K.J. Tinkler (editor) - The History of Geomorphology: From Hutton to Hack: Binghamton Geomorphology Symposium 19

Volume 20

Edited by
K.J. TINKLER

First published in 1989 by Unwin Hyman, Inc.

This edition first published in 2020

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1989 K.J. Tinkler & contributors

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ISBN: 978-0-367-18559-6 (Set)

ISBN: 978-0-429-19681-2 (Set) (ebk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-46449-3 (Volume 20) (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-00-302889-5 (Volume 20) (ebk)

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Edited by
K.J. Tinkler

The Binghamton Symposia in Geomorphology:
International Series, no.19

Boston

UNWIN HYMAN

London Sydney Willington

K. J. Tinkler & contributors, 1989

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First published in 1989

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

The history of geomorphology: from Hutton to Hack / edited by

Keith J. Tinkler.

p. cm. (The Binghamton symposia in geomorphology; no. 19)

Proceedings of the 19th Annual Binghamton Geomorphology Symposium Pref.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-04-551138-1

1. Geomorphology History Congresses. I. Tinkler, K. J., 1942 . II. Binghamton Geomorphology Symposium (19th: 1988: Binghamton, N.Y.) III. Series.

GB400.7.H57 1989

551.4l09-dc20 89-16594

CIP

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

The history of geomorphology. (The Binghamton symposia.

International series; 19)

1. Geomorphology, history

I. Tinkler, Keith J. II. Series

551.409

ISBN 0-04551138-1

Printed in Great Britain by The University Press, Cambridge.

TERRA INCOGNITA

it will be some time before . historians and philosophers awaken from their dogmatic slumbers and see the history of geology as an area with broad implications for the study of science generally.

(M.T. Greene, 1985, p. 97.)

It is a great pleasure to present this book, the proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Binghamton Symposium, to the geomorphological public to commemorate and honour both the publication of James Huttons extended essay Theory of the Earth in the 1788 Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (their very first volume), and the twentieth century career of John Hack of the United States Geological Survey, whose particular contribution to geomorphology has been an explicit formulation of an equilibrium theory of landscape development (Hack 1960). Although Hack is approximately two centuries later than Hutton eighteenth century geologists, especially in Britain, might not have been surprised to read a theory committed to viewing landscape as a state of equilibrium achieved within a system of competing forces, as I hope I demonstrate in my own essay (Chapter 3).

I am convinced that it constitutes a volume worthy of both individuals for it is the first set of essays whose determined focus is the history of geomorphology, although it is by no means the first book on the history of geomorphology. For good measure those few of us who have written books on the history of the discipline (and many of whom were at the Symposium) are frequently taken to task in this volume for having neglected substantial fields and significant areas of concern! We can all retort that nothing in our own essays can be found in our books, and that surely is very satisfactory!

At present geomorphology is showing signs of out-growing a lengthy adolescence and may soon adopt a formal international structure which will be both independent of, and competitive with, similar structures in geography and geology to which its parent bodies belong. This move is likely to be seen as one of great significance by those involved in its organisation and by many beyond it, and it may well signal structural changes within the discipline whose actual outcome and meaning will not be clear for several decades.

My perspective on such a move is cool, because the adoption of an historical perspective with respect to the practice of geomorphology in times past brings the recognition that times present are in no sense different. That which seems appropriate, fundable, official and achievable is just that: the essays of Stoddart (Chapter 8) and Hewitt (Chapter 9) both neatly illustrate, in their different ways, the distinction between official and scientific approaches to the same problem. But institutional expansion, Viteks paper not withstanding (Chapter 14), may not be why our geomorphology will be of interest to future generations. What that interest will be is a matter for speculation. Will it be contemporary interplanetary equivalents of the great explorations of the nineteenth centuries? Will it be our ability to collect vast quantities of real-time process data, and to manipulate it with mathematical models and GIS systems, on computers whose memory capacity is already outgrowing our imagination? Might it be that we have achieved disciplinary consciousness and have begun to write histories of ourselves? Or will it be our realisation that despite an almost total failure to communicate significant quantities of information between major language groups, we have nevertheless managed to muddle our way to a reasonably coherent picture of how the worlds surface works? (see, for example, Starkels essay, Chapter 12) We cannot know: if we did we could be prophets. We must keep an open mind, and we should read the opening essay by Gordon Herries Davies not just for its splendid rhetoric, but to realise that its logic is irrefutable.