T. Peter Park
Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:25:47 -0700
Thomas Jefferson Paleontologist
By Thomas O. Jewett
"Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering
them my supreme delight."
(Letter to DuPont de Nemours as cited in Benson, 1971).
Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, was probably our
most accomplished man in public life as well as the most versatile.
President John F. Kennedy, while entertaining a group of Nobel
Laureates, quipped that this was probably the greatest gathering of
intellect in the White House since Jefferson dined there alone.
During his lifetime, Jefferson was an infallible oracle to half the
population and a dangerous demagogue to the other half, but was
universally recognized as a man of science. A fine mathematician and
astronomer, he could reckon latitude and longitude as well as a ship
captain. He calculated the eclipse of 1778 with great accuracy and was
able to make suggestions for the improvement of almanacs on the equation
of time. Jefferson was considered expert in anatomy, civil engineering,
physics, mechanics, meteorology, architecture, and botany. He was able
to read and write Greek, Latin, French, Spanish and Italian. He was
recognized as a pioneer in ethnology, geography, anthropology and our
subject paleontology. Because of his wide range of knowledge, Jefferson
was ahead of his time in several lines of inquiry and advanced of
contemporary scientists. Even so, Jefferson never failed to acknowledge
that in science he was "an amateur."
As a scientific man Jefferson was interested in all lines of science,
but in all rather as an enthusiastic, highly appreciative, an
intelligent amateur rather than a professional. He had no time to make
himself thoroughly proficient in any one line. The working out of the
details he left to others, whom he assisted and encouraged, to the best
of his ability. (Clark, 1943).
Jefferson was always ready to accept new discoveries and adopt new
theories, even when they might contradict his own beliefs. In the spirit
of the Enlightenment, with its faith in human reason and science, he
maintained an open receptive frame of mind to all discoveries and
scientific speculation. He believed that science held the key to
knowledge for society, and this outlook, combined with his reformist,
humanitarian, and utilitarian proclivities, motivated much of his life
and thought.
Jefferson visualized science as essentially utilitarian. His sight
focused upon the benefits that science could provide humanity. No matter
what line of scientific investigation he undertook, the idea of ultimate
practical application seems to always have been in his mind. He seemed
never to have followed any line through mere pointless curiosity. Even
in his study of fossils Jefferson appeared to have had the idea that at
some time a knowledge of them would prove of value to his countrymen.
One of the first glimpses of Jefferson's interest in paleontology can be
found in his Notes on the State of Virginia. It is his most impressive
scientific achievement, in which he recorded his observations of flora,
fauna, mountains, rivers, climate, population, laws, politics, customs
and fossils of his native state. In Notes Jefferson, also, refuted the
contentions of Count de Buffon that the animals common to both old world
and new are smaller in the new. One of the reasons Jefferson wrote and
published Notes was to refute a claim by the eminent naturalist, the
Comte de Buffon, that human and animal life in America was degenerative
and therefore inferior to the life forms in Europe. Buffon believed,
Jefferson wrote in his Notes,"that nature is less active, less energetic
on one side of the globe than she is on the other." Jefferson added with
more than a hint of sarcasm, "as if both sides were not warmed by the
same genial sun," and launched into a lengthy refutation of Buffon's
hypothesis with convincing evidence that animals are actually larger in
America than in Europe. The mastodon, or mammoth,was his clincher;
Europe had produced no animal to match this behemoth...his shipment of
mastodon fossils to Paris, therefore, was not entirely Enlightenment
altruism; it was also a final salvo in a scientific war. Buffon's
suggestion that infant America was nature's retardate drove him to
collect the ancient bones of the mammoth...When he received his fossils,
he catalogued them carefully and precisely, as was his habit, sending
them off to Philadelphia for admiration, and to Paris for edification.
He kept a few choice specimens, however, for his Monticello
museum--trophies of a sort in commemoration of his private victory in
the battle of New World versus Old. (McLaughlin, 1988)
The entry room at Monticello had been turned by Jefferson into a natural
history museum which showed his great interest in fossils. George
Ticknor, when a young man, visited Jefferson in 1815 and describes the
entry hall:
On one side hang the head and horns of an elk, a deer, and a buffalo;
another is covered with curiosities which Lewis and Clark found in their
wild and perilous expedition. On the third, among many other striking
matters, was the head of a mammoth, or, as Cuvier calls it, a mastodon,
containing only os frontis, Mr. Jefferson tells me, that has yet been
found. (Letter by George Ticknor, 1818 as cited in Rosenberger, 1953).
These fossils were from the famous cache at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky.
