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Wrote the Archbishop: "In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth, Gen. I. v. I. Which beginning of time, according to our chronologie, fell upon the entrance of the night preceding the twenty third day of October in the year of the Julian calendar, 710 (4004 B.C.). Upon the first day therefore of the world, or October 23, being our Sunday." Ussher's concept of Earth's age was widely accepted through the time of René Descartes and Isaac Newton, to a certain extent because scientists were reluctant to refute church doctrine. But by the time of English astronomer Edmond Halley, the Bible was not the instrument of choice for measuring the Earth's age. Halley proposed that the Royal Society of London measure the salinity of sea water and compare it to what might reasonably be calculated to accumulate in one year. The difference would reveal the Earth's age. Halley's conclusions were not definite, but he had a good idea that the Earth's creation extended much farther back than 4004 B.C. As time went on, more and more scientists agreed. |
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This story comes from just the first 20 pages of Sciences of the Earth: An Encyclopedia of Events, People, and Phenomena, edited by WVU Associate Professor of History Gregory Good and published earlier this year by Garland. Readers can also find within the first 20 pages discussions on actualism, uniformitarianism, and catastrophism—theories explaining geological change on Earth. Good began compiling the book in 1990. It is part of a three-book series, the other two dealing with the history of astronomy and the history of scientific instruments. Originally, Good was asked to do an encyclopedia on the history of geology, but that was too narrow a topic, he said. "Geology is a modern concept, dating to 1750 and the mining academies of central Europe. I wanted something broader that didn't prejudge history in 20th century terms—a book that would include a wide variety of knowledge of the Earth." In the end he had 240 articles with 135 contributing authors from 14 countries. One of his purposes was to dispel the notion that scientific disciplines "went back endlessly in history." A first-of-its-kind reference work, the encyclopedia charts two millennia of our knowledge of Earth and its natural laws—which have, as illustrated by the debate over the planet's age, undergone enormous change. "I wanted readers to see at a glance when a scientific discipline formed and what conditions brought it together. Each has a life history and story, and some have changed so completely that only the name has remained the same." With articles ranging from "Dew" and "Dowsing" to "Jesuits and the Earth" and "Mass Extinction and the Impact-Volcanic Controversy," Good's two volumes cover a lot of ground, and a good bit of the atmosphere and oceans, too. And with references to such familiar figures as Hippocrates, Huxley, and Hume, Copernicus, Curie, and Confucius, the encyclopedia also is a who's who of science. It also includes less popularly known individuals who were, nonetheless, consequential in the history of science. The names index contains well over 2,000 entries. One of these is James Lovelock (1919-), whose controversial Gaia hypothesis maintains that organisms shape the Earth and biosphere toward a global balance. This is a notion that counters Darwinism, which holds that organisms evolve and adapt to planetary changes or die. Then there is German meteorologist Alfred Wegener (1880-1930), who, along with American geologist Frank Taylor, first offered the idea of continental drift in 1910. His "mobi" theory that land masses have drifted thousands of miles during millions of years was a 180-degree divergence from the "fixist" theories widely held at the time. These explained Earth's surface features as the result of continental collapse that formed ocean basins and an Earth's crust that contracted to produce wrinkled land formations, rather the way folds are produced when an apple dries. Today, updated versions of the ideas of Taylor and Wegener are well accepted, although the controversy lasted until the 1960s. Understanding such meandering and fluctuation in the history of science is not simply an academic exercise, according to Good. "We are at a critical stage in our relationship to the planet," Good said, "and if we want to make well-informed decisions about our future relations to it, we need to understand the diverse ways we have related to the planet in the past." Our understanding of Earth, at any given time, is incomplete. And even with all the breakthroughs and revolutions in our knowledge, it is often helpful to remember that, as humans, we are looking at Earth from a limited perspective. Good's book is an attempt to illustrate how that perspective has changed. Moviegoers will find familiar concepts in the encyclopedia. Anyone who saw Armageddon or Deep Impact is versed on the notion of "catastrophism" and "mass extinction." Catastrophism is the idea that the Earth's features are a result of catastrophic events such as floods, volcanoes, and earthquakes. It was vigorously opposed during the 19th century by actuas (those who explained the past through causes taking place now) and uniformitarians (who believe that Earth's features formed over a very long period). The "mass extinction" controversy is a late 20th century debate arising from the idea that an asteroid impact 65 million years ago eliminated dinosaurs—though in the movies it was humans in danger of extinction. Among the topics covered are environmentalism, oceanography, cosmology and the Earth, auroras, and articles by Good himself on geomagnetic theory in the 18th and 19th centuries, a history of scientific disciplines, presentism, and the introduction, "Toward a History of the Sciences of the Earth." In his introduction, Good reminds readers that knowledge is always incomplete. "It is wisest to begin a search for knowledge with greatest humility," he wrote. "In this case, we should not presume that we know what the Earth is, let alone what a science of the Earth might be. Especially in earlier centuries or different cultures (but even within the 20th century), the meaning of 'earth' has varied widely." One is not likely to see this book being read under an umbrella at the beach. At $150 for the two volumes, about $100 from book clubs such as Science Book Club and the Natural History Book Club, it may be out of the average book purchaser's budget. But anyone who does have an opportunity to read any part of the encyclopedia will find interesting tales of the quest for knowledge, sometimes pursued in a straight line, but more often than not in tangents and wanderings through observations, speculations, and small, incremental discoveries. Good teaches courses in the history of science. He received his doctorate from the University of Toronto. He is on sabbatical this year, working on a book on the history of investigations of the Earth's magnetism titled "Magnetical World." The cover, he said, will feature Diet Smith, a 1960s Dick Tracy comics character who once said, "He who controls magnetism controls the world." "I'm going to write the book on magnetism solo," Good said. "I'm content with one massive collaborative effort." Good will spend much of his sabbatical at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. He will, however, continue as editor of the international journal Earth Sciences History. |
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