Inventing the Earth: Ideas on Landscape Development since 1740 By
2005 | 171 Pages | ISBN: 1405101873 | PDF | 4 MB
This book chronicles how successive generations of natural philosophers, geologists and geomorphologists have come to invent the view of the Earth over the past 250 years. Chronicles how successive generations of natural philosophers, geologists and geomorphologists have come to invent different views of the Earth over the last 250 years. Uses as its central viewpoint changing ideas about the significance of the action of rain and rivers on the Earth's surface. Shows how our contemporary "truths" have come to be accepted and exposes the frailty of even the most impeccably scientific visions of the Earth. Content: Chapter 1 Inventing Scientific Explanations (pages 3-10): Chapter 2 Inventing the Age (and Origin) of the Earth (pages 11-22): Chapter 3 Inventing 'Modern Earth Science': Charles Lyell and 'the Principles of Geology' (pages 23-40): Chapter 4 Inventing the Ice Age: The Role of Louis Agassiz (pages 41-54): Chapter 5 Inventing A Balanced View of 'forces Now in Operation': Charles Darwin's Travels in Space and Time (pages 55-71): Chapter 6 Inventing A Fluvial Landscape: Powell, Gilbert and the Western Explorations (pages 72-86): Chapter 7 Inventing the Geographical Cycle and the Synthetic Genius of W.M. Davis (pages 87-97): Chapter 8 Reinventing A Newtonian Universe: the Reductionist Revolution, 1945?77 (pages 98-111): Chapter 9 Reinventing the Earth, 1977? : Homo Sapiens, History and Microorganisms (pages 112-126):