Victorian scientist Charles Lyell is often credited as the “Father of Geology,” and he certainly established the modern science. But what about one of his lesser-known predecessors?

Shen Kuo or Shen Kua (1031-1095 C.E.) was a Chinese diplomat, scientist, and polymath who was far ahead of his times. For example,

+He realized that compasses pointed to the magnetic north pole, not true north.
+He observed fossil shells in a mountain range far from the ocean and hypothesized that land was formed by erosion of mountains and deposition of silt.
+He found some fossil stems in Shenxi Province which he identified as bamboo shoots, outside of the 11th century range of bamboo in that region, and inferred that past climates must have been different to allow their growth.
+He both observed the planets and tried to explain their retrograde motions. Unlike the Greek astronomers, he did not assume that all planets moved in circular orbits, but rather hypothesized a “willow leaf” shaped motion.

In a paper published in Journal of the Geological Society, London (Chaloner and Creber 1990), the authors preface their paper with this wonderful introduction about Shen Kuo:

The idea of using plant fossils as palaeoclimatic indicators has a long pedigree, considerably pre-dating Charles Lyell. A Chinese scholar, Shen Kuo, of the eleventh century, found some fossil stems in Shansi [Shenxi] Province, which he described as bamboo shoots (Li 1981). He noted the significant point that these were apparently growing outside the present range of bamboos in that part of China, and went on to make the appropriate deduction that conditions must therefore have changed since the time when the plants were living there (Scott & Smith 1977). Unfortunately for our purposes, the fossils that he had found were almost certainly Neocalamites, relatives of modern horsetails, having very little to do with bamboos systematically, but strongly resembling them in the appearance of their jointed stems. So that while his taxonomy may have been at fault, Shen Kuo’s line of reasoning was centuries ahead of his time. Despite the break in the succession, he must surely be credited as the father of palaeoclimatology!

Modern relatives of Shen Kuo’s fossil “bamboo shoots” growing in Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. Photo (c) 2005 Melissa Barton

While it’s easy to look back at the scientists of the past and scoff at their peculiar ideas of taxonomy (as future scientists will no doubt look back at us and scoff), science would not exist today without their founding efforts. I love these stories of obscure historical scientists, and I’m ever-grateful to Stephen Jay Gould for writing about so many of them.

Unfortunately, most of today’s science students learn very little of the history of their disciplines, which provides context to both the progress of science and the scientific method.

Shen Kuo, being an obscure Chinese scientist, probably won’t displace Lyell in Western history books as the founder of geology, but perhaps he’ll keep the mantle of the father of paleoclimatology — and perhaps one day environmental science and geology students will read about him in their textbooks.

FURTHER READING:

The fine people at Project Gutenberg have posted some of Shen Kuo’s works (in Chinese, unfortunately for most of us) here, and there’s a nice biography of him here.

Chaloner, W.G., and Creber, G.T. 1990. Do fossil plants give a climatic signal? in Journal of the Geological Society, London, vol. 147, p. 343-350.

Li, X.X. 1981. A Bibliography of Chinese Palaeobotany. Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Academia Sinica, Nanjing.