Nathaniel Shaler

Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
Nathaniel Shaler in 1865
Born	(1841-02-20)February 20, 1841 Newport, Kentucky
Died	Cambridge, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Fields	Paleontology, Geology
Institutions	Lawrence Scientific School
Alma mater	Harvard College
Doctoral advisor	Louis Agassiz
Signature

Nathaniel Southgate Shaler (20 February 1841 – 10 April 1906) was an American paleontologist and geologist who wrote extensively on the theological and scientific implications of the theory of evolution.

Biography

Born to a slave-holding family in Kentucky in 1841, Shaler studied at Harvard College's Lawrence Scientific School under Louis Agassiz. After graduating in 1862, Shaler went on to become a Harvard fixture in his own right, as lecturer (1868), professor of paleontology for two decades (1869–1888) and as professor of geology for nearly two more (1888–1906). Beginning in 1891, he was dean of the Lawrence School. Shaler was appointed director of the Kentucky Geological Survey in 1873, and devoted a part of each year until 1880 to that work. In 1884 he was appointed geologist to the U.S. Geological Survey in charge of the Atlantic division. He was commissioner of agriculture for Massachusetts at different times, and was president of the Geological Society of America in 1895. He also served two years as a Union officer in the American Civil War.

Research

Early in his professional career Shaler was broadly a creationist and anti-Darwinist. This was largely out of deference to the brilliant but old-fashioned Agassiz, whose patronage served Shaler well in ascending the Harvard ladder. When his own position at Harvard was secure, Shaler gradually accepted Darwinism in principle but viewed it through a neo-Lamarckian lens. Shaler extended Charles Darwin's work of the importance of earthworm soil bioturbation to soil formation to other animals, such as ants. Like many other evolutionists of the time, Shaler incorporated basic tenets of natural selection—chance, contingency, opportunism—into a picture of order, purpose and progress in which characteristics were inherited through the efforts of individual organisms.

Shaler was an apologist for slavery and an outspoken believer in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. In his later career, Shaler continued to support Agassiz's polygenism, a theory of human origins that was often used to support racial discrimination, falling under the category of Scientific racism. In his 1884 article, "The Negro Problem", published in the Atlantic Monthly, Shaler claimed that black people freed from slavery were "like children lost in the wood, needing the old protection of the strong mastering hand," that they became increasingly dominated by their "animal nature" as they grew from children into adults, and American slavery had been "infinitely the mildest and most decent system of slavery that ever existed."

Bust of Nathaniel Shaler, by Robert I. Aiken

Shaler published work describing the physical geography of different continents and linking these geologic settings to the intelligence and strength of human races that inhabited these spaces. In Nature and Man in America, Shaler justifies the superiority of the Aryan race based on their development within European topography, "marvelously suited to be the cradles of people", erroneously attributing their origin to the Scandinavian provinces, "a field which seems to have been the seat of the strongest men in the world for thousands of years." Expanding upon this logic, Shaler explains that a Scandinavian origin is most fitting because it would seem strange that the "most vigorous and at the same time the most plastic of the world-peoples should have developed among the limited opportunities afforded by high Asia." Similarly, Shaler disparages the topography of the Americas, Africa, and Australia, claiming that these continents "have shown by their human products that they are unfitted to be the cradle places of great peoples." Nevertheless, Shaler is particularly interested in North America. Although he explains that its "large, simple, and easily comprehensible geographic features" as well as unfavorable climate for agriculture render the continent "unfit to cradle great peoples", he argues that the topography is perfectly suited for a race with better characteristics. Thus, Shaler argues that North America has "peculiar advantages” for American people (of Aryan descent) because the climate and topography of the land is ideal for the institution of slavery, which made it possible to cultivate this "new and rude land".

Nathaniel Shaler in 1900

As previously alluded, Shaler believed that slavery was greatly beneficial for the United States, and even went so far as to suggest that slaves themselves benefitted from this institution, suggesting slavery "led to the rapid accumulation of wealth, and in this way brought the people the sooner into a condition in which they could control their own destiny." Expressing concern that the South will "release into barbarism", Shaler proposes that "the advance of the negro to a satisfactory grade in development still depends upon his remaining in close contact with the superior race."

