Geological Survey Professional Paper 669 The Colorado River Region and John Wesley Powell

THE COLORADO RIVER REGION AND JOHN WESLEY POWELL

JOHN WESLEY POWELL: PIONEER
STATESMAN OF FEDERAL SCIENCE

By MARY C. RABBITT

In the middle decades of the 19th century, American science matured rather rapidly. The general scholar with an interest in natural history gave place to the specialist in a particular science, and the various sciences themselves became distinct from each other and from the general body of knowledge.

The geological sciences made especially rapid progress in America because of the opportunity and the necessity to explore the vast western territories. Although Clarence King later remarked¹ that before 1867 (when Congress authorized both the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel and the Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories) "geology was made to act as a sort of camp-follower to expeditions whose main object was topographic reconnoissance," and that it amounted to "little more than a slight sketch of the character and distribution of formations, valuable chiefly as indicating the field for future inquiry," American geologists had, in fact, established a professional society, the Association of American Geologists, as early as 1840. Several years later this society became the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Several State surveys were founded in the 1830's, and by 1840, courses in geology were regularly included in the curricula of several colleges.

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¹See notes and references beginning on p. 20.

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American scientists had been the most ready to accept Darwin's theory of the origin of species when it was proposed in 1859, perhaps in part because Asa Gray, the great American botanist, had paved the way by a series of articles so that evolution would not be charged with atheism, but in part because American scientists were able to contribute much to the documentation of the theory. Darwin was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society in 1869, long before receiving such honors elsewhere. By this time the American public was already becoming fascinated by the extension of the idea of evolution to fields other than biology.

Geology's sister science, geography, had gone through an almost complete metamorphosis from a descriptive and encyclopedic form to a quantitative and systematic science, largely as the result of the work of two German geographers, Karl Ritter and Alexander von Humboldt. Although their methods and philosophic approach were different, both stressed the interdependence of all phenomena on the earth's surface, and both looked for the general laws underlying the diversity of nature.

Arnold Guyot had introduced some of the new ideas to America in his Lowell Institute lectures in 1852, and his book "The Earth and Man" did much to popularize the new geography. In Guyot's words, geography dealt with "those incessant mutual actions of the different portions of physical nature upon each other, of inorganic nature upon organized beings, upon man in particular, and upon the successive development of human societies."

George Perkins Marsh, the forerunner of American conservationists, demurred. His "Man and Nature," published in 1864, was written to show that "whereas Ritter and Guyot think that the earth made man, man in fact made the earth," and he was fast making it uninhabitable by his wanton destruction, waste, and neglect. There was still, Marsh pointed out, "an immense extent of North American soil where the industry and folly of man have as yet produced little appreciable change." Hopefully, there, "with the present increased facilities for scientific observations, the future effects, direct and contingent, of man's labors can be measured and such precautions taken in the rural processes we call improvements, as to mitigate evils, perhaps, in some degree, inseparable from every attempt to control the action of natural laws." A more exact knowledge of the topography and climatic conditions of countries where the surface was yet unbroken was urgently needed, but the geological, hydrographical, and topographical surveys already being made in civilized countries were making such important contributions that within a short time there should be enough facts from which "to reason upon all the relations of action and reaction between man and external nature."

B. A. Gould, the retiring president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1869, was not as optimistic. "The omens are less favorable for science in our own land than elsewhere, since there are peculiar obstacles to be encountered. These chiefly arise, directly or indirectly, from that characteristic in our national development, which assigns an exaggerated value to immediate utility, and a low estimate to what real utility is. It cannot be denied that the attainment of riches is becoming with us more and more the chief aim of existence."

Among other American failings, he observed that institutions of science were "dependent upon subsidies and gifts from individuals" and that the "governance and guidance of intellectual agencies" had been placed "in the hands of men who are not well fitted for their exercise." More than that, it had been forgotten that "the training of the school and the college is but a means, and not an end." Research was being neglected, and the scientist compelled "to earn his bread independently of his vocation, that is to say by work other than scientific research."

There were, however, he thought, hopeful signs for the future. "Science has few stronger friends than among the scholars of America," and "where science does have a foothold, her path is becoming smoothed and the sphere of her influence extended as never before."

"The magnificent, the stupendous march of scientific discovery in the recent past, leads to brilliant and almost limitless aspirations for the future. The range of human insight into the creation has been of late so wondrously expanded at each limit, that we are emboldened to expectations of scientific discovery, which at first seem utterly extravagant."

"What the future is to be," he told his audience on a hot August night at the annual meeting in Salem, Mass., "rests in great measure with the generation now upon the stage."

As he said these words, John Wesley Powell, who would have a large hand in shaping American science a decade or so later, might more properly have been described as waiting in the wings for his entrance cue. As Gould was delivering his address, Powell and eight others, hungry, bedraggled, and weary, were struggling in three small battered boats through the rapids in the Grand Canyon, looking hopefully for the break in the walls that would signify the end of the journey.