history THE BASALT CONTROVERSY IV (PART 18)

摘要

Even while Werner was at the height of his influence as the leader of the Neptunists (see Part 16), a few German geologists had attempted, without success, to challenge his ideas on the origin of basalt. One of the first was Rudolf Erich Raspe (1771), who re ognized that columnar basalt along the lower Rhine River was volcanic (Sigurdsson, 1999, p. 142-143). He is better known as the author of 'Baron Munchausen's Narrative his Marvellous Travels.' Another serious critic was one of Werner's first students, J.K.W. Voigt, who disputed his interpretation of the Scheibenberg basalt (Sigurdsson, 1999, p. 117; see Part 16). As time went by and many locations were found in France, Italy, and Britain, where volcanic and granitic rocks could be observed cutting sediments and each other, Werner's ideas on basalt became more suspect. Even worse, some of his most famous students became advocates rather than critics of Vulcanism as they travelled the globe and began to realize that the field evidence didn't support what they had been taught. These included: Leopold von Buch, probably Werner's most illustrious protege (Sigurdsson 1999, p. 123); Jean Baptiste Barthelemy de Lessups, who observed active volcanoes in Kamchatka in 1790; Alexander von Humboldt, who witnessed the eruption of Cotopaxi in Ecuador in 1803 and wrote classic descriptions of the natural history of South America; and William Maclure, who published the first geological map of the United States in 1809. By the time of Werner's death in 1817, his theories about the 'universal formation' and the sedimentary origin of basalt were badly tarnished and rejected by everyone except Robert Jameson.