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Full Description
Not quite a history of geology, Thinking about the Earth is a history of the geological tradition of Western science. Beginning with a discussion of organic views of the earth in ancient cultures, David Oldroyd traverses such topics as mechanical and historicist views of the earth, map-work, chemical analyses of rocks and minerals, geomorphology, experimental petrology, seismology, theories of mountain building, and geochemistry. He brings us back to the idea that the earth may, in a sense, be regarded as a living entity, or at least that life is an essential feature of its behavior. Oldroyd offers a broad-brush contribution to the history of ideas and theories about the earth, providing a general synthesis of what science-historians have written about the history of the earth sciences. He shows us that ideas about the earth have been changing constantly since the beginnings of geological science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and indeed that ideas changed much more rapidly after the establishment of this science than in preceding centuries. Thinking about the Earth does not assume previous knowledge of earth science. What it does require is an openness to the notion that an understanding of what geologists have to tell us today about the earth can be achieved by examining the evolving history of ideas in geology. This book will be of considerable interest to historians of science, historians of ideas, geologists, students of earth science, and general readers as well.
Contents
Illustrations Acknowledgments Glossary Introduction 1. A Mythical and Living World: Ideas about the Earth in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 2. Mechanical Theories of the Earth and Physico-Theology 3. The Beginnings of Geological Science: Detachment from Cosmogony and Mineralogy 4. Thoughts on Heat, Fire and Water 5. The Earth Surveyed and Geological Mapped: the Territorial Imperative 6. Geological Time and the Tempo of Geological Change 7. Thoughts about Climate. Glaciation and Carving the Earth's Surface 8. The Making of Mountains and the Pulse of the Earth 9. Thinking about Rocks and their Formation: Magma, Migma and All That Stuff 10. Thinking with Instruments: Earthquakes, Early Seismology and the Earth's Hidden Interior 11. Movement of Poles and Continents, or Getting Bigger? 12. Some Grander Ways of Thinking 13. Some Concluding Thoughts Suggestions for Further Reading Notes Bibliography Index
