Woodward wrote An Essay towards a Natural History of the Earth in Latin, and his translator, Benjamin Holloway, a Fellow of the Royal Society, wrote in his introduction to the 1726 edition that the issues that would most gratify and entertain the curiosity of the reader are the advances made in understanding the ‘great Abyss,’ formed out of the catastrophe of the flood: ‘This is indeed a new Province in Philosophy: and we have here open’d to us a Scene in Nature that had hardly ever been thought of before.’38 Woodward was an active fieldworker, he
descended into caves and mines and asked local excavators to tell him when they opened up a new mine or sank a well. He was particularly interested in the gathering of fossils, urging readers to do so as well.39 He writes: ‘The Abyss lyes wholey in the Dark, shut up and conceal’d
from all Mortal Eyes’ (Woodward, p. 47). He was going to go where few dared, he was willing to make his descent and bring back evidence to upset the theories of Burnet. Unlike Burnet, Woodward wrote of his descents of caves and mines though gave us no particular descent narratives:
I have carefully search’d the principal Mines of our Island, and the Bowels of the Earth by whatever Means laid open to View; observing the Strata of every Sort of terrestrial Matter. (Woodward, p. 2)
38 John Woodward The Natural History of the Earth (London: Ellis, 1726), p. 6 39 His collection can currently be seen in Cambridge University’s Sedgewick Museum.
76 His descents, and those of miners he spoke with, revealed strata, or individual beds of rock, ‘to the greatest Depth we ever dig or mine’ (Woodward, p. 47). This observation of strata led him to believe that as the earth’s surface was dissolved during the flood, it settled out through specific gravity when the flood waters retreated down into the abyss, leading to layers of rock and fossils. Where heavy rocks and fossils found their way to the surface instead of sinking, it was because they were slabs that did not dissolve and had floated into place in the turmoil.
Woodward’s field assistant and student, John Hutchinson, disagreed strongly and refused to allow Woodward use of his field notes in supporting his claims, claims which Hutchinson believed undermined biblical authority. Hutchinson called him ‘our undertaker’ (Hutchinson, 1724, p. 98). It was simple for Hutchinson: gravity cannot be used to account for God’s will. Gravity is not the final cause, God is the final cause: ‘So long as Gravity stands, Moses cannot be explained’ (Hutchinson, p. 98). Even as an astute natural philosopher, Hutchinson was keen to stress the limit of curiosity and inquiry. He believed philosophers like Woodward were searching too far:
Ever since the Creation of Man, it has been the constant Employment of the Devil, who has nothing of his own, but his Rebellion, to set up the works of God in opposition to God, and to persuade Man that there were Properties in them independent of God, or incommunicable. (Hutchinson, p.22)
The search motif of Burnet and Woodward generated a contrary narrative of forbidden knowledge: elements of nature were hidden by God for good reason, according to philosophers like Hutchinson. John Ray also argued that the Aristotelean theory of eternalism or the Epicurean atomic theory were the attempts by atheists to evade the natural arguments for the existence of God (Ray, 1704, p. 33). The search motif, or natural revelation, clearly brought philosophers close to what was perceived as Spinoza’s dangerous ideas concerning the equivalence God and nature. Philosophers such as Ray and Hutchinson feared that the
77 revelation of sources of things and causes hidden in the remote obscurity of nature would lead to a belief of God’s immanence in nature or, much worse, in God’s absence.
Hutchinson had collected field data from around Britain and had clearly observed and recorded evidence of rock strata and the process of erosion, transport and deposition; however, the data had to coincide with orthodox thought, for he believed the retreating flood waters were responsible for all he observed:
For the water falling towards the Apertures of the Abyss, in such vast Quantity as was then upon the surface, and with great force would bear away with it even Mountains, and all Matter, and Bodies, that were not firm enough to resist and withstand it.40
His fieldwork in Westmorland, Cumberland and Yorkshire revealed to him springs in valley floors fed by sinks higher up the mountain, huge boulders transported from their place of origin (glacial erratics), rocks made up of other rocks (conglomerates), angular fragments of rock at the foot of mountains and rounded rocks high on mountains, rivers and streams eroding their banks and exposing layers of earth, sand, clay and rounded cobbles, and fissures in many rocks but especially limestone. He observes cave passages across Yorkshire and some that run under surface streams. For Hutchinson, this is erosion, transport and deposition in many forms though not over long periods of time for there is no time in which it can be sustained, for the Bible states it takes only a matter of days for the waters to retreat. The size of the boulders is evidence that it did not all happen at once, and their position on hillsides is due to a varied degree of force. The springs in the valley floor are caves formed by the initial arrival of the abyssal waters truncated by the force of the retreating waters. These observed and measured variations were caused by ‘a few minutes’ difference’ in the time of the retreat (Hutchinson, p. 40). Hutchinson is inspired by Locke’s empiricism and records observations of
78 detail and accuracy though he will not yet think out of biblical orthodoxy; what he observes is assimilated into it.
This orthodoxy is sustained further with theologian, Alexander Catcott’s book from 1761, A Treatise on the Deluge. Catcott, a vicar who visited many caves, was a follower of Hutchinson and quotes passages from his Observations in support of his own Treatise.41 Like
Hutchinson, Catcott observed, measured and recorded subterranean phenomena and generated anomalies that he assimilated into the existing theory. He observes, for example, that cave entrances are small compared to the vast caverns that lie below. He also observes that many small streams converge to form larger ones; this he explains by stating that the originally large entrances are above the chambers and blocked with debris from the retreating flood waters (Catcott, p. 336). He provides an example of this with Eldon Hole in Derbyshire, where from the evidence of two men lowered down the initial shaft of ‘seventy yards’ they notice a lower entrance to another high, parallel chamber. Catcott then identifies a shakehole, or slump, in the surface above the parallel shaft, providing evidence for a plugged shaft (Catcott, p. 338). Nearby Peak Cavern has a huge entrance but soon closes into a series of narrow passages with occasional large chambers; this he explains by way of the initial surge of flood water through both small and wider passages combining to form the much larger entrance (Catcott, p. 340).
Catcott described his visits to caves in Monmouthshire, Pembrokeshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset. He adds the caves of Yorkshire by quoting an article from The Gentleman’s Magazine from March 1761 written by someone under the pseudonym of ‘Pastor.’ This writer has since been identified as John Hutton.42 He was then a Cambridge
undergraduate, who grew up in and around the West Riding of Yorkshire. He was later to write
41 Alexander Catcott, A Treatise on the Deluge (London: Allen, 1768), p. 70.
42 Trevor Shaw, ‘John Hutton, 1740? – 1806. His “Tour to the Caves” and his Place in the History of
79 a much longer article on caves, which included this one from The Gentleman’s Magazine, for the addendum of Thomas West’s second edition of A Guide to the Lakes in 1780, called ‘A Tour to the Caves.’ This was then published independently, with a section on geomorphology, in 1781. This was the first complete cave guide published in Britain and was hugely influential in the development of the field of cave science as well as theories of cave morphology. However, even at this late stage, the biblical theory holds strong for Hutton who believes his philosophical speculations are concurrent with the writing of Moses. He believes erosion has formed caves but only erosion of the softer material left in the cave after the retreating flood water. He also includes all the information on local subterranean hydrology gleaned from local farmers. Hutton’s writing provides an example of how local knowledge drawn from experience is mobilised and becomes a resource for rational deduction.