CHAMBERS, Robert (1802 – 1871)

Robert Chambers was born in Peebles, Scotland on 10 July 1802, and died in St. Andrews, Scotland on 17 March 1871. The son of a cotton manufacturer, Chambers' life was one of early hardship overcome by dedicated work. Following a youth of financial hardship in which he was largely self-educated, he joined his elder brother William in Edinburgh and with him founded the publishing firm of William and Robert Chambers, which would, in 1832, begin Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, one of the most popular British weeklies. Robert's influence began primarily with his scientific articles, summarizing the latest scientific findings, and thus allowing the reading public access to ideas previously only available to the emerging scientific profession, articles which often presented 'exalted views of Creative Wisdom and Providential Care' and thus clearly reflecting the tenets of William PALEY. In addition to his work with the Journal, he wrote and edited over forty popular works within the fields of Scottish history, folklore, biography, and ethnography and produced a number of geological papers and monographs. For these achievements, he was elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1840), the Geological Society of London (1848), and became the president of the revived Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh (1856). Today he is best remembered as the author of the anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), a work that sold over 35,000 copies by 1890 and ran to twelve editions in Britain alone. Deploring the increased specialization among the developing scientific community and the lack of enthusiasm for grand, unifying theories, Chambers set out to provide an all-encompassing theory that would unify divergent fields under the banner of universal development which, although divinely decreed and determined, was not under ongoing divine guidance. This resulting work was, as James Secord notes, an evolutionary epic, which in the words of one reviewer was an ‘attempt made to shew the mutual bearing of sciences, at present too often regarded as far apart’ (Forbes, p. 256).

Chambers' message was simply yet decidedly unsettling. The whole of the creation, from the microcosm to the universe itself, was continually undergoing a process of change – a system brought about by the laws imposed on matter by the Creator at the beginning of time. Species were continually coming into being as simple entities by a process of spontaneous generation while eventually changing into more complex forms. Slight delays in gestation could allow a lower type to give birth to a higher one. In this view, a divine programmer (explicitly analogous to Charles Babbage) could build change into the underlying laws, and thus like need not produce like. It is worth stressing that Vestiges lacks any notion of common descent and rests on the theme of parallel lines each stretching towards the human apex. It is also worth pointing out that Chambers' theories included both the origin of life and the origin of species, whereas Charles Darwin’s theories refused to discuss the former. Thus, though Chambers' ideas were clearly transmutationalist, they in no way formed logical precursors to Darwin's.

Vestiges, far from reflecting an atheistic ideology, clearly assumes that a unitary divine being was responsible for the natural laws that brought everything into being, and to modern readers it reads with a certain charming piety. It projects an image of a universe whose rules of operation derived from beneficent and wise Creator, an image in accordance with the accepted viewpoint of many earlier philosophers to whom natural law exalted rather than diminished God. Chambers believed that universal law was simpler (and thus had greater beauty) than the exceptions demanded by those who clung to literal belief in Scripture. While few respected naturalists of the time were Biblical literalists, Chambers' words would still have proved discomforting to many, if only because of their directness, and he eventually removed any discussions of the scriptural implications of creation by natural law from the sixth (1847) and subsequent editions. Not surprisingly, initial approval for Vestiges in the more radical journals by the likes of Edward FORBES (Lancet) and William CARPENTER (British and Foreign Medical Review) soon gave way to less positive responses by evangelical organs and establishment quarterlies. The Athenaeum published the first adverse review (in January 1845) and began an attack that was to peak with Adam SEDGWICK’s notorious rebuttal in the Edinburgh Review of July of that year. Sedgwick would eventually expand his assault as part of the fifth edition of his Discourse of the Studies of the University (1850).

Above all else, the speculative nature of the work left many of the more conservative reviewers cold. William Henry SMITH felt it to be 'an assemblage of all that is most venturous and most fanciful in modern speculation' (p. 449). Criticisms were also leveled at the scientific content of the work, most famously by Sedgwick and David BREWSTER. In truth, Chambers had not expected scientific criticism from the likes of Sedgwick given the latter’s treatment of Dean Cockburn at the Bath meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He worked hard to achieve the acceptance of his critics, and subsequent editions were revised with the aid of George Fownes, Edwin Lankester and Carpenter in direct response to these criticisms, resulting in a number of significant changes in his argument by the tenth edition of 1853. Chambers' initial reaction to his critics was contained in a slim volume titled Explanations (1845) which sought to, among other things, rebut Sedgwick's remarks. The 1846 edition of that work offered an attack on William WHEWELL's Indications of the Creator, and attempted to show how the likes of Sedgwick, Whewell and William HERSCHEL had amended their pre-1844 statements on natural law in attempts to distance themselves from his position; in short, they were not being consistent in their beliefs nor fair to Chambers and his theory.

