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66-402: The Murchison Medal is an academic award established by Roderick Murchison , who died in 1871. First awarded in 1873, it is normally given to people who have made a significant contribution to geology by means of a substantial body of research and for contributions to 'hard' rock studies. One of the closing public acts of Murchison's life was the founding of a chair of geology and mineralogy in

132-543: A "literary curiosity". However, the high profile of the public debate over Vestiges , with its depiction of evolution as a progressive process, and its popular success, would greatly influence the perception of Darwin's theory a decade later. It also influenced some younger naturalists, including Alfred Russel Wallace , to take an interest in the idea of transmutation. The proponents of transmutation were almost all inclined to Deism —the idea, popular among many 18th century Western intellectuals that God had initially created

198-502: A driving force in the universe’s journey towards improvement. In addition, Erasmus believed that nature had some amount of agency in this inheritance. Darwin spun his own story of how nature began to develop from the ocean, and then slowly became more diverse and more complex. His transmutation theory relied heavily on the needs which drove animal competition, as well as the results of this contest between both animals and plants. Charles Darwin acknowledged his grandfather’s contribution to

264-518: A form of progressive creation, in which each species had its "centre of creation" and was designed for this particular habitat, but would go extinct when this habitat changed. Another source of opposition to transmutation was a school of naturalists who were influenced by the German philosophers and naturalists associated with idealism , such as Goethe , Hegel and Lorenz Oken . Idealists such as Louis Agassiz and Richard Owen believed that each species

330-630: A gigantic system of dislocations, whereby successive masses of the oldest gneisses , have been exhumed from below and thrust over the younger formations. In 1855 Murchison was appointed director-general of the British Geological Survey and director of the Royal School of Mines and the Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street, London, in succession to Sir Henry De la Beche , who had been

396-445: A large role in allowing species to change, develop and become extinct, as well as having new species form. Specifically, Diderot believed that given randomness and an infinite number of times, all possible scenarios would manifest themselves. He proposed that this randomness was behind the development of new traits in offspring and as a result the development and extinction of species. Diderot drew from Leonardo da Vinci’s comparison of

462-428: A leading scientist helped keep transmutational ideas out of the scientific mainstream for decades. In Britain, where the philosophy of natural theology remained influential, William Paley wrote the book Natural Theology with its famous watchmaker analogy , at least in part as a response to the transmutational ideas of Erasmus Darwin . Geologists influenced by natural theology, such as Buckland and Sedgwick, made

528-442: A linear ladder of complexity that was related to the great chain of being . Lamarck also recognized that species were adapted to their environment. He explained this observation by saying that the same nervous fluid driving increasing complexity, also caused the organs of an animal (or a plant) to change based on the use or disuse of that organ, just as muscles are affected by exercise. He argued that these changes would be inherited by

594-426: A more scientific text) his beliefs about the connections between organic life. He notes particularly that some plants and animals have "useless appendages", which have gradually changed from their original, useful states. Additionally, Darwin relied on cosmological transformation as a crucial aspect of his theory of transformation, making a connection between William Herschel’s approach to natural historical cosmology and

660-477: A radical British school of comparative anatomy, fostered a lot of debate around natural history. Edinburgh, which included the surgeon Robert Knox and the anatomist Robert Grant , was closely in touch with Lamarck's school of French Transformationism , which contained scientists such as Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire . Grant developed Lamarck's and Erasmus Darwin 's ideas of transmutation and evolutionism , investigating homology to prove common descent . As

726-481: A regular practice of attacking the evolutionary ideas of Lamarck and Grant, and Sedgwick wrote a famously harsh review of The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation . Although the geologist Charles Lyell opposed scriptural geology, he also believed in the immutability of species, and in his Principles of Geology (1830–1833) he criticized and dismissed Lamarck's theories of development. Instead, he advocated

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792-400: A tree. After mineral life evolves vegetation. The evolution of vegetation culminates with a tree which bears the qualities of an animal. This is the date-palm. It has male and female genders. It does not wither if all its branches are chopped but it dies when the head is cut off. The date-palm is therefore considered the highest among the trees and resembles the lowest among animals. Then is born

