"'A Kingdom Called Siluria': Henry Adams as Geological Catastrophist"

This paper moves geological sciences to a more prominent place in the critical scholarship of Henry Adams. Though Adams’s interest in science is usually seen as “unscientific,” I argue he challenges traditionally held... [ view full abstract ]

This paper moves geological sciences to a more prominent place in the critical scholarship of Henry Adams. Though Adams’s interest in science is usually seen as “unscientific,” I argue he challenges traditionally held assumptions (i.e., uniformitarianism, unity) in both The Education of Henry Adams and Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres by reorganizing the world along different lines. In fact, Adams engages quite significantly with contemporary scientific thought, favoring not progress-oriented narratives but rather scientific theories that embrace chaos and nonlinearity (deep time, geological catastrophism etc.). We should remember that the universe was, in fact, partially created by cataclysmic change and mass-scale extinction despite the prevailing acceptance of uniformitarianism during the nineteenth century by major scientific powerhouses such as Charles Darwin and Lyell. Not only is this investment reflected in the structure of his texts themselves, but also in his interest in other structures: rocks, fossils, and traces. Adams writes routinely about rocks in ways that bridge the natural and the cultural, as natural rock formations appear side by side with stone memorials and gothic architecture.  Far from seeing literature and science as diametrically opposed to each other, Adams attempts to elevate science by merging reason (uniformity) with the imagination (disruption), making way for new modes of thought that stress his Romantic sensibility.  Thus, this more affective study of geology (a term I borrow from Dana Luciano) allows Adams to access alternative histories that, in part, help view climate change as a stark reality.