Chapter 3: Who Authored the 1819 Treatise?
Women Geologists and Authorship
Boyle rather sweepingly states in the body of her article that Shepherd does not refer to Priestley, simply stating that "neither of the books engage at all with Priestley"1. But then later, Boyle seems to contradict herself in the proviso in her footnotes2 in which she concedes that Shepherd did indeed refer to Priestley once in (footnote p52) her 1827 treatise 'Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation.' The footnote Boyle is presumably referring to reads:
"It may be perceived that the notion of externality is not an hypothesis merely as Priestley supposes, but is a conclusion the result of reasoning."3
However, on reading an original publication of Shepherd's 18274 treatise, I suggest that Boyle's claim is, unfortunately, factually incorrect and presumably Boyle was not made aware of this during the few months long peer review process. Shepherd actually refers to Priestley twice in two separate footnotes in her 1827 treatise, the second time being on page 118:
"I find this idea is coincident with one of Priestley's, but I was not aware of his treatise until after the writing of this."5
So, if one were to argue that Shepherd is not the author of the 1819 treatise, then who is? Boyle hypothesizes that the "Scottish architect and engineer, James Milne"6 wrote the 1819 treatise.
How does Boyle argue for this and is it plausible?
One piece of evidence cited by Boyle is that she believes the anonymous 1819 treatise was republished in 1821 with a different publisher and she claims that it was advertised in magazines that year as being the work of an architect named James Milne7.
However, I am struggling to find this the best possible explanation available to us. In this chapter, I shall discuss the position of women in geology in Shepherd's era and in the next chapter, I shall return to the subject of James Milne as a possible author and why I find this implausible.
Firstly, I am unsure why Boyle maintains that Shepherd does not write about force and power. In Shepherd's 1824 and 1827 treatises8, there are several references to force and there are countless references to power (in the relevant, metaphysical and epistemological sense).
Secondly, to my mind, Boyle runs the risk of undermining her own argument. She admits there is written evidence in Shepherd's letters which shows that she was passionate about geology yet Boyle9 goes on to reject the option that Shepherd may have written about geology anonymously in the 1819 treatise and then been dissuaded from publishing it under her own name later on.
However, I think that the possibility that Shepherd wrote about geology (and therefore it is not out of the question that she may have authored the geological content in the 1819 treatise) is an option that needs to be left open. As we can see in letters, academic societies were clearly biased against women in geology, even going so far as to ban them from attending lectures on it, yet Shepherd was openly enthusiastic about women, including herself, becoming involved in the subject. Therefore, it is plausible that someone may have sidelined Shepherd's geology as part of the sexist censorship of women in this field of research.
In Shepherd's era of the 18th and 19th century, geology was a recent, exciting field, ever since the man, considered the father of geology, James Hutton (1726-1797), published his seminal work on it in 1788, titled 'Theory of the Earth'. I wonder whether this is why the phrase 'theory of the earth' was incorporated into many later book titles, such as the 1819 treatise. Perhaps it was a way of indicating that the author was writing a response to Hutton. Indeed, James Milne is said to have authored a book whose title is commonly referred to as simply an 1821 publication called "Theory of the Earth". On Boyle's view10, if I understand her correctly, this is one and the same book as the 1819 anonymous treatise. However, I hesitate to argue for an exact match between the two, based on a similarity of title. They could just be two distinct works that both respond to Hutton's geological treatise by a similar name. Moreover, even Hutton's title somewhat changed as his 'Theory of the Earth' was then later republished in two further formats, together with slightly adapted titles. His theories were not generally accepted until the beginning of the 19th century when the mathematician and scientist John Playfair (1748-1819) elucidated Hutton's geology in more plain, straight-talking English. Although this popularized Hutton's theories on geology, the downside was that Playfair omitted to clarify Hutton's theory concerning evolution, which included the concept of adaptability. In short, Hutton argued that those who are most adaptable or are best adapted to their environment have the greatest chance of survival. It is helpful to bear in mind Hutton's adaptability theory because it was an important precursor and influence on the later, more famous theories by Lyell and Darwin. Whewell, who knew Shepherd and taught one of her treatises at Cambridge, also knew Lyell and Darwin.
