The Aesthetics and Politics of Volcanoes: William Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei

Hamilton gained literary significance through his encounter with Goethe, who visited him several times in his villa during the famous trip to Italy in 1787 (Goethe 1991–1999: 199–211, 220–222, 225–226, 228–229, 231–234, 314–316, 353–355, 365–370). The chemist Otto Krätz has pointed out how astonishing it is that there are no traces of a scientific exchange between them (Krätz 1986, 1987: 134–140). After all, Goethe, who climbed Vesuvius three times, met in Hamilton the most experienced volcanologist of his time and the most precise geological expert of the region. Goethe, however, was a “Neptunist” in questions of geological history, in line with his teacher and the most prominent representative of this doctrine, the Freiberg mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749–1817). Hamilton, on the other hand, represented the opposite (and more modern) position as a “Plutonist.” They were thus on different sides of a scientific debate. The Neptunists assumed that the mainland of the Earth had gradually formed by sedimentation from a sinking primordial ocean. The Plutonists, on the other hand, considered volcanic activity to be the driving force that shaped the surface of the planet from the Earth’s interior.

Goethe remained inclined to the Neptunist theory throughout his life, even after he had exchanged views on geological matters with Alexander von Humboldt dec-ades later and had read his groundbreaking study “Über den Bau und die Wirkung-sart der Vulkane in verschiedenen Erdstrichen” [On the structure and activity of vol-canoes in different parts of the world] (Humboldt 1823: 49–54). In Faust II (1832), Goethe took up the geological debate between the two parties. In the second act, he stages it as an argument between Anaxagoras and Thales, who hold Neptunist and Plutonist views, respectively. And he has Mephisto tell his diabolical version of the formation of the Earth in the fourth act.

The Formation of the Earth

For a long time, volcanoes were a mystery. Even in Hamilton’s time, from to-day’s perspective, quite erroneous assumptions prevailed. According to ancient my-thology, volcanoes were regarded as openings to Hades. Similarly, the oracle of the Sibyl of Cumae, not far from Vesuvius, which Hamilton also mentions, as well as the oracle of Delphi, are today attributed to volcanic gases. According to Christian doctrine, volcanoes were seen as warnings of hell. Geologically, they challenged the biblical worldview, which extends from Genesis through the Flood to the Apocalypse but is unable to explain the long-time history of the Earth, for the duration of which more and more empirical evidence was found in Hamilton’s time.