This is a past event
‘Where every truth is felt as well as seen’:
Reconstructing Charles Lyell’s early intellectual development, 1816-1827
Felicity MacKenzie, University of Edinburgh
Wednesday 21 May 2025 4-6 pm (NK14) and via Teams
Centre for History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Aberdeen
Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) is largely remembered as an influential geologist in the specialised modern sense of the term. This reflects the continued influence of his scientific career. As a close mentor and friend to Charles Darwin and a widely recognised authority on the earth sciences in nineteenth-century Europe and North America, Lyell profoundly influenced ideas about deep time and evolution.
However, this paper will use the newly opened Sir Charles Lyell Collection at the University of Edinburgh to challenge this prevailing view and reconstruct Lyell’s identity and career beyond this role as scientist. It will suggest that it is equally important to view Lyell as an elite, literary gentleman and educational reformer who actively understood his geology to be part of a project of moral, cultural and political reform. Lyell’s ‘mission’ (as he would refer to it in the 1840s) was to ‘civilise’ the British polity by expanding scientific knowledge and education. Geology was at the heart of his vision for that cultural change.
The period 1816-1827 was crucial for the development of Lyell’s integrated view of geology and political change. This paper will use the Sir Charles Lyell Collection to reconstruct Lyell’s intellectual development 1816-1827, tracing his priorities, knowledge networks and key influences. The Collection reveals that Lyell was a thinker deeply engaging with ideas about moral philosophy, law, politics, authorship, human meaning and immortality, as well as, of course, being invested and active in geological debates and fieldwork. When this period is considered in detail, it becomes clear that it provides a foundational basis from which to understand Lyell's life and work.
- Speaker
- Felicity MacKenzie, University of Edinburgh
- Hosted by
- Centre for History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Aberdeen
- Venue
- New King's NK14
- Contact
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