The relevance of this for Shepherd is that these men and their ideas formed part of her intellectual circles and there were academic exchanges between them all. So Shepherd was more than just familiar with Lyell's book and Shepherd did not merely attend some lectures by him when the opportunity for women arose, as Boyle seems to suggest in this article11. Lyell, amongst others, had academic exchanges with Shepherd, both on a scientific and philosophical level. Boyle must be aware of this since she wrote the entry on Shepherd for the Institute for the Study of Scottish Philosophy, where she points out:
"Shepherd's daughter reports that Shepherd was involved with "both the scientific and the literary sides of the learned world" and that her social circle included Sir Charles Lyell, Charles Babbage, Mary Somerville, William Whewell, Sydney Smith, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo (Brandreth 1886: 41-42)."12
Thus, Shepherd would be very familiar with these geological theories (and possibly these versions of the theory of adaptability and evolution) so could plausibly engage with them and write up her responses and ideas on geology and science. Furthermore, the topic of cause and effect, the very field of metaphysics which grounds such theories (including the Uniformitarian Principle in geology, as expounded by Hutton) and science in general, is precisely the focus of Shepherd's uncontroversially authored treatises. Hence, it is a smaller step than one might imagine to go from writing about cause and effect to scientific theory and geology.
Uniformitarianism, a term first used by Whewell, argues for the uniformity of the laws of nature and natural, gradual processes, which remain the same across the centuries. It is also known as the Uniformitarian Principle and the Doctrine of Uniformity. It contrasts with Catastrophism, which claims that natural processes are abrupt and dramatic changes causing catastrophes and radical changes to the earth and its climate. Unlike Uniformitarianism, which believes the present helps us understand past events, for Catastrophists, what occurs on earth now need not have a precedent in the past. Nevertheless, Catastrophists sometimes point to past Biblical events, such as The Flood in Genesis, as lending support for their theory. Whereas Uniformitarians, such as James Hutton, prioritised scientific fields such as natural history over Christianity and scriptural interpretation. Today, scientists tend to use a mixture of the two in their scientific thought. I suggest this might be a mistake because, I think, Catastrophism undermines the ability to underpin scientific hypothesizing and research with rational, logical reasoning and explanation.
Given that Shepherd argued for the uniformity of nature because, as LoLordo13 maintains, it follows from Shepherd's principles, I suggest that she would be a Uniformitarianist, even before Whewell coined the term. LoLordo14 argues that Shepherd believes that "nature is uniform" and that she thinks "we can have knowledge of the uniformity of nature". I think this is quite conclusive that Shepherd is in line with Uniformitarianism. Shepherd, I think, has a great deal of similarity with Spinoza in this respect: they both convincingly argue for a solid, logical foundation to understanding nature and its uniform laws in a way that both expands our knowledge as well as supporting scientific thinking and predictions. However, my present concern here is whether Shepherd's opposition to a Catastrophic outlook could have generated a religious, Christian motivation for sidelining and dismissing her geology.
Moreover, I suggest that there are other scientific topics in addition to geology that may have interested Shepherd and about which she might have conversed with Whewell and Lyell. One such topic could be adaptability and evolution, given that there were strong arguments and contras on this topic within these academic milieus. For me, this would create interesting parallels between Spinoza and Shepherd in my scholarly research. Both are similar types of philosophers in that, although they have a religious belief, they keep to a strong division between pure philosophy and philosophy of religion or theology; they reduce the classic conflicts between religion and science; they participate in scientific thought (which can introduce materialistic claims and arguments) without attempting to set up a battle with religion, be it Christianity or Judaism. DeRose15 interprets Shepherd as accepting, what he calls, pre-philosophical materialism while seeing no need to replace this with philosophical materialism.
This is of particular interest and relevance when analysing Boyle's16 claim that the 1819 treatise could not possibly be authored by Shepherd since Boyle believes that Shepherd is not a materialist yet there are materialist claims in the 1819 treatise. Boyle's17 argument would only stand here as long as there was no conflation between pre-philosophical materialism and philosophical materialism. Otherwise, one could assume that any (pre-philosophical) materialism in the 1819 treatise contradicts Shepherd's general (philosophical) non-materialism. However, Shepherd could remain consistent by accepting one type of materialism (pre-philosophical type of materialism) while not advocating another (philosophical type of materialism). In this way, Shepherd would be able to retain the benefits of materialism for scientific examination of the external world while not running into philosophical problems around the existence of non-material things, such as God. Here again she is similar to Spinoza. They both have to believe in some form of materialism otherwise they would render scientific enquiry redundant, which they are unwilling to do. This is unsurprising, since both were also scientists, as was Margaret Cavendish. All three philosophers were able to hold in tension a religious dimension to life and scientific theories, without one cancelling out the other. Shepherd is not referred to as a scientist but, as I've shown here, she was clearly a Geologist, which is a scientific discipline. Also, as LoLordo18 points out, Shepherd was extremely good at Chemistry and made it foundational to her unique account of causation (which she considered a scientific improvement on Hume's more mechanical-style explanation based on Physics) and there are passages where she demonstrates her knowledge of combustion and mathematical formulae.
