[meteorite-list] More on Jefferson and Weston from Burke

From: David Freeman <dfreeman_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Mar 21 18:09:12 2005
Message-ID: <423F5412.4010200_at_fascination.com>

I salute you, Bernd, the master!

Extremely cool post!

Jefferson has many devoted followers today in his constitutional views.
Many of my literate friends view Jefferson as a saint of the early
government, and even above Washington, and Lincoln.
Again, thank you for this one!
Dave Freeman
mjwy

bernd.pauli_at_paulinet.de wrote:

>BURKE J.G. (1986) Cosmic Debris - Meteorites in History, p. 57:
>
>It was not until October 1805 that Ellicott received published material from France,
>which convinced him that stones did fall, that they had an unusual composition and
>texture, and that they were generated in the atmosphere. He advised Jefferson of
>his conversion, and Jefferson responded on 25 October 1805. He wrote that he had not
>seen the documents to which Ellicott referred, but that he had read Izam's Lithologie
>atmosph?rique, which was "an industrious collection" of facts of the same kind:
>
>"I do not say that I disbelieve the testimony but neither can I say I believe it. Chemistry
>is too much in its infancy to satisfy us that the lapidific elements exist in the atmosphere
>and that the process can be completed there. I do not know that this would be against the laws
>of nature and therefore I do not say it is impossible; but as it is so much unlike any operation
>of nature we have ever seen it requires testimony proportionately strong."
>
>This passage indicates that Jefferson's skepticism was not about the fall of meteorites, but
>about their generation in the atmosphere. It is in this light that we should attempt to judge
>whether or not the remark so often attributed to him following the fall of the Weston meteorite
>two years later is apocryphal - namely, "It is easier to believe that two Yankee professors
>would lie than that stones would fall from heaven." In his Discourse on Jefferson, Samuel Latham
>Mitchill reported that soon after the Weston fall, he received an account and a specimen from
>friends. A senator who was to dine with Jefferson that evening asked to borrow the report and
>sample to show to the President and request his comments. When presented with the evidence,
>Jefferson, according to Mitchill's friend, said that "it is all a lie." Later, on 15 February 1808,
>in a reply to a letter from a citizen offering to send a fragment of the Weston stone for an official
>examination by the Congress, Jefferson suggested that the members of a scientific society would be
>better qualified to examine the stone, "supposed meteoric," than those of the national legislature.
>He continued:
>
>"We certainly are not to deny whatever we cannot account for. A thousand phenomena present
>themselves daily which we cannot explain, but where facts are suggested, bearing no analogy
>with the laws of nature as yet known to us, their verity needs proof proportioned to their
>difficulty. A cautious mind will weigh the opposition of the phenomenon to everything hitherto
>observed, the strength of the testimony by which it is supported, and the error and misconceptions
>to which even our senses are liable. It may be very difficult to explain how the stone you possess
>came into the position in which it was found. But is it easier to explain how it got into the clouds
>from whence it is supposed to have fallen? The actual fact however is the thing to be established."
>
>The tenor and even the wording of this letter is quite similar as that in Jefferson's December 1803
>reply to Ellicott. It is possible that, upon reflection, he dismissed the notion of the atmospheric
>generation of stones and reverted to his original ambivalence about their fall. One other point is
>relevant. At the time of the Weston fall, the New England states were in an uproar about the economic
>effects of the Jeffersonian-sponsored Embargo Act of November 1806, and there was even talk of secession.
>Jefferson was antagonistic to the New Englanders, because they sought to circumvent the embargo by smuggling
>goods into Canada. It is therefore possible that soon after the fall and before the American Philosophical
>Society in March 1808 heard Silliman's report and accepted his memoir for publication, Jefferson, in a fit
>of temper, made the remark. But scholars have not yet located the source, so that at this time it must
>remain conjectural.
>
>
>Best regards,
>
>Bernd
>
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Received on Mon 21 Mar 2005 06:09:06 PM PST