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Trajectories in Science

Geoffrey Cantor

in Quakers, Jews, and Science: Religious Responses to Modernity and the Sciences in Britain, 1650-1900

This chapter looks at nine different modes of scientific activity pursued by Quakers and Jews. These range from the wealthy amateur — including several Jews who pursued science in an upper-class, ... More

This chapter looks at nine different modes of scientific activity pursued by Quakers and Jews. These range from the wealthy amateur — including several Jews who pursued science in an upper-class, gentlemanly fashion — to the Jews and Quakers who traded in scientific specimens. Members of both communities used science in their professional engineering careers. Likewise, both communities produced educationalists who taught science through their lectures and textbooks. Another way in which science was deployed was in the scientific study of their own religious communities through the use of statistics. But there are also some interesting differences. For example, several 18th century Jews were attracted to Newton’s ideas, which were generally ignored by Quakers.Less

Losing the Plot

Adelene Buckland

in Novel Science: Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology

This chapter explains the discoveries and the stories that this book has sought to explore. The story of the “heroic age of geology” has been examined, focusing on the variety of methodological and ... More

This chapter explains the discoveries and the stories that this book has sought to explore. The story of the “heroic age of geology” has been examined, focusing on the variety of methodological and practical positions taken by the gentleman geologists of the Geological Society as they eschewed the self-determining forms of fictional “plots” in their contemplations of earth history. The chapter explains in brief how the book has portrayed the story about the uses of geological forms by novelists as they made attempts at establishing intellectual authority of their writings. From the geological fictions of Charles Kingsley, to George Eliot, to Charles Dickens, the novels show the possibility that history is not a story, but a structure. For Charles Kingsley and George Eliot, geology created for them a useful form of narrative breakdown. Their vision of the earth's formation brought forth their formulation of the novel's creation.Less

Earth Sciences

Glennda Chui

in A Field Guide for Science Writers

In August 1999, I stood in the ruins of a collapsed apartment building near Izmit, Turkey—one of 60,000 buildings destroyed in 40 seconds by the most ... More

In August 1999, I stood in the ruins of a collapsed apartment building near Izmit, Turkey—one of 60,000 buildings destroyed in 40 seconds by the most powerful earthquake to strike a major city in nearly a century. It was a modern building surrounded by trees and greenery. A couch and a table stood intact in a room bright with potted flowers, now open to the air. A woman's coat had been carefully draped over the remains of a wall. As the stench of death rose around us, I wondered if the coat's owner was buried in the rubble beneath my feet. I was sent to Turkey to chase the science—to bring home lessons for readers who live near a strikingly similar fault system in California. But as I surveyed the damage with a team of scientists and engineers, there was no separating the science from the politics. Covered with a fine film of sweat mixed with dust from crumbled buildings and lime that had been scattered to prevent the spread of disease, we saw firsthand how corruption and greed had conspired with the forces of nature to kill more than 17,000 people. Some buildings were constructed right on the North Anatolian Fault. Its mole-like tracks plowed through barracks that had collapsed on 120 military officers, a highway overpass that fell on a bus, a bridge whose failure cut off access and aid to four villages. Researchers found concrete that was crumbly with seashells, chunks of Styrofoam where reinforcing metal bars should have been. Yet some well-reinforced buildings nicked or even pierced by the fault came through just fine, including an apartment building that moved 10 feet and had its front steps sliced off. Another home was cut in two; half collapsed, the other survived with windows intact. “How the hell?” marveled one engineer. “There's no way that building should stand in an earthquake.” That blend of science, politics, and human nature is just part of what makes earth science so compelling. It goes far beyond the academics of geology and plate tectonics to embrace earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, volcanoes, landslides—natural hazards that affect thousands of people and change the course of civilization. Less

“An Independent Publication for Geologists”: The Geological Society, Commercial Journals, and the Remaking of Nineteenth-Century Geology

Gowan Dawson

in Science Periodicals in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Constructing Scientific Communities

The Geological Society of London’s elitism ensured that it remained at odds with commercial journals that sought to foster different, more marketable approaches to the earth sciences. The financial ... More