858-468: A very different approach from Diderot: chance and blind combinations of atoms, in de la Bretonne's opinion, were not the cause of transmutation. De la Bretonne argued that all species had developed from more primitive organisms, and that nature aimed to reach perfection. Denis Diderot , chief editor of the Encyclopédie , spent his time poring over scientific theories attempting to explain rock strata and

924-475: A young student Charles Darwin joined Grant in investigations of the life cycle of marine animals. He also studied geology under professor Robert Jameson whose journal published an anonymous paper in 1826 praising "Mr. Lamarck" for explaining how the higher animals had "evolved" from the "simplest worms" – this was the first use of the word "evolved" in a modern sense. Professor Jameson was a Wernerian, which allowed him to consider transformation theories and foster

990-681: Is a Murchison Avenue in Old Bexley, southeast London. Scarborough in North Yorkshire has a Murchison Street. Murchison's View is named after him. The viewpoint within the Wren's Nest area of Dudley gives a panoramic view over much of Birmingham and the Black Country. Murchinson's visits to the limestone hills of Dudley helped him to develop his understanding of the Silurian System. When he returned to

1056-555: Is indeed none but God. Everything begins from Him and everything returns to Him. In the 14th century, Ibn Khaldun further developed these ideas. According to some commentators, statements in his 1377 work, the Muqaddimah anticipate the biological theory of evolution. Robert Hooke proposed in a speech to the Royal Society in the late 17th century that species vary, change, and especially become extinct. His “Discourse of Earthquakes”

1122-745: The American Antiquarian Society . Three years later, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society . In 1863 he was made a KCB , and three years later he was created a baronet . The learned societies of his own country bestowed their highest rewards upon him: the Royal Society gave him the Copley Medal , the Geological Society its Wollaston medal , and the Royal Society of Edinburgh its Brisbane Medal. There

1188-459: The British Geological Survey from 1855 until his death in 1871. He is noted for investigating and describing the Silurian , Devonian and Permian systems. Murchison was born at Tarradale House , Muir of Ord , Ross-shire , the son of Barbara and Kenneth Murchison. His wealthy father died in 1796, when Roderick was four years old, and he was sent to Durham School three years later and then to

1254-612: The English border counties , were embodied in The Silurian System (1839). The English naturalist, geologist, and palaeontologist John William Salter assisted Murchison in his work on Siluria (1854 and later editions). The establishment of the Silurian system was followed by that of the Devonian system, an investigation in which Murchison assisted, both in the south-west of England and in

1320-563: The Highlands Controversy . James Nicol recognised the fallacy in Murchison's theory and propounded his own ideas; in the 1880s these were superseded by the correct theory of Charles Lapworth , which was corroborated by Benjamin Peach and John Horne . Their subsequent research showed that the infraposition of the fossiliferous rocks is not their original place, but had been brought about by

1386-557: The Old Red Sandstone could be grouped into a definite order of succession. The result was the establishment of the Silurian system under which were grouped, for the first time, a remarkable series of formations, each replete with distinctive organic remains other than and very different from those of the other rocks of England. These researches, together with descriptions of the coalfields and overlying formations in South Wales and

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1452-558: The Rhineland . Soon afterwards Murchison projected an important geological campaign in Russia with the view of extending to that part of the Continent the classification he had succeeded in elaborating for the older rocks of western Europe. He was accompanied by Édouard de Verneuil (1805–1873) and Count Alexander von Keyserling (1815–1891), in conjunction with whom he produced a work on Russia and

1518-619: The Royal Military College, Great Marlow , to be trained for the army. In 1808 he landed with Wellesley in Portugal, and was present at the actions of Roliça and Vimeiro in the Peninsular War as an ensign in the 36th Regt of Foot . Subsequently, under Sir John Moore , he took part in the retreat to Corunna and the final battle there. After eight years of service Murchison left the army and married Charlotte Hugonin (1788–1869),

