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,b
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a Geography Department University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana, Illinois 61801
b Hey and Associates, Inc. 1141 Commerce Drive Geneva, Illinois 60134
c Illinois State Geological Survey Champaign, Illinois 61821
We congratulate Professor Asio on a well composed and interesting letter that showcases Friedrich Albert Fallou's unique and early views on soil as expressed in his 1862 book: Pedologie oder allgemeine und besondere Bodenkunde. Asio's letter provides several revelations and augments our essay (Tandarich et al., 2002). It also further expands our appreciation for the conceptual debt owed to a handful of prescient 19th century European pioneer pedologists. Fallou obviously was a charter member of this august group. We here offer several additional comments to this developing dialog on key 19th century conceptual formulations in pedology and soil science, including the role of scientific terms, and how these formulations affect our worldview of soils today—namely the way we think about them, and how and why we interpret them genetically and make sense of them as we do. Indeed, the sum of such concepts guide our interpretations and explanations, and the best ones lead us to prediction. Insofar as that is a good part of what science is about, it justifies these clarifying forays into our conceptual-historical past. On this point Gould (1977) cautioned that those ignorant of history and its key players are not so much condemned to repeat it as be confused.
One of the interesting points raised by Asio is where he quotes Fallou (in English translation) as stating that his 1862 book expresses "for the first time" the idea that "existing soil knowledge [should be] an interconnected, concise and organized body of knowledge" and thus a science. Asio describes how Fallou in his Introduction justifies soil science as an independent natural science, and that soil, being a natural body, is thus deserving of our study. (Hmmm, we thought such concepts were attributed to famed geologist-pedologist V.V. Dokuchaev!) Other topics Fallou treats, as reviewed by Asio, include soil quality, soil diversity, and soil thickness versus slope steepness and elevation. We learn that Fallou's Chapter 3 treats such key soil properties as color, structure, density, porosity, penetrability, plus others. He also, according to Asio, expresses ideas of soil evolution, where "everything changes itself in form and substance with time." Many other revelations and insights to Fallou's prescient thinking are attributed to him by Asio.
Now sometimes a nuance of thought or a key point can be blurred, or changed slightly—or in the worst case misinterpreted when articulating a conceptual point from one language to another. Nevertheless, who better to assess Fallou's pedological thoughts than another German pedologist? So, if the sum of Asio's reading of the conceptual nuances of Fallou's 1862 book is close to being reasonably accurate, and we assume it is, then Asio may well be right in suggesting that Fallou's book could have provided the foundation on which modern soil science has developed. Most textbook writers, however, have conferred the honor on V.V. Dokuchaev—often citing his 1883 signature work, Russian Chernozem (Tandarich et al., 2002; doubtless many pedology instructors, including at least one of us, have professed such in their classes). This raises the question: Who most influenced Dokuchaev, at least as he expressed his thoughts in 1883? Was it Fallou, mainly, whose 1862 book preceded Dokuchaev's by 21 yr?
In perusing Russian Chernozem, one is struck by several names that regularly and repeatedly pop up amidst Dokuchaev's voluminous sources. Of these, F.E. Ruprecht, I.F. Levakovskii, N. Borisyak, M.N. Bogdanov, and G.P. Gel'mersen (see References) rank near the top, along with a few others. It is clear that the works of these individuals and several others had a huge influence on Dokuchaev—at least if citation frequency and depth of coverage is a fair measure. And insofar as our modern worldview of soil is steeped with views presumably attributed to Dokuchaev, the views of these five scientists and several others—views that were intellectually processed and filtered by Dokuchaev—indirectly touch us now, here in the 21st century.
