UIUELPHIS’, 1834-1844
W. J. Broderip found the first two Stonesfield ‘opossum’ jaws in about 1812,
when a wealthy undergraduate at Oriel College, Oxford (Blainville, 1838a;
Owen, 1871). One he sold to his tutor William Buckland; the other he mislaid,
and only published a description in 1827 on recovering it (Broderip, 1827).
Thus the jaws, coming from the Oxford Oolitic deposits, immediately fell to the
conservative Oxonians. Buckland was a clergyman, handsomely paid at
&lo00 p.a. from the mid-1820s as Canon of Christ Church. H e was a leading
force in the gentlemanly Geological Society and by the 1830s ‘xentific’ adviser
to the Conservative leader Sir Robert Peel, through whom he gained patronage
for his Tory friends. His protkgi: Broderip, who played a 1ead:ing role in the
founding of the Zoological Society cf. 1826), was appointed magistrate at
Thames Police Court in 1822 by Lord Sidmouth, hated by radicals for his
repressive measures.
Master and pupil considered the fossil jaws ‘mammiferous’ (Buckland, 1824;
Cuvier, 1825), even though some doubted the existence of’ mammals in
‘poikilitic’ strata and attempted to reinterpret the Stonesfield slate as postCretaceous (Prkvost, 1825). Broderip (1827) pointed out that, with only seven
grinders, his fossil was ‘generically different’ from Buckland’s (with 10 grinders)
and closer in dental formula to an opossum. He designated it Didelphis Bucklandi
to distinguish it from the other specimen which Cuvier had called D.Prevostii.
By the 1830s the dominant coterie at the Geological Society, comprising
Buckland, Charles Lyell, Adam Sedgwick, and William Fitton (on the
characteristics of this eminent group: Morrell, 1976; 138-9), uncritically
accepted the ‘opossum’ diagnosis and Oolitic age of the entombing slate. And by
the late 1820s some (Lyell, see Bartholomew, 1973: 276) had devised antitransformist strategies which could accommodate the Stonesfield jaws.
But dissent from this mammalian diagnosis did occur, peaking in the
turbulent 1830s, a decade of stress and mob violence following the Reform Bill
crises of 1831-2 (Thompson, 1980). It is not that scientific dissent can be set
against a revolutionary context; it was actually a constitutive part of the ideology
10
A. DESMOND
of radical reform. Radicalism found its scientific teeth in the comparative
anatomy of the Scots Lamarckian Robert E. Grant (Desmond, 1984a). In 1827
Grant had been recruited from Edinburgh to teach zoology in the new
utilitarian London University, an institution representing the ‘mercantile’ nonAnglican interest in the city (a deliberate rival to the ancient universities with
their Tory Established Church backing). Grant (1826) in Edinburgh had
already championed Lamarckism and taken part in the Plinian Society’s
materialist debates (Gruber, 1974; Desmond, 1984a). I n his London lectures he
sought to reduce life to physico-chemical phenomena. H e generally avoided
natural theology, employed naturalistic explanations, and was avowedly
secular, satirizing Providence in class (Godlee, 1921). Thus he cut through the
kind of creationist biology by which the “‘Church and State’ bigots” (Wakley,
1830-1 : 689) justified their social control and privileged existence. His science
constituted a direct political threat, for which reason his lectures were published
and praised by Thomas Wakley, editor of The Lancet, champion of labour, and
radical M P for Finsbury (from 1835). Both Wakley and Grant deplored the
‘monastic ignorance’ of the established universities (Grant, 1830; Wakley,
1830-1 ); they attacked the chartered corporations (Royal Colleges of Physicians
and Surgeons) for their nepotism, elitism, and monopolistic regulation of the
profession (Grant, 1833, 1841) and fought for the rights of the rank-and-file or
‘commonalty’ (Brook, 1945: 79; Sprigge, 1899). They were democrats making
socially-levelling demands for suffrage, parliamentary reform, and the abolition
of privilege. Grant had no truck with Anglican science: he shunned Paleyan
teleology, creationism, and other aristocratic impositions. Instead he imported
materialist Parisian doctrines, principally Geoffroyan transcendental anatomy,
which already had liberal overtones (Appel, 1975: 185, 211), and Lamarck’s
serial progression of life.