Much of the professional criticism of Vestiges was paleontological. Many argued that the fossil record did not show the overall progress that Chambers claimed and his theory of universal development demanded. This argument formed the central aim of  Hugh Miller's Footprints of the Creator (1849), a popular work specifically aimed against Vestiges. For Sedgwick and Miller, the fossil record was not obviously one of increasing complexity through time; simple and complex forms occurred together, while early forms were often complex. Another objection revolved around the stability of species both in the paleontological and neontological realms. Underlying this objection was a belief that the original creation was perfect, a logic that assumed a perfect creation could not be improved and thus could not change. Chambers, along with Charles Lyell and Darwin, was in the forefront of those who fought against such a static view of nature, and it has been often claimed that Victorian opposition to evolutionary thinking stemmed from the culture’s reticence towards change, particularly change that was uncontrolled by any providential force. Chambers' mechanism of rapid saltational (almost revolutionary) change no doubt directly confronted this viewpoint, despite his claims of distant divine influence.

Critics, however, reserved much of their venom for two particular pieces of evidence that Chambers used. While Chambers often warned readers of the Journal of unproven conjectural theories, he felt that, while one should be wary of novel findings, the truth often comes from such. Therefore, he adopted two 'novel findings' that, more than anything else contained in Vestiges, opened the door for criticism. The first of these was the Nebular Hypothesis, previously advocated by Kant, Swedenburg, LaPlace, and Herschel. The production of the universe from a primordial cloud was an idea that had become associated with French revolutionaries, working-class atheists, and various naturalists such as Lamarck, St. Hilaire and the philosophical anatomists in the radical London medical schools. This alone was enough to bring the idea into some disrepute with the establishment. Why then did Chambers adopt the theory? Firstly, nebular material was observable, and up until the appearance of Vestiges, many of the book’s most notable critics (e.g., Brewster and Whewell) had tentatively supported the idea. Secondly, the adoption of the hypothesis allowed Chambers' to infer that, since developmental models had been considered at the cosmological level, such models should then be applicable at a lower level. Unfortunately for Chambers, as he was writing, the Earl of Rosse resolved certain nebulae into their component stars, and very soon Thomas Robinson resolved further nebulae, thus casting further doubt on the hypothesis, and removing support for Chambers' argument.

Chambers attempted to defend his use of the Nebular Hypothesis in the second edition of Explanations (1846), in which he also developed an analogy between the micro- and macrocosms, one which would – in the fifth edition of Vestiges (1846) – allow him to proclaim that the hypothesis had been demonstrated ‘by experiment to the point at which we may almost be said to see it passing into the region of ascertained truths’ (cited in Ogilvie). This support came from the experiments of the Belgian physicist, Joseph-Antoine-Ferdinand Plateau, which Chambers used to counter what he saw as the mere rhetoric of the opponents. A year later, Chambers was less sure of the worth of Plateau’s experiments and, from this point on, Chambers presented the hypothesis solely within the framework of an historical discussion.

Probably the 'fact' that received the greatest amount of ridicule from the critics was Chambers' adoption of the experiments of Andrew Crosse to demonstrate spontaneous generation. Crosse believed that he had generated a new species of mite by allowing electricity to pass through a chemical solution. To Chambers, this proved that life could come from non-living matters, providing another plank for his developmental scheme. But as with the Nebular Hypothesis, his support soon disappeared. The mite was shown to be, not a new species, but a common Acarus horridus, and few believed it appeared by a process of spontaneous generation. As Smith pointed out, 'we have no recoil against this generation of an animalcule by the wonderful chemistry of God; our objection to this doctrine is, that it is not proved' (p. 454). After the fifth edition, Chambers wisely no longer claimed that Crosse had produced a new species of mite. In the tenth edition, he would still mention the experiments though he claimed not to attach a ‘high degree of consequence’ to them (p. 138). As with the Nebular Hypothesis, he was unwilling to totally discount a possibly useful observation that appeared to support his hypothesis, even in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence and scientific opinion.

