Neptunism and transformism:Robert Jameson and other evolutionary theorists in early nineteenth-century Scotland

This paper sheds new light on the prevalence of evolutionary ideas in Scotland in the early nineteenth century and establish what connections existed between the espousal of evolutionary theories and adherence to the directional history of the earth proposed by Abraham Gottlob Werner and his Scottish disciples. A possible connection between Wernerian geology and theories of the transmutation of species in Edinburgh in the period when Charles Darwin was a medical student in the city was suggested in an important 1991 paper by James Secord. This study aims to deepen our knowledge of this important episode in the history of evolutionary ideas and explore the relationship between these geological and evolutionary discourses. To do this it focuses on the circle of natural historians around Robert Jameson, Wernerian geologist and professor of natural history at the University of Edinburgh from 1804 to 1854. From the evidence gathered here there emerges a clear confirmation that the Wernerian model of geohistory facilitated the acceptance of evolutionary explanations of the history of life in early nineteenth-century Scotland. As Edinburgh was at this time the most important center of medical education in the English-speaking world, this almost certainly influenced the reception and development of evolutionary ideas in the decades that followed.</p

Developing a Sense of the Pacific: The 1923 Pan-Pacific Science Congress in Australia

The Australian Congress of 1923 was a determining moment for the Pacific Science Association. In contrast to the Australian meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held in 1914, this first postwar Congress signaled the emergence of a new scientific nationalism i.n Australia and the advent of a new scientific relationship between Australia and Its great and powerful friend across the Pacific. At the same time, the success of the Congress gave the infant Pan-Pacific movement much-needed visibility and support and led directly to the permanent establishment of the Pacific Science Association and to its continuing presence in international scientific affairs