1584-585: The University of Edinburgh . Under his will there was established the Murchison Medal and geological fund ( The Murchison Fund ) to be awarded annually by the council of the Geological Society of London . Source: Geological Society Roderick Murchison Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, 1st Baronet (19 February 1792 – 22 October 1871 ) was a Scottish geologist who served as director-general of

1650-596: The Ural Mountains . The publication of this monograph in 1845 completes the first and most active half of Murchison's scientific career. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1840. In 1846 he was knighted, and in the same year he presided over the meeting of the British Association at Southampton . During the later years of his life, a large part of his time

1716-572: The 18th and early 19th century had to invent terms to label their ideas, but it was first Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter who used the term "transmutation" to refer to species who have had biological changes through hybridization. The terminology did not settle down until some time after the publication of the Origin of Species . The word evolved in a modern sense was first used in 1826 in an anonymous paper published in Robert Jameson's journal and evolution

1782-580: The 18th century. They saw progress in human history as being mirrored by the development of life from the simple to the complex over the history of the Earth. This connection was very clear in the work of Erasmus Darwin and Robert Chambers . Ideas about the transmutation of species were strongly associated with the anti-Christen materialism and radical political ideas of the Enlightenment and were greeted with hostility by more conservative thinkers. Cuvier attacked

1848-438: The 2020 film Ammonite . He is played by James McArdle . Transmutation of species Transmutation was one of the names commonly used for evolutionary ideas in the 19th century before Charles Darwin published On The Origin of Species (1859). Transmutation had previously been used as a term in alchemy to describe the transformation of base metals into gold. Other names for evolutionary ideas used in this period include

1914-801: The Royal Geographical Society and the British Geological Survey." The chief geological investigation of the last decade of his life was devoted to the Highlands of Scotland, where he wrongly believed he had succeeded in showing that the vast masses of crystalline schists , previously supposed to be part of what used to be termed the Primitive formations, were really not older than the Silurian period, since underneath them lay beds of limestone and quartzite containing Lower Silurian ( Cambrian ) fossils . This started off what became known as

1980-507: The Silurian classification into other countries. In 1845, whilst visiting Carclew in Cornwall , he met several Cornish miners who were going to Australia. Believing that there might be gold there, he asked them to send back likely samples. They did this, and thus Murchison knew of the existence of gold in Australia before Edward Hargraves ' discovery. In 1857, Murchison was elected a member of

2046-399: The adjoining parts of Hampshire and Surrey , on which, aided by Fitton, he wrote his first scientific paper, read to the Geological Society of London in 1825. Turning his attention to Continental geology, he and Lyell explored the volcanic region of Auvergne , parts of southern France, northern Italy, Tyrol and Switzerland. A little later, with Sedgwick as his companion, Murchison attacked

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2112-481: The appropriate times, rather than continually interfering with ad hoc miracles each time a new species was required. In 1844 the Scottish publisher Robert Chambers anonymously published an influential and extremely controversial book of popular science entitled Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation . This book proposed an evolutionary scenario for the origins of the solar system and life on earth. It claimed that

2178-930: The arcade on the west side of the central path. The crater Murchison on the Moon and at least fifteen geographical locations on Earth are named after him. These include: the Murchison Range, part of the Stauning Alps , and the Murchison Sound in Greenland ; Mount Murchison in Banff National Park , Canada; Mount Murchison in the Mountaineer Range , Antarctica; Mount Murchison, just west of Squamish, British Columbia , Canada; tiny Murchison Island in Haida Gwaii in

2244-591: The area in 1849 he was greeted by 15,000 locals who declared him the King of Siluria. A memorial tablet was installed on 3 November 2005 in front of School #9 in Perm in Russia. It consists of a stone base, irregular in form, about two metres long, and bearing a dark stone plate with the following inscription (in Russian): To Roderick Impey Murchison, Scottish geologist, explorer of Perm Krai , who gave to

