[meteorite-list] Weston meteorite fall 1807 .... Silliman andWoodhouse, RIVALRY or BAD SCIENCE????

From: Mark Grossman <markig_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 15:11:57 -0500
Message-ID: <07D18BFFACC74455ACE22B439F180BA0_at_QED>

Hi,

For a scholarly discussion of Cathryn Prince's book which covers many of the
topics below, go to www.meteoritemanuscripts.blogspot.com for a more focused
discussion.

Also see Prince's comment at the end of my blog by clicking on the pencil
icon at the end of the post.

As I mentioned in my blog, Greene and Burke's work is highly recommended.

Thanks!

Mark

Mark Grossman
Meteorite Manuscripts
Briarcliff Manor, NY

----- Original Message -----
From: "Shawn Alan" <photophlow at yahoo.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 12:48 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Weston meteorite fall 1807 .... Silliman
andWoodhouse, RIVALRY or BAD SCIENCE????


> Hello Listers,
>
> Over the course of a few days I had done some research on the Weston
> meteorite fall and read up on Silliman's role and it could be summed up to
> these few quotes....
>
> "His scientific work, which was extensive, began with the examination in
> 1807 of the meteor that fell near Weston, Conn. He procured fragments, of
> which he made a chemical analysis, and he wrote the earliest and best
> authenticated account' of the fall of a meteor in America."
>
> Cited from: APPLETONS' CYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY
> VOL V. PICKERING-SUMTER 1888
>
> Source
> http://books.google.com/books?id=K6koAAAAYAAJ&dq=weston%20meteorite%201807%20woodhouse&pg=PA528#v=onepage&q&f=false
>
> "SILLIMAN, Benjamin, scientist, was born in North Stratford, Conn., Aug.
> 8, 1779 : son of Gold Selleck Silliman (q.v.) and Mary Fish (Noyes)
> Silliman. He was graduated at Yale, A.B., 1796, A.M., 1799.... In 1805, he
> went abroad to study a year at Edinburgh and to buy books and apparatus.
> On his return, he studied the geology of New Haven, and in 1807 he
> examined the meteor that fell near Weston, Conn., making a chemical
> analysis of fragments, this report being the first scientific account of
> any American meteor."
>
> Cited from: THE TWENTIETH CENTURY BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF NOTABLE
> AMERICANS I904
>
> And lastly, a quote taken from James Woodhouse biography written by Edgar
> Fahs Smith stating Silliman's account of the Weston meteorite fall to
> be......
>
> "An elaborate account of this meteor has been published by Messrs.
> Silliman and Kingsley, of Yale College, Connecticut."
>
> Source
> http://books.google.com/books?id=4JMEAAAAYAAJ&dq=weston%20meteorite%201807%20woodhouse&pg=PA274#v=onepage&q&f=false
>
> But what caught my interest was the dynamic roles that played with
> Silliman and Woodhouse and that some believed Woodhouse role with the
> Weston meteorite fall to be "loose and not depended on". Take a look at
> the link below and start at the top of the page. From what I can gather,
> Silliman and Woodhouse seemed to have a rivalry and few scholars felt the
> same way about Woodhouse work with the Weston meteorite being bad science.
>
> Source
> http://books.google.com/books?id=BUsLAAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA285&dq=Philadelphia%20Medical%20Museum%2C%205%2C%202%20(1808)%20woodhouse&pg=PA285#v=onepage&q=Philadelphia%20Medical%20Museum,%205,%202%20(1808)%20woodhouse&f=false
>
> Now from my understanding Silliman and Kingsley arrived in Weston December
> 21 1807, a week after the Weston meteorite fall. During those few days
> Silliman and Kingsley interviewed witnesses and acquired fragments from
> various sites in Weston. Here is an excerpt from a letter detailing their
> accounts in Weston....
>
> "Yale College, December 26, 1807.
>
> Messrs. Steele, & Co.,
>
> As imperfect and erroneous accounts of the late phenomenon at Weston are
> finding their way into the public prints, we take the 1U berty of
> enclosing for your paper the result of an investigation into the
> circumstances and evidence of the event referred to, which we have made on
> the ground where it happened. That we may not interrupt our narration by
> repeating the observation wherever it is applicable, we may remark, once
> for all, that we visited and carefully examined every spot where the
> stones had been ascertained to have fallen, and several places where they
> had beeu only suspected, without any discovery; that we obtained specimens
> of every stone; conversed with all the principal original witnesses ;
> spent several days in the investigation, and were, at the time, the only
