Grove Karl Gilbert. 669 



GROVE KARL GILBERT. 



The history of geology, like that of other sciences, 

 affords occasional instances of an nnclue assumption of 

 authority on the part of its eminent men, grown old in 

 service: their earlier work had received so general an 

 adoption that in later years they strove to impose less 

 acceptable opinions upon their juniors, and came to 

 regard dissent from their views as at once an error and 

 an impropriety. 



Never has there lived a geologist who could with better 

 right than Gilbert have assumed an authoritative attitude 

 among his fellows, for it has been well said of his work : 

 "It is doubtful whether the product of any other geolo- 

 gist of our day will escape revision at the hands of future 

 research to a degree equal to the writings of Grove Karl 

 Gilbert"; yet never was there a geologist to whom an 

 assumption of authority would have been more unnatural, 

 or the wish to occupy a dictatorial position more remote. 

 It was from no personal claim or urgency that his opin- 

 ions found acceptance, but from the convincing logic 

 with which they were set forth. It was his habit in pre- 

 senting a conclusion to expose it as a bail might be held 

 on his hand — not clutched as if to prevent its fall, not 

 grasped as if to hurl it against an objector, but poised 

 on the open palm, free to roll off if any breath of dis- 

 turbing evidence should displace it; yet there it would 

 rest in satisfied stability. Not he but the facts that he 

 marshalled clamored for the adoption of the explanation 

 that he had found for them. 



Fortunately for the rest of us, Gilbert gave a clear 

 account of this way of studying a field problem in an 

 address on "The Inculcation of Scientific Method by 

 Example," which he delivered as president of the Society 

 of American Naturalists in 1885. 1 The problem chosen 

 for treatment was the deformation of the Bonneville 

 shorelines,- part of a larger problem upon which he had 

 been engaged for some years. The deformation of the 

 shorelines is briefly set forth, and several alternative 

 hypotheses proposed for its explanation are discussed 

 at some length. Thus it is shown how observation is 

 followed by induction, or the empirical grouping of 

 discovered facts in accord with their conspicuously com- 

 mon characters ; how hypothetical explanations are 

 invented one after the other ; how each explanation must 



1 See this Journal, 22, 284-299, 1886. 



Am. Jour. Sci.— Fourth Series, Vol. XLVI, No. 275.— November, 1918. 

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