The Geological Society of London’s elitism ensured that it remained at odds with commercial journals that sought to foster different, more marketable approaches to the earth sciences. The financial imperatives of the literary marketplace necessitated that these journals endeavored to cultivate a much larger readership than the Geological Society’s official publications, which addressed only the needs of gentlemanly specialists. The pecuniary difficulties imposed by a limited circulation nevertheless had significant implications for the intellectual and scientific value of the Geological Society’s periodicals. At the same time, commercial journals, whose continued existence required a broader audience, utilized the potential of new communities of geologists to forge a less exclusive and more egalitarian conception of the earth sciences, directly challenging the Geological Society’s hierarchical exclusivity. Significantly, the gentlemanly specialists would eventually feel compelled to take advantage of the new opportunities afforded by the more inclusive approach of these journals. The format of the most populist of these commercial periodicals, the Geologist, would, by the end of the nineteenth century, provide the vehicle for a new community of professional geologists to finally supplant, with the Geological Magazine, the intellectual authority of the Geological Society and its gentlemanly specialists.Less

Our Energy Inheritance: Fossil Fuels

Hewitt Crane, Edwin Kinderman, and Ripudaman Malhotra

in A Cubic Mile of Oil: Realities and Options for Averting the Looming Global Energy Crisis

The use of fossil fuels—petroleum, natural gas, and coal—is ubiquitous today and has made possible the advances of modern civilization. These fuels are ... More

The use of fossil fuels—petroleum, natural gas, and coal—is ubiquitous today and has made possible the advances of modern civilization. These fuels are capable of providing energy for a variety of applications—from very small to very large—and touch our lives in many ways. A small gas-fired heater uses about 50,000 Btu/hr (1 standard cubic foot [scf] of gas/min) and keeps our homes warm. A 200-horsepower gasoline engine in a family car consumes around 2 gal/hr of oil and can carry a load of five passengers a distance of 60 miles on a level highway. An 1,800-ton/hr cement plant consumes 900 MBtu/hr (about 0.9 million scf gas/hr) when in full operation and produces the building material widely used for constructing homes, offices, industries, roads, and bridges. A large, coal-fired electric power station (1,000 MW rating) requires between 300 and 500 tons of coal per hour and produces enough electricity to power half a million homes. The range of power that fossil fuels, particularly oil, can deliver is truly amazing: the same basic fuel that powers jet aircraft also powers children’s model aircraft engines. It is unlikely that aircraft will ever be powered by solar panels mounted on the wings or by on-board nuclear reactors. The importance of fossil fuels in our lives cannot be overemphasized. It took millions of years to accumulate them, and their potential exhaustion in just a few centuries should seriously concern all of us. In this chapter, we briefly review the circumstances that led to formation of our fossil fuels and then discuss how much of each of them is available. This discussion requires clarifying the special meanings ascribed to such terms as reserves and resources. For all three fuels, we look at the global distribution of our resources. We also present estimates of possible resource lifetimes under varying conditions of use and indicate the nominal equipment and infrastructure requirements for producing these inherited resources at a rate of 1 CMO/yr. As we shall see, our conventional reserves are somewhat limited, but our resource base is large, and unconventional oil and gas resources offer a substantially greater potential. Nonetheless, exploiting unconventional resources is certain to be more expensive and, in most cases, potentially more damaging to the environment. Less

Formations

Adelene Buckland

in Novel Science: Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology

During the nineteenth-century, the public imagination was captured by the study of the ancient earth—an imagination that was fueled even more with the discovery of dinosaur fossils. This heralded a ... More

During the nineteenth-century, the public imagination was captured by the study of the ancient earth—an imagination that was fueled even more with the discovery of dinosaur fossils. This heralded a “golden age” in geology, and this scientific revolution greatly influenced the emergence of new literary forms that would explain, interpret, order, describe, argue about, and bring into existence new and complex insights about the world. This chapter gives a brief overview of the nature and practice of geology, which at first referred to “theories of the earth,” or generalized systems explaining the entire workings of the earth from its origin to its end. The chapter runs through the birth and history of geology from the term's adoption by the Geological Society of London. The chapter stresses that the purpose of the book is not simply concerned with representations of geology or geologists in literary texts, but the fact that one of the principal practices of the geologist was, itself, literary.Less