2310-477: The changing aspects of plants and animals. Erasmus believed that life had one origin, a common ancestor, which he referred to as the "filament" of life. He used his understanding of chemical transmutation to justify the spontaneous generation of this filament. His geological study of Derbyshire and the sea- shells and fossils which he found there helped him to come to the conclusion that complex life had developed from more primitive forms (Laniel-Musitelli). Erasmus

2376-568: The closing public acts of Murchison's life was the founding of a chair of geology and mineralogy at the University of Edinburgh . Under his will there was established the Murchison Medal and a geological fund ( The Murchison Fund ) to be awarded annually by the council of the Geological Society in London. Murchison died in 1871 and is buried in Brompton Cemetery , London, near the north end of

2442-420: The development hypothesis (one of the terms used by Darwin) and the theory of regular gradation , used by William Chilton in the periodical press such as The Oracle of Reason . Transformation is another word used quite as often as transmutation in this context. These early 19th century evolutionary ideas played an important role in the history of evolutionary thought . The proto-evolutionary thinkers of

2508-532: The difficult problem of the geological structure of the Alps . Their joint paper giving the results of their study is a classic in the literature of Alpine geology. Murchison was an opponent of Charles Darwin 's theory of evolution. He opposed the transmutation of species and supported successive creation . In 1831 he went to the England–Wales border , to attempt to discover whether the greywacke rocks underlying

2574-549: The diversity of fossils. Geological and fossil evidence was presented to him as contributions to Encyclopedia articles, chief among them "Mammoth", "Fossil", and "Ivory Fossil", all of which noted the existence of mammoth bones in Siberia. As a result of this geological and fossil evidence, Diderot believed that species were mutable. Particularly, he argued that organisms metamorphosized over millennia, resulting in species changes. In Diderot's theory of transformationism, random chance plays

2640-691: The field of transmutation in his synopsis of Erasmus’ life, The Life of Erasmus Darwin. Darwin collaborated with Ernst Krause to write a forward on Krause's Erasmus Darwin und Seine Stellung in Der Geschichte Der Descendenz-Theorie, which translates into Erasmus Darwin and His Place in the History of the Descent Theory. Krause explains Erasmus' motivations for arguing for the theory of descent, including Darwin's connection with and correspondence with Rousseau, which may have influenced how he saw

2706-465: The first to hold these offices. Official routine now occupied much of his time, but he found opportunity for the Highland researches just alluded to, and also for preparing successive editions of his work Siluria (1854, ed. 5, 1872), which was meant to present the main features of the original Silurian System together with a digest of subsequent discoveries, particularly of those that showed the extension of

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2772-417: The fossil record showed an ascent of animals with current animals being branches off a main line that leads progressively to humanity. It implied that the transmutations led to the unfolding of a preordained orthogenetic plan woven into the laws that governed the universe. In this sense it was less completely materialistic than the ideas of radicals like Robert Grant, but its implication that humans were just

2838-399: The idea of "archetypes" in the divine mind that would produce a sequence of species related by anatomical homologies, such as vertebrate limbs. Owen was concerned by the political implications of the ideas of transmutationists like Robert Grant, and he led a public campaign by conservatives that successfully marginalized Grant in the scientific community. In his famous 1841 paper, which coined

2904-422: The ideas in lectures: [These books] state that God first created matter and invested it with energy for development. Matter, therefore, adopted the form of vapour which assumed the shape of water in due time. The next stage of development was mineral life. Different kinds of stones developed [over the] course of [time, their] highest form being mirjan ( coral ). It is a stone which has in it branches like those of

2970-646: The ideas of Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire , agreeing with Aristotle that species were immutable. Cuvier believed that the individual parts of an animal were too closely correlated with one another to allow for one part of the anatomy to change in isolation from the others, and argued that the fossil record showed patterns of catastrophic extinctions followed by re-population, rather than gradual change over time. He also noted that drawings of animals and animal mummies from Egypt, which were thousands of years old, showed no signs of change when compared with modern animals. The strength of Cuvier's arguments and his reputation as

