Re: Philidor: No Class (long)

["Steve Brusatte" <dinoland@lycos.com>]

On Tue, 27 Aug 2002 21:34:25  
 David Marjanovic wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Williams, Tim" <TiJaWi@agron.iastate.edu>
>Sent: Monday, August 26, 2002 11:15 PM

>> > The glance of the traveler on horseback is, as Jefferson said, the
>> > exemplar of scientific classification at work.
>>
>> The honorable Jefferson must have been drunk when he said that.  Or high.
>
>I'm pretty sure he was neither. He just said that long before Darwin
>published. That's it. Jefferson thought that living beings and minerals
>alike were _stamps_ that everyone could classify as they liked, _be it by
>color_, and that Linné's classification, whereby he probably meant the exact
>pattern, e. g. that he put *Rhinoceros* into Order Glires, was the most
>BEAUTIFUL that had been _invented_ so far. And because Jefferson's
>contemporaries used Linné's exact system (or so it seems from Jefferson's
>quote), Jefferson thought it should never be changed, and *Rhinoceros*
>should stay in Order Glires forever.

Nah.  I doubt Jefferson was drunk of high, Tim, although he did have a 
particular fondness for French wine. :-)

Jefferson is an interesting figure to study when it comes to his views on 
paleontology.  I sure wish somebody would write a book on his contributions to 
the science.  Along with having Lewis and Clark keep an "eye out" for possible 
extant mammoths and mastodons, Jefferson also wrote about Tertiary (mostly 
Pliocene) fossils from Virginia, including the current state fossil that bears 
his name, _Chesapecten jeffersonius_.  Jefferson only published one book in his 
lifetime (AFAIK), Notes on the State of Virginia, and included in it were his 
own views on the origins of the fossil scallop shells.  I haven't read all of 
the original passages myself (the book is hard to find-I've seen it in a few 
bookstores, but I'm a poor college student now :-)), but interestingly enough 
he basically dismissed the idea that the fossil shells represented signs of 
long-past life. This was a strange twist for a man dedicated to and interested 
in paleontology, at least vertebrate paleontology.

I was able to tour his home of Monticello this summer, and displayed in the 
foyer immediately as one walks in are two nice mastodon lower jaws and several 
disarticulated mastodon limb bones, including, as best I could tell, a really 
nice humerus.

When it came to paleontology, Jefferson could best be called a disciple of 
Cuvier.  The two even supposidely communicated on fossil mammals, or so I've 
read.  I don't know how much Jefferson knew of Lamarckian "evolution," but he 
certainly was unaware of Darwinian natural selection.  I'm no revisionist 
historian, but had Jefferson had access to Darwin, I have no doubt that he 
would have read his books and papers...and probably agreed with him.  

However, Jefferson, like Cuvier, was a follower of Linne and his system-really, 
the only "good" system known at the time.  So, Jefferson wasn't drunk on his 
French wine when discussing his views on "stamp collection" classifications.  
He was a true academic and intellectual, but was constrained by his time.  Who 
knows what new insights paleontology will have gleaned 200 years from now...and 
how stupid many of us might look in light of those developments?

Steve

---
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