This is, I suggest, also highly relevant to the open question of how likely it is that Shepherd was the author of the 1819 treatise. It becomes more likely that Shepherd could have authored that treatise because there is more continuation of approach and subject matter than Boyle19 argues. The chemistry found in her later work is continuous with the first part of the 1819 treatise because, as Bolton maintains about this part of that treatise "...its treatment of causality is said to be inspired by recent developments in chemical science" therefore "There may be a connection between the view of causality urged in this volume and the books published under her name."20 Although this does not prove Shepherd's authorship of the 1819 treatise beyond all reasonable doubt, it is enough to argue that scholarship should not erase the previously held standard view that Shepherd is the possible author, and I think it means that records should not be adjusted to claim that James Milne authored that treatise. There is no certainty about this and so I would advocate including the 1819 treatise in modern edition collections of Shepherd's works so readers can judge for themselves and for records to label the 1819 treatise as anonymous, with Shepherd listed as the likely author.
What Conclusions Can Be Drawn from these Findings?
Consequently, as a result of my findings, I conclude that, either (the strong claim) the letter on Shepherd's passion for geology provides possible proof that she wrote the geological section of the 1819 treatise; or (the weaker claim), at the very least, scholars should leave open the possibility that Shepherd is the author of the 1819 treatise. I have outlined a demonstration that alternative explanations are no less plausible than Boyle's21. Her claims are not indisputable enough to assure one that we are not accidentally overlooking perhaps one of the first female geologists.
Although James Hutton is dubbed the father of geology, there were women geologists prior to him. Shepherd would not be entirely a rarity as a female geologist, especially in the UK where there seemed to be the most amount of women either taking a keen interest in geology and collecting samples, or working in an area of the field and making discoveries, especially from the 19th century onwards. However, geology, like philosophy, still suffers from a high rate of women dropping out from the field so I find it unsurprising that Shepherd has a feminist stance on the inclusion of women in geology and that history may not credit her for her thoughts, and possibly writings, on geology.
It's interesting to compare Shepherd with women in geology around the same time as her. I'm only going to focus on two examples which I think are pertinent to Shepherd and authorship.
One woman geologist who was Shepherd's contemporary was Etheldred Anna Maria Benett (1776-1845) who was born just a year earlier. Benett, who specialised in fossils and owned an impressive collection of them, is considered by some to be the first female geologist. Although, like Shepherd, we have no portrait of her (only a silhouette of Benett as an adult) she, nevertheless, was well-known in her day among fellow geologists22.
What can we learn about sexism in geology and academia by looking at Benett's life story? The discrimination Benett encountered23 was similar yet different from the common barriers women face in academia today, which helps one gain an insight into Shepherd's era, as opposed to making assumptions about issues Shepherd may have faced based on women's experiences in the 21st century. Nowadays, women in academia, including in STEM, are considerably under-cited compared to their male counterparts and men are seen to favour citing other men instead of women academics. However, back in the 19th century, Benett was cited by her various male peers in geology and her samples were included in a major reference book which included 41 specimens from her collection making her the second highest contributor of samples in that book24. In turn, Benett was quick to cite and give credit to men who contributed in some way to her research or from whom she had learnt something. Benett even corresponded with men in the Geological Society, including the President who referred to her as "accomplished"25. However, obviously there were other barriers women faced in the early modern period but this was still not good enough to allow her, or any other woman, to become a member of the society or present their research paper!26
Perhaps unfortunately, her academic generosity led her to also give out her ideas freely when discussing and writing letters about science, thus many leading men learned a great deal from her and no doubt wrote up her ideas27. Meanwhile, Benett sadly only published two articles which simply detail her collection, although she clearly had research findings she could have written up and published. This can be seen by her disagreement with Sowerby about his conclusions drawn from her illustration that he had published in 1816 without her knowledge or consent28. Furthermore, she also disagreed with Sowerby's accuracy generally, or rather the lack of it29. So, like Shepherd, Benett had her work published without her knowledge and consent and in a way with which she did not agree. In Benett's case, it was her biostratigraphic illustration of stone beds in a quarry from which she drew different scientific conclusions based on her commission and research30. In Shepherd's case, it was her response to John Fearn's 1820 book, which she had intended as a private correspondence but it was, nevertheless, published in Parriana in 1828, alongside his sharp criticisms of Shepherd's views. In her defense, Shepherd decided to publish an article, clarifying her views as well as outlining her objections to Fearn's criticisms of her and his overall philosophical arguments.31
Unlike these days, Benett found it easy enough to have interesting, academic correspondence with her peers, despite them being mostly men in a male dominated field of academia. This was by no means unusual. Women in even earlier eras also maintained academic correspondences, including with male experts in their field, such as Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618 - 1680), who sent Descartes her objections to his Substance Dualism; Lady Conway (1631-1679) with More; Lady Masham (1659-1708) with Locke and Leibniz. The correspondence did not amount to a pat on the back for the men, but rather, were critical exchanges between them. The women were happy to pull them up on anything they deemed in error. This is despite women not having access to formal education. So why has this not carried on today?
