[meteorite-list] More on Jefferson and Weston from Burke

From: bernd.pauli_at_paulinet.de <bernd.pauli_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Mar 21 16:46:24 2005
Message-ID: <DIIE.0000004200003590_at_paulinet.de>

BURKE J.G. (1986) Cosmic Debris - Meteorites in History, p. 57:

It was not until October 1805 that Ellicott received published material from France,
which convinced him that stones did fall, that they had an unusual composition and
texture, and that they were generated in the atmosphere. He advised Jefferson of
his conversion, and Jefferson responded on 25 October 1805. He wrote that he had not
seen the documents to which Ellicott referred, but that he had read Izam's Lithologie
atmosph?rique, which was "an industrious collection" of facts of the same kind:

"I do not say that I disbelieve the testimony but neither can I say I believe it. Chemistry
is too much in its infancy to satisfy us that the lapidific elements exist in the atmosphere
and that the process can be completed there. I do not know that this would be against the laws
of nature and therefore I do not say it is impossible; but as it is so much unlike any operation
of nature we have ever seen it requires testimony proportionately strong."

This passage indicates that Jefferson's skepticism was not about the fall of meteorites, but
about their generation in the atmosphere. It is in this light that we should attempt to judge
whether or not the remark so often attributed to him following the fall of the Weston meteorite
two years later is apocryphal - namely, "It is easier to believe that two Yankee professors
would lie than that stones would fall from heaven." In his Discourse on Jefferson, Samuel Latham
Mitchill reported that soon after the Weston fall, he received an account and a specimen from
friends. A senator who was to dine with Jefferson that evening asked to borrow the report and
sample to show to the President and request his comments. When presented with the evidence,
Jefferson, according to Mitchill's friend, said that "it is all a lie." Later, on 15 February 1808,
in a reply to a letter from a citizen offering to send a fragment of the Weston stone for an official
examination by the Congress, Jefferson suggested that the members of a scientific society would be
better qualified to examine the stone, "supposed meteoric," than those of the national legislature.
He continued:

"We certainly are not to deny whatever we cannot account for. A thousand phenomena present
themselves daily which we cannot explain, but where facts are suggested, bearing no analogy
with the laws of nature as yet known to us, their verity needs proof proportioned to their
difficulty. A cautious mind will weigh the opposition of the phenomenon to everything hitherto
observed, the strength of the testimony by which it is supported, and the error and misconceptions
to which even our senses are liable. It may be very difficult to explain how the stone you possess
came into the position in which it was found. But is it easier to explain how it got into the clouds
from whence it is supposed to have fallen? The actual fact however is the thing to be established."

The tenor and even the wording of this letter is quite similar as that in Jefferson's December 1803
reply to Ellicott. It is possible that, upon reflection, he dismissed the notion of the atmospheric
generation of stones and reverted to his original ambivalence about their fall. One other point is
relevant. At the time of the Weston fall, the New England states were in an uproar about the economic
effects of the Jeffersonian-sponsored Embargo Act of November 1806, and there was even talk of secession.
Jefferson was antagonistic to the New Englanders, because they sought to circumvent the embargo by smuggling
goods into Canada. It is therefore possible that soon after the fall and before the American Philosophical
Society in March 1808 heard Silliman's report and accepted his memoir for publication, Jefferson, in a fit
of temper, made the remark. But scholars have not yet located the source, so that at this time it must
remain conjectural.


Best regards,

Bernd
Received on Mon 21 Mar 2005 04:46:15 PM PST