3036-453: The interest in transformism among his students. Jameson's course closed with lectures on the "Origin of the Species of Animals" . The computing pioneer Charles Babbage published his unofficial Ninth Bridgewater Treatise in 1837, putting forward the thesis that God had the omnipotence and foresight to create as a divine legislator, making laws (or programs) which then produced species at

3102-805: The last period of the Paleozoic era the name of Permian. The decision to perpetuate the explorer's name was accepted by the school administration and pupils in connection with a discussion to establish in Perm a pillar or an arch devoted to Roderick Murchison. In 2009, the Ural-Scottish Society erected a memorial to Murchison on the banks of the Chusovaya River . There is a commemorative blue plaque on his residence at 21 Galgate in Barnard Castle (County Durham). A fictionalised version of Murchison appears in

3168-403: The last step in the ascent of animal life incensed many conservative thinkers. Both conservatives like Adam Sedgwick , and radical materialists like Thomas Henry Huxley , who disliked Chambers' implications of preordained progress, were able to find scientific inaccuracies in the book that they could disparage. Darwin himself openly deplored the author's "poverty of intellect", and dismissed it as

3234-452: The leg structure of a human and a horse as proof of the interconnectivity of species. He saw this experiment as demonstrating that nature could continually try out new variations. Additionally, Diderot argued that organic molecules and organic matter possessed an inherent consciousness, which allowed the smallest particles of organic matter to organize into fibers, then a network, and then organs. The idea that organic molecules have consciousness

3300-480: The lowest of animals. It evolves into an ape. This is not the statement of Darwin. This is what Ibn Maskawayh states and this is precisely what is written in the Epistles of Ikhwan al-Safa . The Muslim thinkers state that ape then evolved into a lower kind of a barbarian man. He then became a superior human being. Man becomes a saint, a prophet. He evolves into a higher stage and becomes an angel. The one higher to angels

3366-464: The next generation and produce slow adaptation to the environment. It was this secondary mechanism of adaptation through the inheritance of acquired characteristics that became closely associated with his name and would influence discussions of evolution into the 20th century. The German Abraham Gottlob Werner believed in geological transformism. Specifically, Werner argued that the Earth undergoes irreversible and continuous change. The Edinburgh school,

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3432-525: The only daughter of General Hugonin of Nursted House, Hampshire. Murchison and his wife spent two years in mainland Europe, particularly in Italy. They then settled in Barnard Castle , County Durham, England, in 1818, where Murchison made the acquaintance of Sir Humphry Davy . Davy urged Murchison to turn his energy to science, after hearing that he wasted his time riding to hounds and shooting. With encouragement from his wife Charlotte, Murchison became fascinated by

3498-509: The physical makeup of organisms as a result of the desires of plants and animals. Notably, he describes insects developing from plants, a grand example of one species transforming into another. Erasmus Darwin relied on Lucretian philosophy to form a theory of universal change. He proposed that both organic and inorganic matter changed throughout the course of the universe, and that plants and animals could pass on acquired traits to their progeny. His view of universal transformation placed time as

3564-855: The same province; the Murchison Falls in Uganda; the Murchison River in Western Australia. Murchison has two other rivers named after him in Western Australia: the Roderick River and the Impey River , both tributaries of the Murchison. The town of Murchison in the Tasman Region of New Zealand's South Island was also named after him. Murchison Road is one of the streets in east London, and there

3630-468: The term dinosaur for the giant reptiles discovered by Buckland and Gideon Mantell , Owen argued that these reptiles contradicted the transmutational ideas of Lamarck because they were more sophisticated than the reptiles of the modern world. Darwin would make good use of the homologies analyzed by Owen in his own theory, but the harsh treatment of Grant, along with the controversy surrounding Vestiges , would be factors in his decision to ensure that his theory

3696-411: The universe, but then left it to operate and develop through natural law rather than through divine intervention. Thinkers like Erasmus Darwin saw the transmutation of species as part of this development of the world through natural law, which they saw as a challenge to traditional Christianity. They also believed that human history was progressive, which was another idea becoming increasingly popular in