Jefferson had commissioned William Clark of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition to explore the site, at his own expense. He kept the above
mentioned specimens "for a special kind of Cabinet I have at
Monticello." Jefferson's was particularly proud do this collection and
considered them the prize of his natural history collection. The
majority of the bones he sent on to the American Philosophical Society
in Philadelphia. (Mclaughlin, 1988).
Evidence of Jefferson's interest in paleontology is furnished by his
contributions in the form of reports and specimens to the American
Philosophical Society, of which he was elected a member in 1786 and
became its president in 1797. As a member, Jefferson took the lead in
1792 in raising a thousand guineas to send Andrew Michaud across the
continent to find out about...the bones of a mammoth...(Curtis, 1901).
On August 19,1796, he wrote a report to the Society (his only truly
scientific report) describing bones of extraordinary size found beyond
the Blue Mountains in Virginia. (Clark, 1943). In Greenbriar County,
Virginia, in 1796, a deposit of bones, supposed to be those of a
mammoth, were found and sent to Monticello, where Jefferson set them up
and pronounced them to be those of "a carnivorous clawed animal entirely
unknown to science."
A curious sight might have been witnessed by people who lived the route
of travel between Monticello and Philadelphia when the Vice President of
the United States, on his way to take the oath of office and assume the
second place in the gift of the nation, carried a wagon-load of bones
for his baggage. He delivered them to Dr. Wistar, the naturalist of the
American Philosophical Society, with a labored report under the date of
March 10, 1797, entitled, "A Memoir of the Discovery of Certain Bones of
an Unknown Quadruped, of the Clawed Kind, in the Western Part of
Virginia. (Curtis, 1901).
The Society passed a resolution to publish the report and requested
Charles Peale to put the bones in the best order for Society use. These
were the bones of Megalonyx, later named "Megalonyx Jefersoni", the
first giant sloth found in North America. (Clark, 1943).
Jefferson was head of the Society when that organization financed the
excavation of the bones of a mastodon in Ulster County, New York in
1801. This was during the exciting and close contest Jefferson was
waging for the Presidency. Even so, we find him carrying on a learned
correspondence with Dr. Wistar over the fossils.
This interest in paleontology often brought him the ridicule and wrath
of his political opponents to whom scientific investigation meant
neglect of his proper duties. This was particularly true in 1808 when
the excitement over the embargo of commerce and the complications with
Great Britain were at it height, he had a wagon load of specimens sent
to the White House. Here he laid them out in the unfinished East Room,
nicknamed the "Bone or Mastodon Room." (Clark, 1943). "Mr. Mammoth" as
Jefferson was nicknamed was also roasted in poem for his delight in fossils.
Go, wretch resign thy presidential chair, Disclose thy secret measures,
foul and fair, Go search with curious eye, for horned frogs, Mid the
Wild Louisianian bogs: Or, where the Ohio rolls his turbid stream, Dig
for huge bones, thy glory and scheme. (As cited in Clark, 1943).
Paleontology seems to have been Jefferson's main interest in a pure
science. Some such as Frederick Lucas and Henry Osborn have dubbed him
the "Father of Paleontology". They felt that Jefferson laid the
foundations of the science with his refutation of Buffon's degeneracy
theory, his invention of "stratigraphical" observation which established
the fundamental principle of scientific excavation (Lehmann, 1985), and
his work on the Megalonyx.
There are some though, who feel that Jefferson does not deserve the
title. They argue that the entire basis of his beliefs about
paleontology were mistaken since he denied that any animal species could
ever become extinct. "Such is the economy of nature, that in no instance
can be produced her having permitted any race of her animals to become
extinct." (As cited in Curtis, 1901). It is this reasoning which allowed
Jefferson to put forth the theory that there was a large herd of
mammoths wandering wild in the Mississippi Valley and one of the reasons
he sponsored expeditions to the West.
Perhaps Jefferson's greatest contribution to paleontology is that while
President he helped to make it a respectable pursuit and was largely
responsible through the American Philosophical Society for bringing
together the materials necessary for its advancement. As the first
citizen of the young nation, Jefferson's passion brought prestige and
respectability to the young science.
Bibliography
Benson, G. Randolph. (1971). Thomas Jefferson as Social Scientist.
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Cranbury N.J.
Clark, Austin H. (1943). "Thomas Jefferson as Scientist," Journal of the
Washington Academy of Sciences. 33, no. 7.
Curtis, William Elroy. (1901). The True Thomas Jefferson. A.W. Elson &
Co., Philadelphia.
Lehmann, Karl. (1985). Thomas Jefferson American Humanist.
University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.
McLaughlin, Jack. (1988). Jefferson and Monticello. Henry Holt And
Company, New York.
Rosenberger, Francis Coleman. (1953). Jefferson Reader. E.P. Dutton &
Company, Inc., New York.
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