USING NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE IN GEOSCIENCE CLASSROOMS

A wealth of non-fictional accounts of earth scientists at work have emerged in the last 50 years, including John McPhee’s accounts of the geology and geologists across the United States, Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action, many of Stephen Jay Gould’s books, and many others. Fictional (or semi-fictional) accounts of earth science from the nineteenth century shed light not only on geologic ideas, such as uniformitarianism and evolution, but also on the history of the development of the earth sciences.

I have used Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, Roughing It and his essay “Was the World Made for Man?”; Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People as required reading in introductory geology, geomorphology and hydrology courses. Mark Twain describes longitudinal and temporal changes in fluvial systems better than any textbook I know. Life on the Mississippi also contains Twain’s reflections on whether empirical knowledge heightens or diminishes an individual’s perception of natural systems, a subject of interest to all students and teachers. It is great fun teasing apart Verne’s account of volcanoes and subterranean geology and comparing it to the pictures of the earth’s interior drawn from modern geophysics. (The movie, starring Pat Boone, is another matter altogether). And Thomas Stockmann’s devotion to his science (environmental hydrology and microbiology) adds an unusual dimension of character to the political and domestic drama of An Enemy of the People. Not only do these accounts offer geoscience students a welcome change from normal reading assignments, they can be used to stimulate discussions of professional ethics, history of geoscience ideas in both professional and societal contexts, and concepts of deep time and space.