> persons who had explored the whole ground.
>
> We are, gentlemen, your obedient servants,
>
> BENJAMIN SILLIMAN.
> JAMES L. KINGSLEY.
>
> Cited from: THE AMERICAN REGISTER OR GENERAL REPOSITORY OF
> HISTORY, POLITICS, AND SCIENCE. PART II FOR 1807.
>
> Source
> http://books.google.com/books?id=SlrQAAAAMAAJ&dq=weston%20meteorite%201807%20woodhouse&pg=PA267#v=onepage&q&f=false
>
> After Sillimans and Kingsley return from Weston, on December 29, 1807
> Silliman and Kingsley sent a preliminary description of the fall phenomena
> and the stones to The Connecticut Herald, in New Haven, making the report
> one of the first published report on the Weston meteorite fall.( Marvin
> B47 2007, The origins of modern meteorite research) A day later, December
> 30, 1807 Dr Benjamin Rush handed over some specimens from the Weston
> meteorite to James Woodhouse for analysis.
>
> Cited from:
> http://books.google.com/books?id=SlrQAAAAMAAJ&dq=weston%20meteorite%201807%20woodhouse&pg=PA267#v=onepage&q&f=false
>
> And now this is where the dilemma lays with Silliman and Woodhouse and the
> rivalry between the two could have started. Stated earlier, in January
> 1808 Silliman's manuscript accounts the analysis of the Weston fall and at
> that time Woodhouse's analysis had been unpublished and to some felt his
> work to be unsound and loose.
>
> "On 1808 March 4, the memoir by Silliman and Kingsley
> was read to the American Philosophical Society and assigned
> to referees Woodhouse, Hare, and Cloud, who were so
> favorably impressed that they recommended publication in
> the forthcoming volume of the society?s Transactions
> (Marvin 1979), which, however, would not appear until the
> following year. Meanwhile, their work became widely known
> in Europe when Silliman submitted their paper to various
> European editors with high hopes of reaching a readership
> knowledgeable about meteorites and their chemistry. His
> hopes were quickly fulfilled. During 1808, excerpts or
> abstracts appeared in several well-known European journals,
> including the Philosophical Magazine, Biblioth?que
> Britannique, Annalen der Physik, Journal de Physique, de
> Chemie, et d?Histoire Naturelle, and Journal des Mines. A
> copy was read to the Royal Society in London, and a
> newspaper article on it had been translated into French and
> read to the National Institute in Paris before a rapt audience
> including Fourcroy, Vauquelin, Berthollet, Laplace,
> Lagrange, and Biot (Brown 1989:236). All of this attention
> served not only to raise Silliman, who was at the very
> beginning of his career, into the ranks of internationally
> known scientists, but also to elevate the status of Yale
> University and, indeed, of American science, itself?even
> before the publication of the memoir in the Transactions of
> the American Philosophical Society in 1809."
>
> (Marvin B47 2007, The origins of modern meteorite research)
>
>
> Now is the rivalry between Silliman and Woodhouse on who published the
> analysis first or is it seeded deeper between the two individauls on the
> greatest meteorite fall in American HISTORY? One can concluded that
> Silliman and Kingsley went to Weston. Stilliman's preliminary description
> of the meteorite fall was published on December 29th 1807. In March 1808
> Silliman and Kingsley read their memoir of the Weston meteorite fall and
> analysis in front of the American Philosophical Society and to further
> their analysis and research had numerous excerpts and abstractions
> published in Europe in 1808. In addition, many sources had concluded that
> "Silliman's scientific work, which was extensive, began with the
> examination in 1807 of the meteor that fell near Weston, Conn. He procured
> fragments, of which he made a chemical analysis, and he wrote the earliest
> and best authenticated account' of the fall of a meteor in America."
>
> As for Woodhouse is concerd, his reputation as a chemist and mineralogist
> was not high and to some, seen as being loose and not being dependable
> with analysis of stones. Now does the rivalry lay in the lack of evidence
> that one might present in an argument of why Woodhouse deserves
> accreditation or is the rivalry a mere conflict bewteen student/teacher, a
> delemma that presented its self at the time of meteoritic science was at
> the for front in America, the race for notoriety of the first American to
> have a well documented account with the first American meteorite fall, THE
> WESTON meteorite.
>
>
> Thank you
> Shawn Alan
> IMCA 1633
> eBaystore
> http://shop.ebay.com/photophlow/m.html
>
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Received on Tue 22 Feb 2011 03:11:57 PM PST