Ecology before ecology: biogeography and ecology in Lyell's ‘ Principles ’

Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (first published in three volumes between 1830 and 1833) has been described as ‘the most famous geological book ever written’ (Gould 2000, p. 159). The second volume (1832) is primarily biological in content; indeed a modern subtitle for this volume could be ‘Ecology and biogeography, a palaeontological perspective’. Most commentators on the biological importance of The Principles have focused on two aspects; its hostility to Lamark’s evolutionary ideas and the influence of the book on the young Charles Darwin (e.g. Oldroyd 2002). However, as David Wool (2001) has recently pointed out, many aspects of the ecology in The Principles appear surprisingly modern, although the term ‘ecology’ was not coined until nearly 50 years after its publication. Care is needed as it is easy to misinterpret such a book by focusing on the ideas which seem prescient to a modern reader while ignoring the apparently wrong ideas in which they are embedded. Indeed the ecology in Lyell’s Principles is just as interesting for the absence of now commonplace ideas as well as interpretations that seem bizarre to modern readers (some of which were also considered strange by many of Lyell’s contemporaries). The Principles went through 12 editions during Lyell’s life time (Figs 1 and 2) and is unusual in that although the book had an enormous influence on geology it led to no distinct Lyellian school or research tradition (Rudwick 1978). This essay concentrates on volume two of the first edition. The content of The Principles changed quite considerably over the nearly 50 years between the first and twelfth editions, by concentrating on the first edition my aim is to focus on the ecological understanding of a leading British scientist in the early 1830s. Using later editions would lead to a different interpretation of several points (Box 1 or compare this essay with Wool (2001) who relied on the 9th edition of 1853). The core of Lyell’s approach in The Principles is a very strict version of uniformitarianism which stressed that the causes of geological change observed acting today were wholly adequate to explain past changes and that these causes had always acted at the currently observed rates (Gould 1987; Rudwick 1998). Therefore Lyell reviews current geological and biological processes in detail, as these should allow the correct interpretation of past events. This led Lyell to postulate a steady-state world where biological species became extinct at a rate balanced by the creation of new species (by a mechanism he left unspecified). Peter Bowler (2000) has argued that this ultra strict version of uniformitarianism arose from Lyell’s attempt to produce a theoretical approach to geology that was in accord with the definitions of science current in philosophy at the time. Bowler suggested that in this, Lyell was behaving in an unusual manner for a scientist in that his theories were partly driven by philosophical concerns rather than merely using philosophy to justify a scientific position that had been reached without philosophical input.