In the eighteenth century there was still a belief among many peoples that stones fell down with the lightning. These stones, which earlier authors had called ombriae, brontiae and cerauniae s1F. D. Adams, The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences (New York: Dover, 1954), 118-24., were often regarded as having supernatural powers n1 There is a considerable number of cases in which meteorites have actually been the object of worship. See L. LaPaz, Hunting Meteorites: Their Recovery, Use, and Abuse from Paleolithic to Present, Topics in Meteoritics No. 6 (Albuquerdistribution. © 1978 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized Downloaded from https://sss.sagepub.com by Patricio Parente on November 4, 2007 490 que, NM: University of New Mexico, 1969), 84-94. Also H. N. Nininger, Out of the Sky (Denver, Col.: University of Denver Press, 1952), 5-8.. Bishop Pontoppidan observed that the Norwegian peasants believed that these stones were especially useful to women in labour, in that they would aid delivery of the child s2 E. Pontoppidan, The Natural History of Norway (London: A. Linde, 1755), 174-76.. Belief regarding the supernatural powers of these stones was so strong in Prussia that Helwing, the minister of Angerbourg, finally had to resort to the use of the Secular Arm to root them out s3 A. de Jussieu, 'De l'Origine et des Usages de la Pierre de Foudre', HMARSP, 1723 (Paris, 1753), partie 'Histoire', 6-9.. Accordingly one savant after another took pains to describe how baseless was the idea that these stones had really fallen with the lightning s4 See G.-L. L. De Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, Vol. VI (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1779), 225; article on 'Pierre de Foudre', in Dictionnaire Raisonné Universel d'Histoire Naturelle (Lyon: Bruyset, 1791); article on 'Foudre, Pierres de', in J. L. R. d'Alembert and D. Diderot, Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Metiers (Paris, 1757)..
These figure stones' appeared to one eighteenth-century savant as belonging to three types s5Mahudel, 'Sur les Prétendues Pierres de Foudre', Histoire et Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres H][MAR,IBL Vol. 12 (Paris 1745), partie 'Histoire', 163-69.. The first were evidently fossils, the hardened remains of creatures which had once been living. A second, more interesting, variety were obviously the tools of primitive man which, left behind wherever settlements had formerly been, gave rise to the idea that the lightning had sent down these strange wedges and axes. A third type of 'lightning-stone', which seemed to be a pyrite or marcasite with a black crust, was a little harder to explain. Whereas the first two types had been related to lightning because of their pointed shape (naturally thunderbolts had to be pointed), the reason for the connection of the third type with lightning was not clear. 'We will have to leave it to the chemists to demonstrate its origin against those who believe it to be celestial,' the savant said indifferently s6Ibid., 163.. That all three types of stones should have been given the same name was unfortunate for the recognition of meteorites. For while the scientists of the twentieth century would agree with the savants of the eighteenth on the identity of the first two types, they would disagree on the third type, which definitely included some stones which really had fallen from the skies, although not with the lightning. But when real meteorites were brought to savants for consideration, the memory of the erroneous ones was still vivid. No savant wished to be considered foolish by accepting as authentic items analogous to ones already shown to be fraudulent. It took many years before prejudice could be overcome.
The savants of the eighteenth century were also well aware that the ancients had reported that stones had rained down from the sky on several occasions. Probably most savants saw this simply as an example of the credulity of ancient authors, but some were differently disposed. The French historian Fréret, for instance, suggested that his colleagues at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres take these ancient reports seriously. He argued that many of the 'prodigies' reported by the ancients were real enough: they were simply natural events, perhaps somewhat rare, which had been given a supernatural interpretation s7N. Fréret, 'Réflexions sur les Prodiges Rapportez dans les Anciens', HMARIBL, Vol. 4 (Paris: 1746), partie 'Mémoires', 411-36.. The geologist Guettard, in his notes on Pliny's Natural History, also felt that stones could rain from the sky, and cited modern as well as ancient reports of them doing so s8 Pliny the Elder, Histoire Naturelle de Pline, Vol. I (Paris: Desaint, 1771), 404-09.. He felt that such rains might be caused by hurricanes and volcanic explosions.
But the question of stone-falls was of more than merely historical interest. The three stones which had been sent to the Académie des Sciences in 1769 were far from the only recently fallen ones which came into the hands of savants. Testimonial accounts of contemporary falls were even more numerous. Yet the analysis of one of the three stones in 1772 was the first time that a stone said to have fallen was analyzed by a scientific academy and described in a scientific journal. The negative assessment of the stone's origin by such a prestigious body was probably very influential in determining the reaction of other scientific bodies to the stones, and to testimonies about them. The reaction of the Académie created an environment in which information transfer about the phenomenon was slow and imperfect. For the verdict of the Académie was widely viewed as being the official viewpoint of science itself, not just that of a single academy. To explain why this verdict was changed three decades later, we must examine in detail how individual savants made decisions about the reality of meteorites and the social intelligence system which brought them the information which was the basis for these decisions.