The long battle with reviewers culminated in the tenth edition, with its appendix in which Chambers replied to many of his critics by demonstrating that many of the authorities he used were also the authorities of contemporary science. In attacking Sedgwick, he not only pointed out that the geologist had once held the general position that he himself advocated, but also that, being 'neither an anatomist or naturalist', Sedgwick could not be accepted as an expert in these areas (p. xlix). Thus, central to his defense were his views on authority and professionalism. The common perception that the anonymous author of Vestiges lacked practical scientific experience lead many critics to reject him. Brewster wrote that had the author 'performed one single chemical experiment, and endeavored to understand its import ... he would never have presumed to write this book' (p. 507). Chambers was a talented amateur in a period which was still largely the age of the amateur with few professional scientists. As Vestiges went through successive revisions, movements within the 'scientific community' were leading to increased calls for professionalization, and by the tenth edition the negative reaction from the likes of Thomas Henry HUXLEY was largely in response to Chambers' status as an anonymous amateur who was attempting to bring scientific issues directly to the public without the mediation of the professionals who existed at that time. Chambers saw himself as a natural philosopher rather than as a scientist, thus cloaking himself in an older, more inclusive tradition. This allowed him, as an amateur (as were most natural philosophers), to believe that he could synthesize the writings of the professionals in a manner that was not only novel but in a form that would educate the masses. Like his critics Miller and Huxley, Chambers functioned as a popularizer. Yet, while Chambers was castigated for his efforts, Miller was accepted due to his obviously more pious attitude to nature and its lessons, while Huxley as part of the emerging scientific elite could effectively delineate boundaries and thus maintain his status as respected scientist and trusted popularizer.

Whewell also saw Chambers as not playing by the ‘rules’ of discourse set up by the emerging scientific community. Within the first forty-five pages of Indications, he accuses Chambers of not allowing facts to speak for themselves and thus disprove his hypothesis of universal development. Chambers was faulted for bringing his dogmatic ideas to the public before they could be examined and refuted by scientists; ‘hypotheses which have thus been advantageous to science have been tentative hypotheses admitted into the mind for trial and rejected if the facts were found to contradict them; not dogmatic hypotheses published to the world, and defended by an appeal from mean of science to ‘another tribunal’’ (p. 25). It is precisely because Chambers by-passed the ‘men of science’ for ‘another tribunal’ (the reading public) that Whewell felt Vestiges to be pernicious. He believed that the public’s acceptance of the ideas put forth in the work did not reflect well on the readership’s state of mind regarding the nature of scientific thought; the problem with Vestiges was one both of author and reader.

Ironically – at least for his critics – Chambers became quite accomplished as an amateur geologist, and as author of fourteen geological works between 1843 and 1864, he was well enough known for Darwin to have a correspondence with him on geological issues, particularly regarding the raised beaches at GlenRoy. These scientific works would, however, make little difference to the status of the nominally anonymous author of Vestiges – while many suspected Chambers as the author, his geological works provided little support for Vestiges as a serious work of science. Indeed, at the same time as he was publishing these geological works, Chambers was exploring the validity of spiritualist claims. He began attending séances and visiting mediums in the early 1850’s, a period in which he began writing a History of Superstition, the manuscript of which would eventually be destroyed. (It is perhaps notable that this period also saw the last major revisions to Vestiges and a marked decrease in references to the Creator in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal). Oppenheim believes that he spent the years between 1853 and 1871 attempting to reconcile the naturalism of Vestiges with his spiritualist experiences, leaving a number of unpublished manuscripts on spiritualism.

It is possible to see the importance of Vestiges in the way that it demonstrated to Darwin how not to write a transmutationalist work. By 1844, Darwin had completed his 230 page unpublished essay which would, fifteen years later, become Origin. He responded to Sedgwick's fulminations with a sigh of relief, realizing that he had covered many of the cleric's objections. Responses to Vestiges lead Darwin to realize that the Quinary system of William MacLeay was inherently useless, and that the specification of hypothetical genealogies was potentially dangerous. Yet there is a danger in this view in that it eclipses Chambers’ true accomplishment in seeing him as a minor precursor to Darwin. In a time of socio-political turmoil, Chambers bravely expressed a theory that denied the fixity of species, the special non-material nature of ‘mind’, and humankind’s special status within the universe. As such, and despite the evident flaws with the work, the publication of Vestiges stands as a waypoint marking both within the rising secularization of scientific discourse, and the eventual decline of the amateur within the scientific community.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844; repr. in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and Other Evolutionary Writings, Editor James A. Secord, Chicago, 1994; 10th edn., 1853; repr. in Vestiges and the Debate before Darwin, Editor John M. Lynch, Bristol, 2000).

