AMOS EATON AND THE DEBATE OVER LOCALIZED GEOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE

"Geology is chaos without systematic arrangement." Writing in 1827, Amos Eaton, the founding professor of the Rensselaer School at Troy, New York, was asserting more than a general tenet of science. He was seeking to build a case for a distinctively North American systematic geological nomenclature. Like other American geological field workers of the early nineteenth century, Eaton had drawn eclectically from among competing European theoretical models for how to begin to explain the Earth's history. His embrace of basic Wernerian mineralogical categories did not prevent Eaton from incorporating recent French achievements in vertebrate paleontology (Cuvier and the Brongniarts), British work on paleobotany (Buckland), and alertness to new stratigraphy principles being promoted by William Smith's disciples (Phillips and Conybeare) into his attempts to develop a comprehensive system of North American rock names and sequences.

Eaton sought to find and characterize the world's geological history within the territory of New York state. To understand and appreciate how such an audacious scheme was thinkable at the time requires an excursion into the realm of scientific biography. Amos Eaton embodied contemporary paradoxes: earth science was necessarily becoming a cooperative international enterprise, while all forms of cultural achievement in the United States were heavily invested with nationalistic significance during the decade when the youthful republic celebrated just its 50th anniversary of independence. The debate over scientific practice regarding localized geological nomenclature was influenced by these historical circumstances, and it is interesting to reexamine Eaton's aspirations on behalf of systematic geology through the lens of his personal (and patriotic) motives. By 1830, Eaton would justify his naming behavior as follows (from the first edition of his Geological Text-Book):

Whoever is "first in the field" of natural science, has an exclusive right to give names. His successors should either adopt his names, or give them as synonyms and equivalents. This is essential to the very being of science. But English and French geologists have introduced new names, not adopted in Germany; because new discoveries have made them necessary. I have done the same thing in America, and for the same reasons.