Male academics (or women academics for that matter) do not generally correspond with women at any level of education or academic position as they did back in the early modern era, even though emails would make it a much faster and easier process. I attempted to begin academic exchanges by email (all men with the exception of one female PhD student at an Israeli university) when starting out as an independent researcher, but I found they are more unresponsive or snobby than they generally were in the early modern era! And less willing to accept that they may have made an error, such as conflating two Hebrew words, for instance, 'Herem' and 'Get'. Yet, women in the 17th-19th century were demolishing entire arguments and theories that their male peers had put forward, not just questioning a word! Furthermore, the early modern men were engaging in genuine, deep philosophical debates with these women, a rare phenomenon these days in the over-competitive and uncooperative world of academia.
My point is, the position of women in society is not clear cut, everything was not worse then and better now. Some attitudes have stayed the same. Bennett was called "masculine" and "eccentric"32 in her era, although there's nothing wrong with that! Or unusual, given that Anne Lister was also seen in the same light during this same period in 19th century history. However, women like them are still often perceived in the same way today and can be treated in surprising ways. Burek33 shares her story of how Cambridge University placed her in a male halls of residence. (So much for arguments in favour of trans-excluding women's spaces and so-called sudden safety concerns about the biological physique of transwomen when a male halls of residence full of cisgender, heterosexual men is deemed an acceptable space for a woman to have a bedroom!)
Women in the past enjoyed some freedoms women do not have access to today and we have other benefits that they did not. Nevertheless, the drop out rate and thinning out of women students and lecturers means that, both in terms of qualifications and jobs, there are significantly more women at the bottom than at the top of the academic ladder. The ceiling level is set very low for women in universities. Thus, one must not suffer from historical arrogance by assuming that women no longer have the same problems as they did in the early modern era and the 19th century. Benett was annoyed that her work was misquoted by men and that men in science had a "very low opinion" of women's "abilities"34, but these are persistent issues women still face in academia today, whether in philosophy or STEM.
Another female geologist in the UK who was born a couple of years before Shepherd's disputed treatise was Elizabeth Catherine Thomas Carne (1817–1873). Although she did write, her works were not especially scientific. Even so, she published one work in 1860 under a male pseudonym (that bore no resemblance to her own name) and a different work, this time a religious pamphlet, published anonymously in 1871. This shows us two publishing problems for women that may be relevant to the 1819 treatise. One is that, around 62 years after the 1819 treatise, women geologists still felt they needed to publish their work anonymously, even if it was not about geology. A second authorship identification problem is that, even 41 years after the 1819 treatise, a British women thinker and geologist such as Carne was publishing under a fabricated male name.
All this, I suggest, poses an important and huge problem when making claims and constructing arguments concluding that an historical text is clearly authored by a man rather than a woman, mostly on the basis of apparent historical evidence that there is a male name listed as the author of the work. Boyle35 leaves a great deal of questions unanswered in this article, such as why she feels the 1819 treatise is so discontinuous with Shepherd's other treatises, despite elsewhere36 citing Shepherd's chemistry formula in her 1824 treatise, which was also initially published anonymously and is only a few years after the 1819 treatise. This one also contains chemistry references in its first part.