Maps and Legends

Adelene Buckland

in Novel Science: Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology

The geological map was a form that could offer critical information on the structure of the land, such as the presence of coal, minerals, and building materials from deep within the earth's crust. In ... More

The geological map was a form that could offer critical information on the structure of the land, such as the presence of coal, minerals, and building materials from deep within the earth's crust. In turn, this was beneficial to mine owners, engineers, and architects. It wasn't until the nineteenth century, however, that European geologists would evolve a powerful visual vocabulary that would enable them to render an entire region in three-dimensional terms. The first geological map of an entire country would be published in 1815 by William Smith, a Yorkshire canal surveyor. Smith's work would be plagiarized by George Bellas Greenough for the Geological Society for the purpose of empirical research for the new science, and to galvanize the Society's new research program. Greenough knew that it would be via these maps that geologists could make their most successful lobbies for public support.Less

Kingsley’s Cataclysmic Method

Adelene Buckland

in Novel Science: Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology

Charles Kingsley had a great deal of interest in geological science. His work provides direct links to the gentleman geologist who had pioneered its “heroic age.” Kingsley secured honorary membership ... More

Charles Kingsley had a great deal of interest in geological science. His work provides direct links to the gentleman geologist who had pioneered its “heroic age.” Kingsley secured honorary membership upon his founding of the Society of Natural Science, where scientific instruction was delivered to the middle-class men of Chester. He was later greatly influenced by Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, whereby his studies on geology interrogated his practice as a novelist. His fictional heroes were practitioners of geology, from Yeast's Lancelot Smith, to Alton Locke in the 1850 novel of the same name. This seeping of his scientific musing with the craft of literature brought about the censure of Kingsley's work in literary criticism for it seemed he was more interested in making statements than the conventions of plot. This chapter explores Kingsley's works and how they have influenced the development of geology.Less

Dead on Arrival

James Lawrence Powell

in Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: From Heresy to Truth

This chapter focuses on the geologists' rejection of the theory of continental drift, first brought up by Alfred Wegener. World War I prevented English speakers from reading either of the first two ... More

This chapter focuses on the geologists' rejection of the theory of continental drift, first brought up by Alfred Wegener. World War I prevented English speakers from reading either of the first two editions of Wegener's The Origin of Continents and Oceans. The third edition appeared in German in 1922 and in 1924 in an English translation with an introduction by J. W. Evans, the president of the Geological Society of London. But alert British and American geologists could have learned of Wegener's theory in 1922 from two articles in English. The first was an unsigned review of the 1922 German third edition in the British scientific journal Nature. One who likely read the review was the Yale professor Charles Schuchert, who would launch a career-long crusade against continental drift. This chapter looks at other geologists who challenged continental drift, including Edward Berry, Frank Taylor, Philip Lake, and Reginald A. Daly.Less

Geologists Unite Against Heresy

James Lawrence Powell

in Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: From Heresy to Truth

This chapter focuses on geologists who united against the idea of continental drift, first brought up by Alfred Wegener, and declared it a heresy. According to Robert Newman, “In the crucial ... More

This chapter focuses on geologists who united against the idea of continental drift, first brought up by Alfred Wegener, and declared it a heresy. According to Robert Newman, “In the crucial 1922–1933 period, six of the twelve presidents of the Geological Society of America were on public record in their presidential addresses as opposing drift; of the other six, only one, Reginald A. Daly of Harvard, took a mobilist position. Of geologists elected to the National Academy of Sciences during this period, ten were active opponents of mobilism, all of them committed before the notorious American Association of Petroleum Geologists debate. All the vocal opponents of mobilism were elites, and they stood united…against heresy.” This chapter looks at other geologists who challenged Wegener's theory, including Rollin T. Chamberlin, Charles Schuchert, E. W. Berry, and Bailey Willis. It also considers the papers by Schuchert and Willis, the distinguished magisters of geology, that effectively marked the end of active debate over continental drift in the United States.Less