Explanations: A Sequel to "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" by the Author of that Work (1845; repr. in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and Other Evolutionary Writings, Editor James A. Secord, Chicago, 1994; 2nd edn., 1846; repr. in Vestiges and the Debate before Darwin, Editor John M. Lynch, Bristol, 2000).

Other relevant works

‘On the existence of raised beaches in the neighbourhood of St. Andrews’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1843), vol. XXXIV.

‘Sur la variation du niveau relatif de la terre et de la mer’, Paris Societe Geologique, Bulletin (1846-'47), vol. IV.

Ancient Sea Margins, as Memorials of Changes in the Relative Level of Sea and Land (1848).

‘Geological notes on the valleys of the Rhine and Rhone’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1849), vol. XLVI.

‘On glacial phenomena of the neighborhood of Edinburgh’, British Association Reports (1850), pt. II.

‘Personal observations of terraces in Scandinavia’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1850), vol. XLVIII.

Tracings of the North of Europe (1851).

‘On the glacial phenomena in Scotland and some parts of England’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1853), vol. LIV.

‘On eyeless animals of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1853), vol. LV.

‘Further observations on glacial phenomena in Scotland and the North of England’, British Association Reports (1854), pt. II.

‘On the Great Terrace of erosion in Scotland’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1855), n.s. vol. I.

‘On glacial phenomena in Peebles and Selkirkshire’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1855), n.s. vol. II.

Tracings of Iceland and the Faroe Islands (1856).

‘On the recently discovered glacial phenomena of Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Craigs’, Proceedings of the Royal Society (London) (1857), vol. III.

‘Testimony - its posture in the scientific world’ in Edinburgh Papers (1861).

‘Notice of an 'eskar' at St. Fort, Fifeshire’, Geological Magazine (1864), vol. IV.

Further reading

[Brewster, David], North British Review, vol. 3, (1845), pp. 470 – 515.

[Forbes, Edward]. Lancet, vol. 2, pp. 265 – 6.

Hodge, M.J.S., 'The Universal Gestation of Nature: Chamber's Vestiges and Explanations’, Journal of the History of Biology vol. 4, (1972), pp. 127 -152.

[Huxley, Thomas Henry], British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, vol. 13, (1854), pp. 525 – 439.

Lynch, John M. (ed.) Vestiges and the Debate before Darwin, 7 vols (Bristol, 2000).

Lynch, John M. ‘Scriptural Geology, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and contested authority in Nineteenth-century British science’ in Sidelined Sciences: Shifting Centres in Nineteenth-Century Scientific Thinking (London, 2005).

Miller, Hugh, Footprints of the Creator (1849; repr. in Lynch 2000).

Millhauser, Milton, Just Before Darwin: Robert Chambers and Vestiges (Middletown CT, 1959).

Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey, ‘Robert Chambers and the nebular hypothesis’, British Journal for the History of Science (1975), vol. 8, pp. 214 - 232.

Oppenheim, Janet, The Other World: Spiritualism and psychical research in England, 1850 - 1914 (London, 1985), pp. 272 - 278.

Schaffer, Simon, ‘The nebular hypothesis and the science of progress’ in History, Humanity and Evolution (London, 1989), pp. 131 - 164.

Schwartz, Joel, ‘Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley, and Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation’, Journal of the History of Biology (1990) vol. 23, pp. 127- 153.

Secord, James A. ‘Extraordinary experiment: electricity and the creation of life in Victorian England’ in The Uses of Experiments: Studies in the Natural Sciences (London, 1989), pp. 337 - 383.

Secord, James A., Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago, 2000).

[Sedgwick, Adam], Edinburgh Review vol. CLXV, (July 1845), pp. 1-85.

Sedgwick, Adam, A Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge (5th edn., 1850; repr. in Lynch 2000).

Whewell, William, Indications of the Creator (2nd edn., 1845; ; repr. in Lynch 2000).

JML [John M. Lynch]