I have suggested that strongly denying that Shepherd could be the author of the 1819 treatise is not only, one, a general feminist concern in history; but two, is also applicable to research methodology in the history of philosophy; and three, more specifically, when analysing whether Shepherd was the possible author of the 1819 treatise and how far one should go in dismissing her as the true author. Especially if this impacts on library records, scholarship and public information, which it already has before scholars have had the opportunity to debate it thoroughly. This, I think, is a mistake. Thus, I struggle to see how any research could establish, with absolute certainty, that Shepherd was not the author. In the next chapter, I shall return to the other main line of argument that Boyle presents, namely, that James Milne is a more plausible author of the 1819 treatise than Shepherd.
References:
1Boyle, D., 'A Mistaken Attribution to Lady Mary Shepherd' Journal of Modern Philosophy, 2(1): 5 pp1-4 [in open access download, last downloaded 4th April 2022] (June) 2020. p3
Available at:
https://jmphil.org/articles/10.32881/jomp.100/
DOI: http://doi.org/10.32881/jomp.100
2Ibid p3
3Shepherd, Mary. Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation. Piccadilly, London, United Kingdom: John hatchard and Son., 1827. https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/#page/n7/mode/2up. p52
4Ibid
5Ibid p118
6Boyle, 'A Mistaken Attribution to Lady Mary Shepherd' p1
7Ibid p3
8Shepherd, Mary. An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect : Controverting the Doctrine of Mr. Hume, Concerning the Nature of That Relation, with Observations upon the Opinions of Dr. Brown and Mr. Lawrence Connected with the Same Subject. London, United Kingdom: Printed for T. Hookham, 1824.
https://archive.org/stream/essayuponrelatio00shepiala#page/n7/mode/2up. ;
Shepherd, Mary. Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation. Piccadilly, London, United Kingdom: John hatchard and Son., 1827. https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/#page/n7/mode/2up
9Boyle, D., 'A Mistaken Attribution to Lady Mary Shepherd'
10Ibid
11Ibid
12Boyle, D., 'Lady Mary Shepherd (1777-1847)' (no date given) available at:
http://www.scottishphilosophy.org/philosophers/mary-shepherd/
13LoLordo, A., 'Mary Shepherd on Causation, Induction, and Natural Kinds', Philosophers' Imprint, (December) 2019, Volume 19, NO. 52, PP. 1-14; p2
Online ISSN: 1533-628X
Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0019.052
Hosted by Michigan Publishing, a division of the University of Michigan Library. Available to read and download at:
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/phimp/3521354.0019.052/1
14Ibid p2
15DeRose, K., 'Mary Shepherd: A Proposed Reading', Phil126: Modern Philosophy, Descartes to Kant university course module, Yale University, April 26th 2021
Available to download at (see pdf link, fourth to last bullet point for updated handout 28th April 2021)
https://campuspress.yale.edu/keithderose/126-s21/
Download link:
https://campuspress.yale.edu/keithderose/files/2021/04/126-4-28-21-Shepherd.pdf
16Boyle, 'Lady Mary Shepherd (1777-1847)'
17Ibid
18LoLordo 'Mary Shepherd on Causation, Induction, and Natural Kinds'
19Boyle 'Lady Mary Shepherd (1777-1847)'
20Bolton, Martha, "Mary Shepherd", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
Available at:
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/mary-shepherd/
21Boyle, 'A Mistaken Attribution to Lady Mary Shepherd'
22Burek, Cynthia V. 'The first lady geologist, or collector par excellence?' Geology Today, vol 17(5), pp. 192-194 Publisher: Blackwell Science; (09/2001) p7 in pdf download
ISSN: 0266-6979; URI http://hdl.handle.net/10034/12138 ;
Additional Links:
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0266-6979&site=1
Full open access article (p1-8) available to download at:
http://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/364004.pdf
A PDF version of this article was published in Geology Today© 2001. The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com. The illustrations have been removed.
23Ibid
24Ibid
25Ibid
26Ibid
27Ibid
28Ibid
29Ibid
30Ibid
31Boyle, D., 'Lady Mary Shepherd (1777-1847)'
32Burek 'The first lady geologist, or collector par excellence?'
33Burek
34Ibid
35Boyle, D., 'A Mistaken Attribution to Lady Mary Shepherd'
36Boyle, D., 'Lady Mary Shepherd (1777-1847)'
