DeWitt Clinton and Amos Eaton

Download or read book DeWitt Clinton and Amos Eaton written by David I. Spanagel and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did geology and politics inform scientific ideas and contribute to New York's prominence in the early nineteenth century? David I. Spanagel explores the origins of American geology and the culture that promoted it in nineteenth-century New York. Focusing on Amos Eaton, the educator and amateur scientist who founded the Rensselaer School, and DeWitt Clinton, the masterful politician who led the movement for the Erie Canal, Spanagel shows how a cluster of assumptions about the peculiar landscape and entrepreneurial spirit of New York came to define the Empire State. In so doing, he sheds light on a particularly innovative and fruitful period of interplay among science, politics, art, and literature in American history.