So Grant’s understanding of fossil life would have profoundly differed from
Buckland’s. Grant needed an undeviating Lamarckian ascent to establish the
operation of materialistic laws; like later reformers and ‘evolutionists’ (e.g.
Robert Chambers and Herbert Spencer; Young, 1965; Peel, 1971), he would
have welcomed an inexorable lawful ascent as a weapon against aristocratic
resistance to social melioration and continued political progress. But the need
for irrevocable ascent made accommodation of a Secondary mammal difficult.
The progressive sequence was presumed to be from Secondary reptiles to
Tertiary mammals. Geoffroy (1833) had even argued that the birth of mammals
was unlikely in Secondary times, on the grounds that their respiratory organs
would have been ill-suited to the low oxygen concentration. Grant was thus first
to oppose the mammalian diagnosis (Valenciennes, 1838), arguing in his 1834
London lectures that Cuvier’s Montmartre excavations had indeed revealed
Eocene opossums, but that the ancient Stonesfield jaws had been “erroneously
ascribed to the same animal” (Grant, 1833-4: 72).
However, the leading fellows of the Geological Society took no action until
Grant reasserted his position in his General View of the Characters and the Distribution
of Extinct Animals (published in the British Annual in 1839 and as a separate tract
in 1839). Although other scholars have tackled the events at the Society in
1838-9 (Gerstner, 1970; Bowler, 1976: 20-1; Rupke, 1983: 162-4), by failing to
notice Grant’s role they have missed the crucial transformist aspect of the debate.
Understanding Grant’s position allows us to place the episode within the larger
IN‘IERPRE‘IING THE: O R I G I N OF MAMMALS
I1
social context. Owen, Buckland and the gentlemen of the Society were intent on
highlighting the absurdity of Lamarckian change, of a materialist system
divorced from moral influence and self-sustaining (Owen, 1842: 202:i. Neutral,
apolitical geological enquiry was to be presented as final arbiter of the fate of
radical transformism. Grant’s dissension was well known in Paris by 1838 and
pointed out to Henri de Blainville, himself a champion of the Lamarckian series
for anti-Cuvierian reasons (Appel, 1980) and critical of the ‘opossum” diagnosis
(Blainville, 1838a,b). Blainville compared the complex crowns and roots of the
Stonesfield molars to those of Richard Harlan’s ‘saurian’ Basilosaurus as proof
that these were not exclusively mammalian features, and he coined the name
Amphitherium for the Oxford fossils. Grant (1839: 7, 42-5, 54) immediately
accepted Blainville’s name; he published an account of the known jaws (four by
now), and agreed that Rasilosaurus was a “closely allied” genus. He actually
‘saw’ the jaws’ composite structure; faith in Lamarckian serialism had shaped
even his perception of anatomical characteristics.
Buckland went to great pains to discredit this reinterpretation. With
disaffection spreading to France and Germany, he now visited the European
capitals with the originals of D.premrtii and D. bucklandi. Aided by the
sympathetic Cuvierian Achille Valenciennes in Paris, he had casts made and
presented to members of the Acadkmie. Valenciennes (1838) observed only a
single dentary, favourably comparing the jaws to those of the living Didelphis
murina; finding nothing anomalous he rechristened the fossil marsupial
Tlgdacotherium. In September 1838 Buckland moved on to Freiberg (where he
joined up with Owen) to place the fossils before the congress of German
naturalists, hoping for an equally decisive result.
But the problem remained Grant. His serial transformism made it imperative
to dispense with his palaeontological views as publicly as possible. and Buckland
naturally turned to Owen for help. Owen had received extensive patronage
from Broderip and Buckland. Broderip, the Tory Vice-President of the
Zoological Society, had helped Owen onto the Council (and in turn been
supported when he himself came under radical flak in 1835 for resisting electoral
demands for his replacement). The two men backed a Tory clique intent on
removing Grant from the Council, following his demands for reform and greater
accountability (Derby el al., 1835; Wakley, 1836-7). Buckland had played host
to the Owens on honeymoon in 1835. He attended Owen’s Hunterian lectures,
supplied him with fossils for his (anti-transformist) analysis of British saurians
(Owen, 1842), and financed him from the coffers of the Geological Society and
British Association. Owen (1837: 33-6; also 1842) took examples of retrogressive
fossil sequences from Buckland (1837) and both employed. a model of
punctuated progression to defeat the transformists. Owen was wcll suited to the
task. He had been trained at the monopolistic College of Sur!geons by J. H.