Legacy at Harvard University

In his later career, Shaler served as Harvard's Dean of Sciences and was considered one of the university's most popular teachers. He published scores of long and short treatises in his lifetime, with subjects ranging from topographical surveys to moral philosophy. Shaler mentored many students, including William Morris Davis, who worked for him as a field assistant, and was later hired by Shaler to teach at Harvard. William Morris Davis became a renown geographer, and similar to Shaler, wrote about how different geographies produced more or less fit societies. When Shaler passed, a fund was set up by alumni in his honor, which was specified to be used for field experiences, and these funds are still in use for student field trips today.

Despite his published work on racial climatology and polygenism, his name remains a lasting fixture at Harvard University. The Harvard Earth & Planetary Sciences department annually gives out the Shaler Teaching Award to teaching fellows that exhibit excellent teaching, which includes a monetary prize and an engraved rock hammer. In addition there is a seminar room named after him on the 4th floor of Geological Museum, the Shaler Seminar Room.

Works

• (1870). On the Phosphate Beds of South Carolina.
• (1876–82). Geological Survey of Kentucky [6 vols.]
• (1876). Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Kentucky.
• (1878). Thoughts on the Nature of Intellectual Property and its Importance to the State.
• (1880). "The Geology of Boston and its Environs," in The Memorial History of Boston.
• (1881). Illustrations of the Earth's Surface; Glaciers [with William Morris Davis].
• (1884). A First Book in Geology.
• (1885). Kentucky, a Pioneer Commonwealth ["American Commonwealth Series"].
• (1891). Nature and Man in America.
• (1892). The Story of Our Continent.
• (1893). The Interpretation of Nature.
• (1894). The United States of America [2 vols.]
• (1895). Domesticated Animals.
• (1895). The Geology of the Road-Building Stones of Massachusetts.
• (1896). American Highways.
• (1898). Geology of the Cape Cod District.
• (1898). Outlines of the Earth's History.
• (1899). Geology of the Narragansett Basin.
• (1900). The Individual: Study of Life and Death.
• (1903). A Comparison of the Features of the Earth and the Moon.
• (1904). The Citizen: A Study of the Individual and the Government.
• (1904). The Neighbor.
• (1905). Man and the Earth.
• (1909). The Autobiography of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler.

Fiction

• (1903). Elizabeth of England: A Dramatic Romance in Five Parts.

Poetry

• (1906). From Old Fields: Poems of the Civil War.

See also

• Bully for Brontosaurus

Further reading

• Adams, Michael C.C. (1998). "'When the Man knows Death': The Civil War Poems of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler," The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 96, No. 1, pp. 1–28.
• Bladen, Wilford A. (1983). "Nathaniel Southgate Shaler and Early American Geography," in Pradyumna P. Karan (ed.), The Evolution of Geographic Thought in America: A Kentucky Root. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company.
• Berg, Walter (1957). Nathaniel Southgate Shaler: A Critical Study of an Earth Scientist. Ph.D. thesis, University of Washington.
• Davis, William M. (1906). "Nathaniel Southgate Shaler," Educational Foundations 17 (10), pp. 746–755.
• Koelsch, William A. (1979). "Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, 1841-1906", in T.W. Freeman & Philippe Pinchemel (ed.), Geographer: Bibliographical Studies, Vol. III. London: Mansell.
• Lane, A. C. (1926). "Nathaniel Southgate Shaler (1841-1906)," Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 61, No. 12, pp. 557–561.
• Livingstone, D. N. (1980). "Nature and Man in America: Nathaniel Southgate Shaler and the Conservation of Natural Resources," Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 369–382.
• Thayer, William Roscoe (1906). "Nathaniel Southgate Shaler," The Harvard Graduates Magazine 15, pp. 1–9.
• Warner, Langdon (1906). "Nathaniel Southgate Shaler," The World's Work 12, pp. 7676–7677.

External links

• Works by Nathaniel Shaler at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Nathaniel Shaler at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by Nathaniel Shaler at Hathi Trust
• Works by Nathaniel Shaler at Unz.com