SEDGWICK, ADAM (b. Dent, Yorkshire, England, 22 March 1785; d. Cambridge, England, 27 January 1873), geology.

    species. This belief was grounded in his strong sense of the “designful” beauty of organisms: although he was not primarily a paleontologist, his favorite lecture subject was the adaptive significance of fossil mammals. But his concept of teleology was philosophically unsophisticated, and like Paley (whose work had influenced him deeply) he simply wished the contemplation of organic design to nourish the sense of wonder that would lead the mind toward God.

Any theory of the transmutation of species by natural means therefore seemed to Sedgwick to threaten this preparatory function of natural theology and to lead to a “train of monstrous consequences.” Above all, since he saw clearly that whatever applied to other species ultimately must apply to man, the consequences of any evolutionary theory seemed to him to include the denial of the reality of the “moral” realm. Although a devout Christian, Sedgwick was no fundamentalist in religious matters: he was a prominent member of the Broad Church party within the Anglican Church, and was greatly concerned to see progressive science and enlightened theology working independently toward an ultimate synthesis of truth. But this meant that he was as much concerned to expose the pretensions of a naïve materialism that undermined man's moral responsibility as he was to attack simplistic “reconciliations” between geology and Scripture. Thus in his presidential addresses of 1830 and 1831 he criticized the popular “Scriptural geologists” even more vehemently than the proponents of transmutation. His influential Discourse on the Studies of the University (1833) linked a reassertion of the place of geology within the tradition of natural theology with a trenchant criticism of utilitarian moral philosophy; and the same concerns later were expressed vehemently in a major anonymous review (1845) of Robert Chambers' Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.

Sedgwick was angered not only by the inaccuracies and pseudoscientific pretensions of Chambers' unsigned book: more fundamentally he feared that the specious plausibility of its all-embracing principle of naturalistic “development” would undermine the sense of personal responsibility that he believed was basic to the nature of man in society. He reiterated his views even more vehemently in a vastly enlarged fifth edition of the Discourse in 1850; by the time Darwin sent him a copy of the Origin of Species, Sedgwick's antipathy to the “materialistic” tendencies of evolutionary theories had become so obsessive that his reaction was predictable.

By the end of his long life Sedgwick had in effect survived into a new period in the history of science; and although he was widely admired and even loved as a warmhearted and noble character, many of his scientific views seemed remote and antiquated. But in his prime he had been one of the most distinguished geologists within an exceptionally talented generation; and his concern for the broader implications of science had left an enduring mark on the place of science in university education.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. ORIGINAL WORKS.

Sedgwick's more important earlier works include A Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Geology (Cambridge, 1821); “On the Origin of Alluvial and Diluvial Formations,” in Annals of Philosophy, n.s. 9 (1825), 241-247, and 10 (1825), 18-37; “On the Geological Relations and Internal Structure of the Magnesian Limestone, and on the Lower Portions of the New Red Sandstone Series . . .,” in Transactions of the Geological Society of London, 2nd ser., 3, pt. 1 (1829), 37-124; “Address[es] to the Geological Society, Delivered on the Evening of the Anniversary . . .,” in Proceedings of the Geological Society of London, 1 (1830), 187-212, and (1831), 281-316; “A Sketch of the Structure of the Eastern Alps . . .,” in Transactions of the Geological Society of London, 2nd ser., 3, pt. 2 (1832), 301-420, written with Murchison; A Discourse on the Studies of the University (Cambridge, 1833; 5th ed., 1850; repr. Leicester, 1969); “Remarks on the Structure of Large Mineral Masses, and Especially on the Chemical Changes Produced in the Aggregation of Stratified Rocks During Different Periods After Their Deposition,” in Transactions of the Geological Society of London, 2nd ser., 3, pt. 3 (1835), 461-486; “Introduction to the General Structure of the Cumbrian Mountains . . .,” ibid., 4, pt. 1 (1835), 47-68; and “A Synopsis of the English Series of Stratified Rocks Inferior to the Old Red Sandstone,” in Proceedings of the Geological Society of London, 2 (1838), 675-685, and “Supplement [to the same],” ibid., 3 (1841), 541-554.

In the 1840's he published “On the Physical Structure of Devonshire, and on the Subdivisions and Geological Relations of Its Older Stratified Deposits, &c.,” in Transactions of the Geological Society of London, 2nd ser., 5, pt. 3 (1840), 633-704, written with Murchison; “On the Distribution and Classification of the Older or Palaeozoic Deposits of the North of Germany and Belgium, and Their Comparison With Formations of the Same Age in the British Isles,” ibid., 6, pt. 2 (1842), 221-301, written with Murchison; “Three Letters