Introduction: Science as Literature

in The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856

This introductory chapter first discusses how, in the early nineteenth century in Britain, the new science of geology was publicized in spectacular and theatrical forms that enabled it to gain the ... More

This introductory chapter first discusses how, in the early nineteenth century in Britain, the new science of geology was publicized in spectacular and theatrical forms that enabled it to gain the cultural authority it enjoys today. Performance was central to the public face of earth science. Its adherents pulled off an imaginative coup by giving their public tantalizing glimpses of an earth history far longer and stranger than the story of a literal six-day Creation which had held sway over much of that public at the turn of the century. This was no easy task. The new narrative had to compete not only with the Book of Genesis, but also with centuries of sacred-historical tradition, of which John Milton's epic poem of Creation and Fall, Paradise Lost (1667), was only the most prestigious expression. Rather than assaulting this potent body of narrative head-on, proponents of the new science turned it to their own ends, “justify[ing] the ways of God to men” by forging a new Creation-myth for an imperial age. Popularization took many forms, including lectures, exhibitions, and even custom-built geological museums. But it was in their literary productions—in books, journals, magazines, and newspapers—that these geologists and their followers reached most of their increasingly variegated public. This book aims to show how the truth-claims of public science have been supported by (and expressed within) structures that we are used to thinking of as fundamentally opposed to scientific procedure. By examining science as literature, rather than science and literature, it hopes to complicate some of the oppositions to which the latter duality has given rise.Less

Enter the Mammoth

in The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856

This chapter discusses how showmanship underpinned geology's public appeal in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, whipped up in guidebooks such as Peale's Historical Disquisition that ... More

This chapter discusses how showmanship underpinned geology's public appeal in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, whipped up in guidebooks such as Peale's Historical Disquisition that presented fossils as sublime relics of a legendary past. Practicing geologists may have repudiated such rhetoric as a rule, but even they had their uses for it when promoting their science as worth the attention of polite society. This is illustrated in the final section of the chapter, which turns to the English translation of a work by Cuvier in which the grand historical vistas of Enlightenment “theories of the earth” were recast in a new and approved guise.Less

William Buckland: Antiquary and Wizard

in The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856

This chapter describes the geology lectures of William Buckland. Buckland “ingrafted” geology directly onto the more biblically aligned “theories of the earth,” as well as onto Cuvier's procedures, ... More

This chapter describes the geology lectures of William Buckland. Buckland “ingrafted” geology directly onto the more biblically aligned “theories of the earth,” as well as onto Cuvier's procedures, without drawing (as Cuvier had) a polemical distinction between the two. This attitude did not impress some of Buckland's colleagues in the Geological Society, who continued to dissociate themselves from such a speculative, text-centered perversion of their empirical principles. Yet the publicity that Buckland achieved for his science in the 1820s gave “Oxford geology” a prominent place among the competing versions of geology on offer to leisured non-specialists. He was also a born showman. The lectures had to be entertaining, or nobody would attend them: natural science was optional in the Oxford curriculum, and there were no examinations. One of the chief means by which Buckland's geology opened an “amazing field to imagination” was his visual aids, many of which still survive. He introduced into his lectures not only reconstructions of entire skeletons, but also restorations of the living creatures.Less

Lizards and Literalists

in The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856

This chapter considers the increasing freedom with which British writers on earth history exploited the spectacular potential of fossils to stage the world before man. The first part charts this ... More

This chapter considers the increasing freedom with which British writers on earth history exploited the spectacular potential of fossils to stage the world before man. The first part charts this movement by examining the work of two geologists of the new school, both peripheral to the Geological Society of London: Gideon Mantell and Robert Bakewell. In the late 1820s Mantell and Bakewell produced revised versions of older treatises, and in both cases, a new tone can be detected when their previous work is compared. But spectacle and confidence were not confined to the new geology. The second and third parts of the chapter show how the same rhetoric was seized on by several biblical-literalist writers in the late 1820s to popularize their own geologies, much to the dismay of the Geological Society's leading lights.Less