But in our count, Fallou was cited by Dokuchaev only once (p. 323), and then largely as an afterthought. Albert Orth, another exemplary German pedologist, was cited three times (p. 315, 330, 332), also mainly as afterthoughts. In fact, both Fallou and Orth occupy the lower part of Dokuchaev's citation frequency list, near its bottom! With regard to Fallou, it raises the question: Did Dokuchaev even read Fallou's 1862 book on soil, one of only several that existed then, and if so was it a careful or early read? Was it perhaps an early career read that maybe he later forgot about, and perhaps never reread to refresh his memory? Or did Dokuchaev perhaps consider certain of Fallou's ideas unimportant [like he did Darwin's on bioturbation], which then overshadowed the conceptual pearls that Asio spotlights, pearls that Dokuchaev might possibly have subconsciously retained, which—under an unknowing guise of his own ideas—were expressed in his chernozem book?
We will, alas, never know. But such questions raise others about how we scientists develop our ideas, and about how we, in all innocence, may fail to assign priority cognizance for pre-existing thoughts, which we gain through reading or hearing, but then forget we did—and later subconsciously assume they were ours all along. Probably we all are guilty of such memory-lapse pecadillos, which is understandable (but it must be far worse now because of the incredible expansion of science, scientists, journals, fields, scientific terms, etc., compared with Dokuchaev's time).
Asio asks why, in light of his conceptual contributions, Fallou has received so few accolades from soil scientists and pedologists beyond those conferred belatedly by E. Blanck (1949)? Asio suggests some good reasons; we suggest some more.
One is clearly Dokuchaev's failure to acknowledge Fallou's contributions in his chernozem tome. Another is, if we read Asio correctly, Fallou's apparent reluctance to coin and define terms for the prescient concepts he formulated. Now scientific terms are often viewed, understandably, as either blessings of new thought, or curses of jargon. For example, a set of terms considered essential by a pedologist may be considered jargon by an ecologist, and vice versa. Nevertheless, well-defined terms are necessary for all sciences, and timely useful ones can advance a field quickly, especially process terms (because they link to genesis and explanation). Asio gives examples of expressions Fallou used to describe certain things, conditions, and some processes, to which Orth (and others) later gave names, such as ‘soil profile’ and ‘soil layers’, among others. Without names for things, for processes, and for theories and such, we are functionally handicapped (Johnson, 1994). Helen Keller expressed this perfectly: "Everything had a name and each name gave birth to a new thought" (Johnson, 1999). We submit that had Fallou coined and defined more conceptual terms to showcase and articulate his early ideas, his recognition as a founder of soil science might have come earlier, more quickly, and been more visible. His book likely would have made a bigger splash—and more decidedly so if it had been translated into other languages (note how quickly Dokuchaev's views on soil science were absorbed by American soil scientists in the 1920s and 1930s following Marbut's English translation of Glinka's book. Maybe Asio will translate Fallou's book?)
We agree that Fallou likely suffered the handicap of not being a professor, and therefore lacked students to promote his message—like Dokuchaev so successfully did. On the other hand, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein (at least early on) had similar handicaps that seemed not to limit their status as scientists—though admittedly their life circumstances were different.
Asio joins E. Blanck (1949) in honoring Fallou as a founder of soil science, an honor earlier bestowed by Yarilov (1904), and by others on both Dokuchaev and Darwin (Tandarich et al., 2002; cf. Yarilov, 1936; Ghilarov, 1983). So it appears we now have three cofounders of soil science/pedology, each with his own blend of contributions, and each with his major soil works appearing respectively in 1862 (Fallou), in 1881 (Darwin), and in 1883 (Dokuchaev). In terms of priority, one can argue that Fallou clearly has the edge. In terms of significance of contributions, well, that is for readers and the field to decide.
Finally, it is unlikely that these comments will terminate this dialog on founders, theories, descriptive and genetic terms, on the relative significance of one or another's pioneer contributions, and so on. Others may opt to voice their views, and that is good, for such views, like Asio's, augment an intellectually healthy trend over the past decade [or two] of North American pedologists and soil scientists starting to actively examine their historical roots, which follows nearly a century when few did. It calls to mind Nobelist Sir Peter Medawar's (1979) lament on the near-total indifference of many scientists to the history of ideas that lie at the root of their own research. Sir Peter, we reckon, will endorse the trend—and these letters.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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NOTES |
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 TOP NOTES REFERENCES |
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TOPNOTESREFERENCES |
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