October 2007 Newsletter, Vol. 36, No.4
PhotoEssay
Thomas Wright (1711-86) was born in Byers Green, Co. Durham and received his primary education in Bishop Auckland, Gateshead and Sunderland. An autodidactic polymath, he went on to become a tutor to the aristocracy and successful author of works on natural philosophy, mathematics, gardening, and architecture. In 1742 he was offered a post at the Imperial Academy at St. Petersburg (which he declined) and in 1750 he published his most popular book, An Original Theory of the Universe, which is primarily remembered for its description of the Milky Way and for the impact that its ideas had upon the philosopher Immanuel Kant. Yet over the course of his career he produced hundreds of pages of letters, notes, and drawings – many of which were turned into pamphlets, paper tools, engraved diagrams, study guides and wall charts.
“A New Theory of the Earth” is a manuscript book written sometime around 1773. Wright drew many of the book’s ideas from the canon of texts employed by humanists across Europe during the early modern period and the Enlightenment. First taught in households, parish schools and academies, then in universities, this canon included the Bible along with various classical, patristic and Renaissance works and incorporated a select group of new books associated with the Scientific Revolution. It allowed Wright to cite Copernicus, Kepler and Newton in one sentence, then Ptolemy, Eusebius, Origen and Agricola in the next.
Although “A New Theory” utilized a Newtonian notion of gravity, the scientific theories and examples that supported its argument came from chemistry and natural history – not primarily natural philosophy. Focusing on material transformations, effluvial inundations, terrestrial exhalations and magnetic pulses, Wright treats the earth as an organism. Avoiding chronological timescales, he suggests that the earth’s life consists of some 12 stages in which it is repeatedly transformed by water and fire, a cosmological periodization common at the time and echoing the Bible and natural histories like Buffon’s Histoire naturelle (1749). The hand-drawn diagram of the earth’s structure in Plate IX represents one of the stages in which there is “The Universal conflagration or final Dissolution of the Earth by Fire.” Although it is a simple composition, Wright’s training as a draftsman and architect is apparent. The concentric circles of the earth’s inner core were drawn with a compass, while the volcanoes and aerial effluvia were drawn free hand. The different shades were achieved via the use of cross hatching and stippling points made in both ink and graphite.
Wright was keenly aware of how to market a book. By the time he published An Original Theory of the Universe, Newtonian natural theology had established itself as a popular literary genre. This work, with its appeals to Georgian tropes of order, mathematical certitude, and a high price tag, was written for an upper class-readership. But “A New Theory” was different. Whereas his earlier publications gave a macroscopic narrative of astronomical order, his later work turns to the relatively microscopic issue of the earth’s formation and eventual transformation. Though the other side of the same cosmological coin, it had little relevance for an upmarket audience interested in natural analogues of the social order and which usually knew little about the material theories used to explain volcanoes, tides and minerals. To popularize his ideas, Wright, therefore, had to turn to a different medium. Scholars of the time, urban and provincial alike, often wrote up complicated discussions of natural phenomena as manuscript ‘books’ and ‘pamphlets’ for circulation amongst friends, colleagues, students and foreign correspondents. Although the circulation routes of such texts in the north of England have yet to be determined, Wright’s correspondence lists show that he had assembled an extensive network of former students and intellectual interlocutors – many of whom were women – and who formed the most likely audience for “A New Theory.”
– Matthew D. Eddy
Lecturer in the History of
Science and Culture
Durham University
Image: Thomas Wright of Durham, A New Theory of the Earth Founded upon and More Fully Explaining the Universal Phenomenon of Earthquakes; the Magnet and Doctrine of Tides [circa. 1773],
Durham University, Department of Special Collections, MS 18/1