The Flamingo’s Smile

by Stephen Jay Gould

  So completely has the violence of that tremendous convulsion destroyed and remodeled the form of the antediluvian surface, that it is only in caverns, that have been protected from its ravages that we may hope to find undisturbed evidence of events in the period immediately preceding it.

  The caves were full of bones, trapped within by the rising waters. The bones belonged to species then resident in their local areas (thus the Flood was not sufficiently violent to mix faunas in a random hodgepodge throughout the world). The bones were fresh (pointing to a recent burial), enclosed only with mud washed in by floodwaters or by a light covering of cave drippings (also indicating a deluge of no great antiquity), and belonged to species now extinct but closely allied with modern forms (the less fortunate creatures that found no lodging on the ark).

  An interesting perspective on early nineteenth-century styles of excavation. A cave containing various “relics of the flood” yields its treasures. FROM BUCKLAND, 1823.

  Buckland’s discussion of the Kirkdale cave provides a good illustration of his methods and modes of argument. He found an extensive deposit of fossil bones, broken into angular fragments, sometimes embedded in mud, sometimes encrusted with drippings of cave limestone. Invoking a gastronomical simile from his own time, Buckland described his cache:

  Where the mud was shallow, and the heaps of teeth and bones considerable, parts of the latter were elevated some inches above the surface of the mud and its stalagmitic crust; and the upper ends of the bones thus projecting like the legs of pigeons through a piecrust into the void space above, have become thinly covered with stalagmitic drippings, whilst their lower extremities have no such incrustation, and have simply the mud adhering to them in which they have been inbedded.

  Buckland devotes most of his monograph to proving that Kirkdale was a hyena den, and that the bones present therein had been gathered and crushed by its denizens. He worked, as all good geologists do, by seeking modern analogues for his ancient results. He learned everything he could about hyenas, ranging from the Latin texts of classical authors to personal observations of hyenas in the Exeter zoo. He proved that the Kirkdale bones were crushed and cracked into the same angular fragments that modern hyenas produce, and he found that the curious spheres of bone fragments within his caves were identical with the droppings of his friends behind bars at Exeter. He also discovered abundant hyena bones within the cave—all crushed and cracked as well—indicating that hyenas approach their own dead as they treat the prey and carrion of other species that form their usual diet.

  Since Buckland found no uncracked hyena bones in the cave (but did recover some in outside deposits), he conjectured that as floodwaters rose, the hyenas had left the cave and high-tailed it for the hills:

  Should it be further asked, why we do not find, at least, the entire skeleton of the one or more hyenas that died last and left no survivors to devour them; we find a sufficient reply to this question, in the circumstance of the probable destruction of the last individuals by the diluvian waters: on the rise of these, had there been any hyenas in the den, they would have rushed out, and fled for safety to the hills; and if absent, they could by no possibility have returned to it from the higher levels: that they were extirpated by this catastrophe is obvious, from the discovery of their bones in the diluvial gravel both of England and Germany.

  The most common bones at Kirkdale belonged to elephants, rhinos, and hyenas. Since all these animals now inhabit tropical climates, Buckland assumed that the deluge had marked a rapid transition to colder temperatures. (He was quite wrong, for we now know that all these species were long-haired, Ice Age variants of modern tropical relatives.) The Reliquiae diluvianae is most distinctive in avoiding any discussion of causes and general theories. Buckland abjured the older traditions of system building and speculation, and wrote instead an empirical monograph on specific evidences for a flood. This tactic rendered his work testable and laid the ground for its refutation—the most healthy activity that science can pursue. In discussing the supposed shift to colder climates, Buckland made his only conjecture about cause and then immediately withdrew in conformity with his larger goal:

  What this cause was, whether a change in the inclination of the earth’s axis, or the near approach of a comet, or any other cause or combination of causes purely astronomical, is a question the discussion of which is foreign to the object of the present memoir.

