Geology

Professor Coleman wrote a series of three articles for the New York journal The Chataquan on the relationships between the physical and biological sciences. The third essay examined the interdisciplinarity of Geology. The description was in line with the courses he was teaching at the university. Although Coleman came to specialize in historical geology, his notebooks, manuscripts and publications display the professor's broad knowledge of all facets of the discipline.

… [Geology] is of vast extent and tends to divide into several more or less distinct sciences, such as Lithology, Dynamic Geology, and Paleontology. Lithology is busied with the rocks that compose the earth’s crust, the only part accessible to us. ... In some respects it draws largely on physics and is very closely related to mineralogy. Dynamical geology treats the forces which shaped the world; the volcanoes, earthquakes, and slow folding of the rocky crust that have given rise to mountain ranges, plains, valleys, and ocean beds; and the gnawing of winds, weather, and water which steadily undo the work of the former forces. … Historical geology begins in astronomy, traces the slow cooling and solidification of our earth till water condensed and began its work, and then takes up the numberless forms of animal and plant life which grow more and more numerous and more and more like present races as age followed age. (continued on the next page)