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Conclusion Echoes of New York’s Embrace of Geological Investigation During his lifetime, Amos Eaton witnessed and contributed to a radical transformation of theory and practice in American geology. Contrary to what one might suspect from reading ordinary American history textbooks, the first four decades of the nineteenth century were an era in which scientific investigations were widely considered to be relevant to the broader needs and intellectual interests of the general public. Collectively, the political, literary, artistic, and religious discourse of these decades displays a wide variety of dramatic and colorful examples of lay awareness of contemporary geological ideas and hints at wide participation in debates that arose from those investigations. This book has examined how changes in geological knowledge both derived from and enabled the rise of the Empire State. Between 1776 and 1842, New Yorkers worked hard to develop respectable representation among the new nation ’s cultural institutions and were leaders in American commerce and technology . New York’s successful multivalent exploitation of its physical geographic advantages depended essentially on the now little considered fact that its early political leaders, including the Jeffersonian Republican DeWitt Clinton and the Federalist Stephen Van Rensselaer, were willing to work together to make serious investments in institutions and projects that would foster local talent in the study of natural history. The centerpiece of their collaboration was, of course, the construction of the monumental Erie Canal, which provided the easiest avenue for internal immigration from the Atlantic seaboard to the continental interior while effectively capturing the lion’s share of Great Lakes commerce through New York State. In all the reams of writing one can find celebrating this remarkable technical feat, very little consideration has been paid to the significant ways in which Echoes of New York’s Embrace of Geological Investigation 213 local knowledge of New York’s physical geography and geology made completion of this audacious project financially and politically feasible. When one considers the many frustrations and material setbacks experienced by canal promoters during those seven years of construction, one sees the political fortitude and technical ingenuity required to sustain multiple phases of canal excavation through a variety of challenging terrain. The project might easily have proven just as foolish and unprofitable as the grandiose canal projects subsequently launched in every state that tried to imitate New York’s astounding initial success. Even among scholarly historical studies of the early American republic, it is rare to see a critical analysis of the circumstances that elevated the pursuit of theory and practice in the natural sciences to a place of professionalism, high respect , and social authority.1 Paradoxically, while it has become almost a cliché to attribute the emergence of a distinctly American national identity to the vastness and sublimity of American nature, the research literature that examines just how Americans used the land to formulate a distinct national character has developed as a haphazard patchwork of subspecialties. This book has drawn upon work by historians of science, technology, political science, literature, and art in order to better comprehend the activities, institutional innovations, individual contributions , and, most importantly, the intersecting relationships across disciplinary boundaries that were ultimately responsible for New York State’s leadership in the development of new intellectual capacities and widespread cultural appreciation for the scientific study of nature. Three familiar tropes of American intellectual history have informed this study: the struggle for independence from European political and cultural hegemony , the frontier reputation for placing practical considerations above theoretical ones, and the metaphor of warfare between science and religion. Though each of these tropes possesses at least a germ of enduring truth, in terms of my specific findings, all three historical generalizations require some fine-tuning and modification. The most fruitful and robust of the three is definitely the struggle for American independence from European political and cultural hegemony. A respected elder colleague of mine in the history of science once shared his opinion regarding how this trope applied to the special case of geology: “Every intellectual endeavor in America derived from and emulating European activities had to generate its own sense of independence, even as had our political system. In the realm of science, America was in a colonial state of dependency. In natural history and geology however, the subject matter was necessarily distinct from that in Europe and the sense of nationalism rather easy to develop.”2 In the particular case of Amos Eaton’s life and career, his persistent desire for [3.135.198.49...

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