  After discussing Kirkdale and other caves of Britain and Germany, Buckland moved on to subsidiary evidence for a universal deluge. The last part of Reliquiae diluvianae discusses two corroborating sources. First, Buckland studied the loams and gravels that mantle solid strata throughout northern Europe, and he found within them bones of the same animals that frequented his caves. Since he regarded loams and gravels as direct deposits of the Flood, similar fossils established the cave remains as relics of the last days before Noah. Secondly, he argued that the sculpturing of hills and valleys records the action of surging floodwaters.

  In summarizing his discussion of Kirkdale, Buckland drew an essential inference that sowed the seeds of his later undoing. Buckland’s flood theory absolutely required two conclusions to establish Noah’s deluge as the agent that both sealed the caves and deposited exterior loams and gravels. First, all cave deposits and gravels must represent material of the same age. Second, each of these accumulations must record a single event, not a series of floods or other catastrophes.

  There is no alternation of this mud with beds of bone or of stalagmite, such as would have occurred had it been produced by land floods often repeated; once, and once only, it appears to have been introduced; and we may consider its vehicle to have been the turbid waters of the same inundation that produced universally the diluvial gravel and loam on the surface without.

  In drawing the inference, Buckland had left his self-proclaimed, strictly empirical path (a misplaced ideal that few imaginative scientists can and do follow in any case). No real data supported his claim for contemporaneity of cave deposits with loams and gravels. Moreover, since his caves were widely separated, he could present no direct evidence that the fossils within all hailed from the same time. Indeed, Buckland was arguing in reverse—from prior belief to empirical conclusion. He assumed that these diverse and discontinuous deposits were contemporaneous because he believed so strongly in the historical reality of Noah’s flood. Yet, he also claimed that he could prove Noah’s flood from the empirical evidence alone. You can’t have it both ways.

  Nonetheless, in a bold and striking conclusion, penned four years earlier in his inaugural address at Oxford in 1819, Buckland proclaimed:

  The grand fact of an universal deluge at no very remote period is proved on grounds so decisive and incontrovertible, that had we never heard of such an event from Scripture or any other authority, Geology of itself must have called in the assistance of some such catastrophe.

  This famous quotation has often been exposed to ridicule on the assumption that Buckland suffered from advanced self-delusion born of his biblical convictions. Not so. The statement, though forceful, is not unreasonable and reflects one of the supreme ironies in all the history of science.

  We know, in retrospect, that England and most of northern Europe were, quite recently, covered several times by massive continental ice sheets. The evidences that glaciers leave—large boulders transported far from their source, poorly sorted gravels apparently dumped into their present resting place by catastrophic agents—are very similar to what gigantic floods might produce. Indeed, much glacial topography is formed by floodwaters from melting ice. Buckland, in fact, was studying evidence of glaciation but, quite naturally, interpreted his data as results of flooding. If Buckland had lived in southern Europe or if the science of geology had arisen in the tropics, this reasonable version of “flood theory” would never have entered our history. We can scarcely blame Buckland for not envisaging a mile of ice atop his native land. Surely, in the 1820s, the idea of a continental ice sheet was prepost
erous and unthinkable, while a surging flood confuted neither reason nor experience. However, and again in retrospect, we can easily see why Buckland’s theory quickly failed the test. He attributed his cave deposits and external gravels to a single flood; they were, in fact, produced by several episodes of glaciation.

  Throughout the 1820s, Buckland’s theory was a subject of lively debate within the Geological Society of London. The greatest geologists of Britain lined up on opposite sides. As his chief ally, Buckland could depend upon his Cambridge counterpart and fellow divine, the Reverend Adam Sedgwick. Leading the opposition were Charles Lyell, the great apostle of gradualism, and the aristocratic Roderick Impey Murchison. The debate surged with all the vigor of Buckland’s floodwaters, but within ten years both Buckland and Sedgwick had thrown in the towel.

