Robert Chambers (publisher Born 1802) - Other Activities

Other Activities

Chambers gave a talk on ancient beaches at the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting at Oxford in May 1847. An observer named Andrew Crombie Ramsay at the meeting reported that Chambers "pushed his conclusions to a most unwarrantable length and got roughly handled on account of it by Buckland, De la Beche, Sedgwick, Murchison, and Lyell. The last told me afterwards that he did so purposely that might see that reasonings in the style of the author of the Vestiges would not be tolerated among scientific men." On the Sunday Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, used his sermon at St. Mary's Church on "the wrong way of doing science" to deliver a stinging attack obviously aimed at Chambers. The church, "crowded to suffocation" with geologists, astronomers and zoologists, heard jibes about the "half-learned" seduced by the "foul temptation" of speculation looking for a self-sustaining universe in a "mocking spirit of unbelief", showing a failure to understand the "modes of the Creator's acting" or to meet the responsibilities of a gentleman. Chambers denounced this as an attempt to stifle progressive opinion, but others thought he must have gone home "with the feeling of a martyr".

Near the close of autumn 1848, Chambers allowed himself to be brought forward as a candidate for the administrative position of Lord Provost of Edinburgh. The timing was especially poor, with others seeking any means possible to try and discredit his character. His adversaries found the perfect opportunity to do so in the swirling allegations that he was the author of the much reviled Vestiges. William Chambers, in his Memoir of Robert Chambers, still sworn to secrecy despite his brother's recent passing, makes his only mention of Vestiges in connection with this affair: "(Robert) might have been well assured that a rumor to the effect that he was the author of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' would be used to his disadvantage, and that anything he might say on the subject would be unavailing.". Robert withdrew his candidacy in disgust.

In 1851 Chambers was one of a group of writers who joined the publisher John Chapman in reinvigorating the Westminster Review as a flagship of free thought and reform, spreading the ideas of evolutionism.