alive and well - Geological Society of Australia

It was no doubt his experience with the US ExploringExpedition that sparked Dana’s drive towards grand geologicalsyntheses. He recognised early in his career the fundamentaldifferences between continents and ocean basins, believing bothto be permanent features of the globe. The principal mechanismdriving the formation of such features as the linear volcanicchains of the ocean basins and the mountain chains borderingthe continents — especially the Americas — Dana accepted, inaccordance with widely held beliefs of the time, to be thecontraction of a cooling Earth. The continents, largely free ofvolcanoes, he believed to have cooled first, and must bepermanent. Ocean basins, with depressed topography and activevolcanoes, must have been the chief focus of cooling andcontraction. Their subsidence would have caused lateral pressureand uplift of the continental margins to form mountain chains.His concept of geosynclines described the infilling of a downward-bucklingzone with thick sediment derived fromcomplementary upbuckling. In the words of Bob Dott (1997),Dana was thus able to consider the accretion of continentalNorth America as a perfect example of this process, but it alsorevealed ‘God’s plan of creation’ better than any other continent.The essential features of his thinking on continental accretionlingered, particularly in North America right up to the advent ofplate tectonics.This welding of a theory of global evolution with divineplanning is characteristic of much of Dana’s writing; he is describedas returning again and again to refine and extend his theoryfor the evolution of the globe “under divine direction … to fitit for a new age — the Age of Mind.” His religious views stemmedfrom a puritanical upbringing, and they never left him. He hasbeen described as ‘torn between his piety and his science’, onlybelatedly accepting Darwin’s theory of biological evolution, andthen only partially. TH Huxley is reputed to have remarked thatDana wrote “with one eye on fact and the other on Genesis.”Dana the musicianHis life-long engagement with Christianity provided Dana withanother outlet for his creative energy. He was an able musician,playing piano, flute and guitar. He is known to have written a56-page songbook that contained a nativity sequence, as well assongs about his personal life, and a number of songs aboutAntarctica. The US Geological Survey has celebrated Dana themusician with performances of his Antarctic songs given at opendays in the 1840s style.It was through his music that I had my second encounter withDana. In 2011 the School of Music at the Australian NationalUniversity organised a conference Antarctica: Music, Sounds andCultural Connections, a cross-disciplinary meeting designed tobring the arts and sciences together. I had been reading theaccounts of the Wilkes Expedition and chanced across a long epicpoem, Thulia: a tale of the Antarctic. This was written by one JamesCroxall Palmer, the young assistant surgeon to the expedition anda fellow traveller on the Peacock with James Dana. This poem,which runs to some 42 pages, tells of the struggles of the FlyingFish, a New York harbour boat and one of the tiniest ships in theexpedition’s fleet. It gives a vivid overall impression of the trialsendured by the whole expedition. Palmer, who went on to enjoya stellar career in medicine, managed to get the poem publishedin 1843, the year after the expedition’s return to the USA, preemptingWilkes’s own account of the venture. But what intriguedme in reading this account was to discover that none other thanJames Dwight Dana had set verses in the poem to guitar music!I was able to present this story at the conference, and thusintroduce Dana as artist as well as scientist.Further readingCuriously, there does not appear to be any recent comprehensivebiography of Dana, although there is one, apparently unpublished,PhD thesis. The most detailed chronological accountI have been able to find is that of Louis Pirsson (1919). A briefbut valuable summary is given by James Natland (2003). However,scholarly articles continue to appear, dealing both with hisscience and with the impact of his science on contemporarythinking, its links to the cultures of the Pacific, and his visit toAustralia. These encompass Dana’s influence in developinggeology as a profession, and his somewhat patriotic view of theNorth American continent as a geological ideal, with reinforcingby the Divine Creator. His reports and books, however, areavailable in many academic libraries. The selective reference listbelow provides further reading.ELIZABETH M TRUSWELLR E F E R E N C E SDana, JD 1849. ‘Geology’ United States Exploring Expedition 1838–1842, Volume IX.C Sherman, Philadelphia.Dana, JD 1852–1855. ‘Crustacea’ United States Exploring Expedition 1838–1842,Volumes XIII–XIV. C Sherman, Philadelphia.Dana, JD 1875. Corals and Coral Islands. Sampson Low, Marston Low & Searle,London.Dott, RH 1997. ‘James Dwight Dana’s old tectonics — global contraction underdivine direction’ American Journal of Science 297, 283–311.Igler, D 2010. ‘On coral reefs, volcanoes, Gods, and patriotic geology; or, JamesDwight Dana assembles the Pacific Basin’ Pacific Historical Review, 79, 23–49.Mozley, A 1964. ‘James Dwight Dana in New South Wales, 1839–1840’ RoyalSociety of New South Wales 97, 185–191.Mozley, A 1966. ‘Dana, James Dwight (1813–1895)’ Australian Dictionary ofBiography, Volume 1 (MUP), http://adb.anu.edu au/biography/dana-james-dwight-1953/text2347Natland, J H 2003. ‘Rock Stars. James Dwight Dana (1813–1895): Mineralogist,Zoologist, Geologist, Explorer’ GSA Today, February, 20–21.Newell, J 1997. ‘James Dwight Dana and the emergence of professional geology inthe United States’ American Journal of Science, 297, 273–282.Palmer, J C 1843. Thulia: a tale of the Antarctic. Samuel Colman, New York.Pirsson, L V 1919. ‘Biographical Memoir of James Dwight Dana’ US NationalAcademy of Sciences. Biographical memoirs Volume IX. 41–92.Prendergast, M L 1978. ‘James Dwight Dana: the life and thought of an Americanscientist.’ PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.Vallance, T G 1981. The fuss about coal. In D J and S C M Carr (eds), Plants andMan in Australia. Academic Press, Sydney, pp. 136–176.TAG September 2012| 27