  Two primary discoveries forced Buckland’s retreat. First, he eventually had to admit that his deposits of loam and gravel were not distributed throughout the world (as “an universal deluge” would require) but only over lands in northern latitudes (reflecting—though Buckland did not yet know the reason—the limited extent of glaciers spreading from polar regions).

  Second, and more importantly, the everyday dog work of geology proved that Buckland’s caves and gravels did not all correlate, or “match up,” as products of a single event in time and also that several deposits recorded more than one episode of flooding (or glaciation, as we would now say). “Correlation” is the basic activity of field geologists. We walk from outcrop to outcrop; we try to trace the beds of one location to the strata of another; we ascertain which beds at our first location match (or correlate in time with) sets of strata in other places.

  As this basic work proceeded, geologists recognized that Buckland’s cave deposits and gravels represented many events, not a single universal flood. This discovery did not require that floods be abandoned as causal agents, but it did rob Noah of any special status. If numerous floods had occurred, then Buckland’s striking evidence could not be ascribed to any particular biblical event. Moreover, since Buckland found no human bones in any of his deposits (whereas Noah’s deluge occurred to extirpate rapacious humanity), he eventually concluded that all the many floods he now recognized had antedated the Noachian deluge.

  In 1829, following a vigorous debate at the Geological Society over Conybeare’s paper on the Thames Valley (William Conybeare was a prominent member of Buckland’s team), Lyell wrote triumphantly to his supporter Gideon Mantell:

  Murchison and I fought stoutly and Buckland was very piano. Conybeare’s memoir is not strong by any means. He admits three deluges before the Noachian! and Buckland adds God knows how many catastrophes besides, so we have driven them out of the Mosaic record fairly.

  (For nonmusical readers, I point out that piano simply means “soft” in Italian. The instrument bears its name as a shortening of pianoforte for a device that can play both softly, or piano, and loudly, or forte.)

  Buckland himself admitted defeat on the same grounds in his next major book of 1836, though he had not yet recognized the glacial alternative:

  Discoveries which have been made, since the publication of this work [Reliquiae diluvianae], show that many of the animals therein described, existed during more than one geological period preceding the catastrophe by which they were extirpated. Hence it seems more probable, that the event in question, was the last of the many geological revolutions that have been produced by violent irruptions of water, rather than the comparatively tranquil inundation described in the Inspired Narrative.

  When their evidence fails, fine scientists like Buckland do not simply admit defeat, crawl into a hole, and don a hair shirt. They retain their interest and struggle to find new explanations. Buckland not only abandoned his flood theory when empirical work disproved it, but he eventually led the movement in Britain to substitute ice for water.

  Although study in retrospect is unfair to historical figures, I must report that I experienced an almost eerie feeling while reading Reliquiae diluvianae in the light of later knowledge about glacial theory. So many of Buckland’s specific empirical statements almost cry out for interpretation by ice sheets rather than water. He continually reports, for example, that the inundation, both in Britain and in North America, must have come from the north, an obvious direction for advancing ice but not for universal floodwaters of a rising ocean. He also argues that blocks of granite moved to lower altitudes from the summit of Mont Blanc prove that the Flood rose high enough to cover all mountains—while we would simply say that descending glaciers brought the boulders down.

  Louis Agassiz, the Swiss geologist who had grown up almost literally between mountain glaciers, developed the theory of ice ages during the 1830s. He and Buckland became fast friends and co-explorers. Buckland also became one of England’s first converts to glacial theory. He read three papers advocating this new interpretation of his old evidence before the Geological Society in 1840 and 1841, and he eventually even persuaded his old adversary Charles Lyell about the reality and power of continental ice sheets. Thus, Buckland not only promptly abandoned his flood theory when it failed the test; he also led the search for new explanations and rejoiced in their discovery.