Green, amanuensis and medical disciple of Coleridge, and a leading conservative
romantic. Just as Coleridge ( 1972: 53) had deplored mechanics’ institutes,
“lecture bazaars” (i.e. joint-stock London University), and the “plebzfication” of
science, so Owen’s scientific strategy typified the Anglican elite’s response to the
democratic challenge. (Owen felt the threat directly: his own College was one of
the reformers’ chief targets: Grant, 1841; Desmond, 1984b.) Therefore it was in
his interest to welcome the Stonesfield marsupial for breaking the Lamarckian
continuum and to endorse the ‘creative’ alternative employed by the geological
12
A. DESMOND
aristocracy in their argument for a divinely-instituted natural and social order
(Morrell & Thackray, 1981).
Buckland loaned the two Ashmolean jaws to Owen, who concluded in the
first part of his paper, read to the Geological Society in November 1838, that
they were definitely mammalian (on account of the convex condyle). He
pointed to George Waterhouse’s newly-discovered numbat Myrmecobius as the
closest living marsupial. Since Waterhouse considered the numbat, with nine
molars in each half jaw, as “analogically” comparable to Tupaia among the
Insectivora (Waterhouse, 1841), Thylacotherium Prevostii (with 10 molars) could
be considered an insectivorous marsupial (Owen, 1841a ) . This is what Buckland
wanted to hear, but Owen met heavy resistance. The Athenaeum reported that
his talk sparked “a protracted and brilliant discussion’’ and that the result was
more favourable to the “ ‘progressive’ theory” (i.e. serial progression) than
anyone had expected (Anon., 1838a, b). Grant’s was presumably the main voice
raised in opposition, since the only other dissident, William Ogilby, remained
largely undecided (Ogilby, 1839; Owen, 1846: 37). Buckland was probably as
surprised as the Athenaeum reporter by the resistance and now prepared to ‘stack’
the gallery for the second instalment. H e invited the former Whig Chancellor,
Lord Brougham, to witness the onslaught on Blainville’s “Botheratiotherium”
and to dine with the Society “Clite” (Buckland, 1838a). Buckland (1838b) was
critically aware of the ideological importance of the Stonesfield question and
told Owen that it was essential to establish the beast’s marsupial nature as
quickly as possible because of Grant’s views. While in his next letter to
Brougham, he talked of the forthcoming “skirmish” and of giving the “coup de
grdce” to those defending a reptilian diagnosis (Buckland, 1 8 3 8 ~ ) .
Owen read the second paper on 19 December, when he renamed Broderip’s jaw
Phascolotherium (Owen, 1841a). All that remained was to invalidate the last piece
of evidence supporting the ‘saurian hypothesis’, i.e. the reptilian nature of
Harlan’s Basilosaurus, with its complex roots like those of the Stonesfield jaws.
O n the 19th Owen and Buckland agreed tactics and Buckland began drafting a
paper proving that Basilosaurus was an aquatic mammal and challenging
Blainville’s and Grant’s use of the fossil (Buckland, 1839). Harlan was a skilful
American palaeontologist, equally adept at publicizing his discoveries and
ingratiating himself with the London savants (Gerstner, 1970; Harlan, 1834). In
January 1839 he arrived unexpectedly in Europe packing basilosaur bones from
the Alabama plantations. This gave Buckland and Owen an excellent
opportunity to confirm their belief that Basilosaurus was no reptile. In a letter
Buckland made clear to Owen the tactical advantage of persuading Harlan
himselfto recant publicly at the Society and swing the vote-or, failing that, for
Owen to override Harlan’s diagnosis. Either way it was imperative to promote
Basilosaurus “to the Rank of a mammal and get the promotion gazetted in the
Report of the Geol. Society” (Buckland, 1839). Overriding Harlan proved
unnecessary. Although the Society’s minute book reveals that Grant introduced
Harlan as his guest on 9 *January (Geological Society, 1839), the statement
Harlan then read reveals that he had been successfully converted by Owen.
