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SCIENCE STUDIES EVENTS
A MEMBER IN NAME ONLY: GEOLOGY AS A COMPONENT IN
19TH CENTURY AMERICAN NATURAL HISTORY
Julie Newell
Southern Polytechnic State University
Social and International Studies Program
April 7, 2005
Thursday, 5:00pm-6:30pm
Sumwalt College, Room 102
Natural history was a popular pursuit in nineteenth-century America,
finding a wide audience in public lectures, books, periodicals, and local
societies. Often described by historians as a combination of &$151; or
precursor to &$151; botany, zoology, and geology, natural history combined
healthy outdoor activity with wholesome contemplation of the content and
order of the Creation. The place of "geology" in this arrangement, however,
became increasingly problematic. As geology emerged as the preeminent
science, especially in the United States, of the first half of the
nineteenth century, it required and achieved widespread pubic support even
as amateur participation in the science became more difficult and less
desirable.
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