Lyell Steps In

in The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856

During the 1820s Scottish writers were beginning to corner the market in attractive literalist earth history. The new school of geology, too, is popularly seen as having been “founded” by two ... More

During the 1820s Scottish writers were beginning to corner the market in attractive literalist earth history. The new school of geology, too, is popularly seen as having been “founded” by two Scottish writers—James Hutton and, in particular, Charles Lyell—the latter of whose greatest achievements lay in his ability to synthesize and deploy vast quantities of abstruse scientific data within an elegant, rhetorically compelling work of literature. To assess his significance more accurately, we need to see Lyell not just as a geologist, but also as a man of letters. This chapter shows that Lyell developed several of the narrative techniques examined so far, deploying them with new confidence and extending their imaginative scope. His chiselled prose was no mere adornment to his ideas, but an essential part of their appeal. Thanks not only to what he said, but more importantly to the way he said it, Lyell transformed the public profile of geology and its genteel practitioners at a critical stage in the science's development.Less

Geological Mapping and the Geographies of Proprietorship in Nineteenth-Century Cornwall

Simon Naylor (ed.)

in Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science

This chapter explains how the cartographic enterprise can be read as a “form of territorial acquisition” on the part of mapping geologists, focusing the mapping of geology of Cornwall, England. It ... More

This chapter explains how the cartographic enterprise can be read as a “form of territorial acquisition” on the part of mapping geologists, focusing the mapping of geology of Cornwall, England. It highlights the importance of maps spatial instruments and as a visual language and as an important tool in the “visual technology” of the natural sciences. This chapter explains that survey of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall depended on the reductive visual authority of the map as a guide to what could and could not be seen.Less

A Place in La Mancha

Hugh Thomas

in Eduardo Barreiros and the Recovery of Spain

This chapter discusses Eduardo's interests in agriculture. The chief concession that Eduardo gave to Chrysler in the summer of 1969 was one which declared that after he left Barreiros Diesel, he ... More

This chapter discusses Eduardo's interests in agriculture. The chief concession that Eduardo gave to Chrysler in the summer of 1969 was one which declared that after he left Barreiros Diesel, he would not work in the world of motors for five years. In the 1970s, the Barreiros family would go to mass at La Solana when they spent the weekend at the finca, as they often did. There, too, Eduardo would find his builders, his painters, his carpenters, and eventually, his cowmen. As soon as he had bought the farm, he realized that its soil was even drier than he had supposed. Eduardo began to look for water, to seek subterranean rivers, and also sought out sophisticated geologists and old-fashioned water diviners.Less

Challenges to lyell's geotheory (1832–35)

in Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform

The full publication of Charles Lyell's Principles, while causing no scientific revolution, provoked intense argument among geologists. This chapter focuses on the reactions to Lyell's geotheory. In ... More

The full publication of Charles Lyell's Principles, while causing no scientific revolution, provoked intense argument among geologists. This chapter focuses on the reactions to Lyell's geotheory. In general, fellow geologists welcomed his enlarged repertoire of actual causes as capable of explaining more than had hitherto been supposed; but they rejected his claim that there had never been any events more sudden or violent than those witnessed in human history, and even more his claim that there had been no overall directionality in geohistory. Above all, they unpicked Lyell's unitary concept of “absolute uniformity” into its component meanings, some of them more plausible than others.Less

Byron's Afterlife and the Emancipation of Geology1

Ralph O'connor

in Liberty and Poetic Licence: New Essays on Byron

This chapter demonstrates that Byron's poetry both prompted and helped geologists in England to promote their science, and to free it from Biblical literalism in the public eye. During this ‘heroic’ ... More

This chapter demonstrates that Byron's poetry both prompted and helped geologists in England to promote their science, and to free it from Biblical literalism in the public eye. During this ‘heroic’ age of geology, the science won a large following in Britain, partly because its pioneers were also men of letters. Treatises such as Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology were literary masterpieces, whose poetic imagery and rhetoric were crucial in advocating this strange new science. These literary factors, in which Byron looms large, complicate the simple Moses-to-Darwin narratives typical of scientific secular positivism. The chapter begins with a discussion of the very specific challenge posed by Cain to the new historical geology.Less