From American Monster by Paul Semonin
From American Monster by Paul Semonin |
At a 1962 dinner for 49 Nobel laureates, President John F. Kennedy quipped that the event was "the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
The statesman and author of the Declaration of Independence was many other things besides, including an ardent naturalist. Thomas Jefferson admired the French naturalist Buffon, and was consequently quite agitated by Buffon's contention that America's cold, moist climate stunted the growth of its inhabitants. Jefferson spent years — sometimes in the most discouraging moments of the American Revolution — working on his Notes on the State of Virginia to refute Buffon's theory of American degeneracy. Jefferson compiled tables comparing the weights of American animals and their European counterparts, pointing out the size of the American bear (twice as big as its European counterpart) and the buffalo (utterly without a European counterpart). He sent Buffon the hide, bones and horns of an American moose. An American mastodon fossil, much larger than any elephant, was another weapon in Jefferson's artillery. Thanks to Jefferson's persistent efforts, Buffon largely changed his mind about American degeneracy. He promised to make corrections in his next book but didn't live long enough.
 From Jefferson and Science by Silvio Bedini |
Besides showing them off to the Europeans, Jefferson identified American fossil remains. Shortly after they were unearthed in 1797, he acquired some fossil bones belonging to what he initially thought was a mammoth. After seeing the claws, including the one shown here, he guessed he had the remains of a large carnivore. He named the fossil Megalonyx and wrote a paper for the American Philosophical Society. Before he presented the paper, though, he learned of the discovery of Megatherium, a giant fossil ground sloth from Paraguay. Noting the similarities between the fossils, Jefferson updated his paper before its publication the society's Transactions in 1799.
Although he was a deist rather than a Christian, Jefferson resisted the idea of extinction, unable to believe that God would allow a species to disappear from the face of the earth. When he authorized the Lewis and Clark expedition, he hoped the travelers would find mastodons still living in America's newly acquired territory. (The explorers never found a live mastodon, but they did send him a live prairie dog.)
In the American Philosophical Society, Jefferson served as councilor, vice president and president in the 1780s and 1790s. In 1807, he commissioned William Clark to collect roughly 300 fossils, the best of which Jefferson donated to the society. (The inferior specimens he kept for himself or sent to the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris.) Jefferson also championed the museum founded by Charles Willson Peale in 1784, a uniquely successful 18th-century American museum.
In addition to natural history, Notes on the State of Virginia addressed the issue of race and human equality, but the work does not fare well when judged by today's standards. Although Jefferson opposed (in theory if not in his lifestyle) the institution of slavery, he maintained that Africans were inferior to their white masters. (He was more charitable toward Native Americans, perhaps to better prove his point to Buffon.) Yet a certain belief in equality still pervaded Jefferson's life. In 1813, he wrote to John Adams:
But even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of Man. Science had liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example had kindled feelings of right in the people. An insurrection has consequently begun, of science, talents, and courage against rank and birth, which have fallen into contempt.
For more information:
Jefferson and Science by Silvio Bedini
Fossil Legends of the First Americans by Adrienne Mayor
American Monster by Paul Semonin
The Mismeasure of Man: The Definitive Refutation to the Argument of the Bell Curve by Stephen Jay Gould
Bursting the Limits of Time by Martin J.S. Rudwick
Lewis and Clark: Inside the Corps, on the PBS Web Site (http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/inside)
Narrative text and graphic design © by Michon Scott - Updated January 28, 2006