3762-519: The world. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed a hypothesis on the transmutation of species in Philosophie Zoologique (1809). Lamarck did not believe that all living things shared a common ancestor. Rather he believed that simple forms of life were created continuously by spontaneous generation . He also believed that an innate life force, which he sometimes described as a nervous fluid, drove species to become more complex over time, advancing up

3828-421: The young science of geology and joined the Geological Society of London , soon becoming one of its most active members. His colleagues there included Adam Sedgwick , William Conybeare , William Buckland , William Fitton , Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin . Exploring with his wife, Murchison studied the geology of the south of England, devoting special attention to the rocks of the north-west of Sussex and

3894-613: Was a relative late-comer which can be seen in Herbert Spencer 's Social Statics of 1851, and at least one earlier example, but was not in general use until about 1865–70. In the 10th and 11th centuries, Ibn Miskawayh 's Al-Fawz al-Kabir (الفوز الأكبر) , and the Brethren of Purity 's Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity (رسائل إخوان الصفا‎) developed ideas about changes in biological species. In 1993, Muhammad Hamidullah described

3960-401: Was an early proponent of what we now refer to as "adaptations", albeit through a different transformist mechanism – he argued that sexual reproduction could pass on acquired traits through the father’s contribution to the embryon. These changes, he believed, were mainly driven by the three great needs of life: lust, food, and security. Erasmus proposed that these acquired changes gradually altered

4026-782: Was based on comparisons made between fossils, especially the modern pearly nautilus and the curled shells of ammonites. In the 18th century, Jacques-Antoine des Bureaux claimed a "genealogical ascent of species". He argued that through crossbreeding and hybridization in reproduction, "progressive organization" occurred, allowing organisms to change and more complex species to develop. Simultaneously, Retif de la Bretonne wrote La decouverte australe par un homme-volant (1781) and La philosophie de monsieur Nicolas (1796), which encapsulated his view that more complex species, such as mankind, had developed step-by-step from "less perfect" animals. De la Bretonne believed that living forms undergo constant change. Although he believed in constant change, he took

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4092-600: Was derived from both Maupertuis and Lucretian texts. Overall, Diderot’s musings all fit together as a "composite transformist philosophy", one dependent on the randomness inherent to nature as a transformist mechanism. Erasmus Darwin developed a theory of universal transformation. His major works, The Botanic Garden (1792), Zoonomia (1794–96), and The Temple of Nature all touched on the transformation of organic creatures. In both The Botanic Garden and The Temple of Nature, Darwin used poetry to describe his ideas regarding species. In Zoonomia, however, Erasmus clearly articulates (as

4158-689: Was devoted to the affairs of the Royal Geographical Society , of which he was in 1830 one of the founders, and he was president 1843–1845, 1851–1853, 1856–1859 and 1862–1871. He served on the Royal Commission on the British Museum (1847–1849). Murchison also announced the Permian system to geology in 1841, based on explorations in Perm Krai undertaken with Édouard de Verneuil. Murchison

4224-418: Was fixed and unchangeable because it represented an idea in the mind of the creator. They believed that relationships between species could be discerned from developmental patterns in embryology , as well as in the fossil record, but that these relationships represented an underlying pattern of divine thought, with progressive creation leading to increasing complexity and culminating in humanity. Owen developed

4290-522: Was hardly a foreign scientific society of note without his name among its honorary members. The French Academy of Sciences awarded him the prix Cuvier, and elected him one of its eight foreign members in succession to Michael Faraday . In 1855 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1871 awarded the Founders' Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. One of

4356-577: Was responsible for establishing much of the international prestige of British geology, and he viewed the spread of his stratigraphic systems on maps around the world "as a scientific form of imperial expansion". He frequently described geological excursions (such those he made abroad) as "invasions" or "conquests" and enjoyed being dubbed the "King of Siluria". According to the scholar Robert A. Stafford, "Murchinson's tendencies towards militarism , imperialism , and megalomania ran through his career and finally found full expression his simultaneous leadership of

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