EDWARD HITCHCOCK, RODERICK MURCHISON, AND REJECTION OF THE ALPINE GLACIAL THEORY (1840–1845)

Abstract

Massachusetts geologist Edward Hitchcock was among the first of his American colleagues to investigate the glacial theory of Swiss geologist Louis Agassiz. After studying a copy of Agassiz's Études sur les Glaciers 1840, Hitchcock displayed an initial enthusiasm regarding its explanatory powers in the published version of his presidential address before the newly-founded Association of American Geologists, and in his concurrently-published Final Report on the Geology of Massachusetts 1841. But that same year, Hitchcock also undertook a 400-mile journey to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, to test the possible validity of a hypothetico-deductive argument that he had formulated, about whether Alpinestyle glaciers had once descended from their summits. From the lack of supporting field evidence, Hitchcock abruptly retreated into a non-committal stance that merely argued for some combination of ice-and-water that he labeled “glacio-aqueous action.” In the following year, Hitchcock engaged in a brief controversy with British geologist Roderick Murchison, in which the two men accused each other of mis-representing his support for the glacial theory. In reality, both had ended up on exactly the same side of the debate, having independently reached identical conclusions concerning rejection of the Alpine glacial theory. Hitchcock's stance appears to have influenced at least a few of his American colleagues to adopt this line of reasoning. But neither Hitchcock, nor Murchison, was able to extrapolate from the notion of Alpine to continental glaciation, as Agassiz had daringly conjectured, with the result that acceptance of the glacial theory was delayed for the next two decades or more. Ironically, neither man seemed to have realized that they had reached a virtual consensus on this question.