In 1876 Rev. Thomas Condon became the first geology professor at the University. Today, students and professors continue to discuss his work.
On Friday night at the School of Law, the Museum of Cultural and Natural History hosted the second of a three-part lecture series on Condon and the collection of fossils he donated to the University when he was teaching here.
Ellen Morris Bishop, geologist and director of Oregon Paleo Lands Institute, spoke Friday about the importance of Condon’s seminal work, “Thomas Condon and the Two Islands: Changing Visions of Oregon’s Earliest Landscape.”
“He was perceptive and had a keen eye for the landscape,” Bishop said before her speech. “He alluded to things that we are now only able to understand about Oregon’s landscape.”
Hattie Mae Nixon, a volunteer at the museum, said Condon is an important part of the University’s tradition and that “Condon started the science department and introduced geology to the school.”
Condon spent most of his life exploring the richly diverse fossil bed in the John Day Valley, which Bishop called “the most accessible place to study geology from the last 50 million years.
It is from his findings that Oregon geologists now lay their groundwork for new studies on the state’s landscape.
“You can find some astounding statements in the book,” Bishop said during her hour-long speech. “Some things he couldn’t explain, but he had the capacity to look at the landscape with new eyes, just not the technology to understand them.”
Bishop said Condon’s findings aren’t the only thing that we should examine. She believes that his ability to bring geology to the common man should be emulated.
“It’s incumbent upon scientists to show data, research and findings to the world in a way they understand,” Bishop said. “Science isn’t about right and wrong. It’s constantly changing and I think that confuses people. Condon helped Oregon understand the geology of the landscape, but we (geologists) haven’t done a good job presenting it to the public.”
Bishop feels that bringing geology to the masses is important in understanding our world, but that “we face right now increasing agitation from religious components” as well.
“Condon felt that religion and science wasn’t mutually exclusive,” Bishop said. “The end of ‘Two Islands’ makes the point that there has been a resistance to science from Galileo to evolution. There doesn’t have to be that barrier, they can co-exist.”
Pat McDowell, a professor of geography at the University, said that Bishop did a good job of showing how Condon helped make Oregon history known world-wide.
“There is a lot to learn from what Condon said about the divide between religion and science. I like the fact that (Bishop) alluded to him being a positive model for all of us,” said McDowell.
At the conclusion of her speech, Bishop said she wanted everyone to go away with the same thinking Condon brought to the University more than a hundred years ago.
“We should follow the concepts that Condon used,” Bishop said. “He saw the landscape with new eyes. Oregon should be proud he came to the U of O and gave so much to the tradition here.”
The third and final speech in the series will take place Oct. 26 at 5:30 p.m. in room 175 at the William W. Knight Law Center. This speech will be given by Ted Fremd, chief paleontologist at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, and is titled “It’s About Time: Designing Accurate Exhibits for the New Thomas Condon Paleontology Center, John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.”