  Modern creationists, on the other hand, have dogmatically preached an even more outmoded and discredited version of flood theory since G.M. Price revived it fifty years ago. They do no fieldwork to test their claims (arguing instead by distorting the work of true geologists for rhetorical effect), and they will change not one jot or tittle of their preposterous theory.

  I can present no greater contrast between this modern pseudoscience and the truly scientific spirit than Adam Sedgwick’s recantation in his presidential address before the Geological Society of London in 1831. As Buckland’s chief supporter, he had led the fight for flood theory; but he knew by then that he had been wrong. He also recognized that he had argued poorly at a critical point: he had correlated the caves and gravels not by empirical evidence, but by a prior scriptural belief in the Flood’s reality. As empirical evidence disproved his theory, he realized this logical weakness and submitted himself to rigorous self-criticism. I know no finer statement in all the annals of science than Sedgwick’s forthright recantation, and I wish to end this essay with his words. As a witness at the Arkansas creationism trial in December 1981, I also read this passage into the courtroom record because I felt that it illustrated so well the difference between dogmatism, which cannot change, and true science, done in this case by people who happened to be creationists. The final irony and deep message is simply this: flood theory, the centerpiece of modern creationism, was disproved 150 years ago, largely by professional clergymen who were also geologists, exemplary scientists, and creationists. The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not religion:

  Having been myself a believer, and, to the best of my power, a propagator of what I now regard as a philosophic heresy, and having more than once been quoted for opinions I do not now maintain, I think it right, as one of my last acts before I quit this Chair, thus publicly to read my recantation….

  There is, I think, one great negative conclusion now incontestably established—that the vast masses of diluvial gravel, scattered almost over the surface of the earth, do not belong to one violent and transitory period….

  We ought, indeed, to have paused before we first adopted the diluvian theory, and referred all our old superficial gravel to the action of the Mosaic flood…. In classing together distant unknown formations under one name; in giving them a simultaneous origin, and in determining their date, not by the organic remains we had discovered, but by those we expected hypothetically hereafter to discover, in them; we have given one more example of the passion with which the mind fastens upon general conclusions, and of the readiness with which it leaves the consideration of unconnected truths.

  8 | False Premise, Good Science

  MY VOTE for the most arrogant of all scientific titles goes without hesitation to a famous paper written in 18
66 by Lord Kelvin, “The ‘Doctrine of Uniformity’ in Geology Briefly Refuted.” In it, Britain’s greatest physicist claimed that he had destroyed the foundation of an entire profession not his own. Kelvin wrote:

  The “Doctrine of Uniformity” in Geology, as held by many of the most eminent of British geologists, assumes that the earth’s surface and upper crust have been nearly as they are at present in temperature and other physical qualities during millions of millions of years. But the heat which we know, by observation, to be now conducted out of the earth yearly is so great, that if this action had been going on with any approach to uniformity for 20,000 million years, the amount of heat lost out of the earth would have been about as much as would heat, by 100° Cent., a quantity of ordinary surface rock of 100 times the earth’s bulk. (See calculation appended.) This would be more than enough to melt a mass of surface rock equal in bulk to the whole earth. No hypothesis as to chemical action, internal fluidity, effects of pressure at great depth, or possible character of substances in the interior of the earth, possessing the smallest vestige of probability, can justify the supposition that the earth’s crust has remained nearly as it is, while from the whole, or from any part, of the earth, so great a quantity of heat has been lost.

  I apologize for inflicting so long a quote so early in the essay, but this is not an extract from Kelvin’s paper. It is the whole thing (minus the appended calculation). In a mere paragraph, Kelvin felt he had thoroughly undermined the very basis of his sister discipline.

  Kelvin’s arrogance was so extreme, and his later comeuppance so spectacular, that the tale of his 1866 paper, and of his entire, relentless forty-year campaign for a young earth, has become the classical moral homily of our geological textbooks. But beware of conventional moral homilies. Their probability of accuracy is about equal to the chance that George Washington really scaled that silver dollar clear across the Rappahannock.