Evidently Owen had borrowed the bones the previous week, sectioning and
microscopically examining them a t the College of Surgeons, while persuading
Harlan that they were in fact cetacean (Harlan, 1841). At the Geological
Society Owen then capped Harlan’s ‘recantation’ by renaming the whale
INTERPRETING T H E O R I G I N OF MAMMALS
13
Zeuglodon, nailing the coffin lid of the “Saurian hypothesis” (Owen, 184lb), and
with it hopes for a transformist continuum.
DISCUSSION
Gerstner (1970: 147) sees Owen’s and Harlan’s joint examination as a n
exercise in Transatlantic cooperation, but study of manuscript s’Durcessuggests
that Owen and Buckland had aimed to create such an impression. They
conspired to present the Society dissidents with a fait accompli. Thus Owen’s
mode of presentation was crucially important. It was less an exercise in
international good-will than an attempt to regain the co-opted Iossils and turn
them to anti-serialist ends. Buckland was aware of the need to ensure maximum
publicity for the rout; and understandably so, since there was considerably more
at stake than simply correct interpretation. With science integrated into
strategies designed to achieve wider social and political goals, one can
appreciate Buckland’s sensitivity to the Lamarckian threat of the anti-Tory
radicals, who were themselves turning to nature for support.
So the marsupial diagnosis did not succeed solely because of more accurate
observation. I t also reflected the failure of doctrinaire radicalism with its interest
in a reptilian Amphitherium. While Grant’s transcendental anatomy was
applauded by middle-class liberal journals, his hard-nosed naturalism-the
ideology of secular democratic thought-received
little support except from
radical extremists, and radicalism itself was becoming increasingly impotent in
the Peelite 1840s. Not only was the outcome of the Stonesfield dehate in keeping
with the political times, but for Owen there were more than professional benefits.
Because his anti-transformist strategy was well received by the new political
masters, it continued to pay dividends. Financed by the conservative managers
of the British Association to the tune ofL200 in 1841, he was able to draw up a
report on extinct mammals (Owen, 1843) and ultimately turn this into his
History of British Fossil Mammals, which extracted fresh capital from the
Stonesfield incident (Owen, 1846: 37-42). So the real pay-off for cooperation
with Peelites came in terms of pecuniary aid. Owen was always sensitive to the
spirit in which the awards were given; and at the learned sociei.ies a.nd British
Association he continued on the anti-Lamarckian attack. For his Creative
dcfence he was lionized by Tory gentry and Conservative Members of the
House like Lord Francis Egerton and Sir Philip Egerton, whose socially-stratified
moral cosmos was under threat. (‘l’he late 1830s were notorious far Chartist
violence-peace
was maintained in Birmingham in 1839 while Owen was
reading his first paper on British saurians by cavalry with drawn sabres: Morrell
& Thackray, 1981: 52.)
With the collapse of Lord Melbourne’s liberal ministry in 1841 and Peel’s
return to No. 10, Buckland engineered a massive Civil List pension of A200 p.a.
for Owen (Buckland, 1842; MacLeod, 1970; Desmond, 1984b), emphasizing his
“sound” religious views and Paleyite piety in a letter to Peel. This enabled
Owen to publish hisHistory in 12 parts without financial worry (Owen, 1894: i, 207).
Grant never fully accepted a ‘marsupial’ Amphitherium (Grant, 1853: 176;
Desmond, 1984c), but as a n out-of-favour radical in financial difficulty he now
lacked comparable resources for promoting his rival ‘fossil zoology’ (Anon.,
1850: 69 1). Party gifts therefore enabled Owen to publicize his providential
14
A. DESMOND
palaeontology-and since this was an integral part of wider Peelite strategies,
his ‘didelphid’ diagnosis was quickly enshrined in Victorian gentlemanly
geology.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I should like to thank William F. Bynum, James A. Secord, and Michael Benton
for discussions and criticism; and the following libraries for allowing me access to
manuscript material: British Library; British Museum (Natural History);
Geological Society of London; Royal College of Surgeons of England; and
University College London.
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INTERPRETING 'I'HE O R I G I N OF MAMMALS
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