Philip Henry Gosse (1810–1888)

"Night-attack of wolves in Mongolia." "Nearly fatal combat with a kangaroo." "Comic scenes with the Elephant." "Captain Herriman examines a supposed Sea-serpent." This charming book, published by British naturalist PHILIP HENRY GOSSE (1810-1888) in 1860, was a best seller in its day, and no wonder: this is a passionate around-the-world journey through nature both wild and serene... and mysterious. "In the annals of cryptozoology," says cryptozoologist Loren Coleman in his new introduction, "Gosse is credited as one of the grandfathers of the discipline... In this book, one finds his records of the sea serpent, giant snakes, African unicorn, South America ape, and Ceylonese devil-bird, reflecting this early interest in romantic zoology, the precursor of cryptozoology." Philip Henry Gosse FRS (/ɡɒs/; 6 April 1810 – 23 August 1888), known to his friends as Henry, was an English naturalist and populariser of natural science, an early improver of the seawater aquarium, and a painstaking innovator in the study of marine biology. Gosse created and stocked the first public aquarium at the London Zoo in 1853, and coined the term "aquarium" when he published the first manual, The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea, in 1854. His work was the catalyst for an aquarium craze in early Victorian England.

Gosse was also the author of Omphalos, an attempt to reconcile the geological ages presupposed by Charles Lyell with the biblical account of creation. After his death, Gosse was portrayed as an overbearing father of uncompromising religious views in Father and Son (1907), a memoir written by his son, Edmund Gosse, a poet and critic, though the son's description of Gosse has since been described as having included "error, distortion...unwarranted claims, misrepresentation" and "abuse of the written record".
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2411452.The_Romance_of_Natural_History… (mehr)

Omphalos is famous for being the book that said God put fossils on the Earth to test our faith. It turns out to have a hypothesis not quite that bad, and I was intrigued and surprised to find myself enjoying it somewhat, as long as I skipped over the bits where Gosse describes a bunch of plants in exhausting detail.

The argument he devises is actually very compelling, if you buy his two initial premises: 1) all matter must be created ex nihilo at some point and 2) species are all unique, i.e. they cannot transmutate into one another. He also says everyone accepts that all life is circular: an adult has a baby grows up into an adult has a baby...

If you buy those two premises (which are nuts for us, but acceptable for a Victorian, even if already outside the scientific mainstream pre-Darwin), then it logically follows that all species must have popped into existence in such a way that implies past existence. When God magically creates a tree, you would be unable to discern it from a tree that had grown out of a seed. Simply analogize this to a planetary level, and you get the fact that though the Earth seems to be millions of years old, if its existence is circular, then it had to pop into existence at some point in the cycle, which would imply previous existence even if it was untrue. And all other things being equal, if you accept the Earth magically popping into existence, you may as well go with the Biblical account, of course.

All very well reasoned from completely wrong premises. It reminds me of that statement in Doctor Who that logic merely allows one to be wrong with authority. Philip Henry Gosse had authority in spades; the book's second and third chapters are actually a very good explanation of cutting-edge geological and natural historical thought. Shame that his apparently prodigious intellect was wasted so much; the book ruined him, and probably his relationship with his son, too.

Still almost a good read, though; I bet that as long as Evenings at the Microscope, or Researches among the Minuter Organs and Forms of Animal Life avoids the cod-evolutionary theory, it is pretty good.… (mehr)