What is Speleology (or Cave Science)?
Caves and karst are about as far from this environment as one could imagine. The MSS is interested in science in which the researcher is just as likely to be lying in a pool of water, turning over rocks, and peering through a hand lens, muddy to her ears. Modern cave science, or speleology, is barely one hundred fifty years old, if you count the efforts of Adolf Schmidl in Slovenia and Edouard Martel all over Europe as marking its beginnings. Since its beginning, speleology has had a lot of mapmaking and surveying involved: you can’t study something until you know where it is. Early speleology is not that much different than that of today: exploration, observation, formation of theories, and testing of those theories in the laboratory or the field. Granted, there is a bit more math these days, but that is the major difference. Speleology in the United States, at least that variety of theory based on rigorous observation and experiment by people with formal scientific training, is barel
