Martin J. S. Rudwick
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226731285
- eISBN:
- 9780226731308
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226731308.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, scientists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth—and the relatively recent arrival of human life. The geologists of the period, ...
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In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, scientists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth—and the relatively recent arrival of human life. The geologists of the period, many of whom were devout believers, agreed about this vast timescale. But despite this apparent harmony between geology and Genesis, these scientists still debated a great many questions: Had the earth cooled from its origin as a fiery ball in space, or had it always been the same kind of place as it is now? Was prehuman life marked by mass extinctions, or had fauna and flora changed slowly over time? A detailed account of the reconstruction of prehuman geohistory, this book takes readers from the post-Napoleonic Restoration in Europe to the early years of Britain's Victorian age, chronicling the staggering discoveries geologists made during the period: the unearthing of the first dinosaur fossils, the glacial theory of the last ice age, and the meaning of igneous rocks, among others. Ultimately, the author reveals geology to be the first of the sciences to investigate the historical dimension of nature, a model that Charles Darwin used in developing his evolutionary theory.Less
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, scientists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth—and the relatively recent arrival of human life. The geologists of the period, many of whom were devout believers, agreed about this vast timescale. But despite this apparent harmony between geology and Genesis, these scientists still debated a great many questions: Had the earth cooled from its origin as a fiery ball in space, or had it always been the same kind of place as it is now? Was prehuman life marked by mass extinctions, or had fauna and flora changed slowly over time? A detailed account of the reconstruction of prehuman geohistory, this book takes readers from the post-Napoleonic Restoration in Europe to the early years of Britain's Victorian age, chronicling the staggering discoveries geologists made during the period: the unearthing of the first dinosaur fossils, the glacial theory of the last ice age, and the meaning of igneous rocks, among others. Ultimately, the author reveals geology to be the first of the sciences to investigate the historical dimension of nature, a model that Charles Darwin used in developing his evolutionary theory.
Jason Groves
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780823288106
- eISBN:
- 9780823290475
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823288106.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The second chapter explores a geological imaginary in the Age of Goethe that takes shape around the errant mobility of granite within a climatologically volatile planet rather than the vertical ...
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The second chapter explores a geological imaginary in the Age of Goethe that takes shape around the errant mobility of granite within a climatologically volatile planet rather than the vertical cliffs, stationary mountains, and imperturbable landforms that have traditionally occupied ecocritical attention. In carefully attending to Goethe’s longstanding engagement with the aesthetic and geological problem of so-called erratic blocks, this chapter recontextualizes the scenes and figures of mobility in his 1829 novel Wilhelm Meister’s Years of Wandering within the errancy of the more-than-human world. The itinerant protagonists in this novel are geomorphic figures whose genealogy includes the granite erratics, and the novel’s environmental imagination is one oriented less toward fixed stratifications and more toward the plotting of an erratic mobility.Less
The second chapter explores a geological imaginary in the Age of Goethe that takes shape around the errant mobility of granite within a climatologically volatile planet rather than the vertical cliffs, stationary mountains, and imperturbable landforms that have traditionally occupied ecocritical attention. In carefully attending to Goethe’s longstanding engagement with the aesthetic and geological problem of so-called erratic blocks, this chapter recontextualizes the scenes and figures of mobility in his 1829 novel Wilhelm Meister’s Years of Wandering within the errancy of the more-than-human world. The itinerant protagonists in this novel are geomorphic figures whose genealogy includes the granite erratics, and the novel’s environmental imagination is one oriented less toward fixed stratifications and more toward the plotting of an erratic mobility.
Alistair Sponsel
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226523118
- eISBN:
- 9780226523255
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226523255.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter opens part 3, “A Different Approach to Authorship,” by arguing that Darwin’s increasing anxiety was driven by the challenge of fulfilling his obligations as a geological author. With ...
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This chapter opens part 3, “A Different Approach to Authorship,” by arguing that Darwin’s increasing anxiety was driven by the challenge of fulfilling his obligations as a geological author. With this argument, Sponsel pushes back against the notion that Darwin felt sickened by his private investigations into species. Darwin’s references to being ill while researching species indicate that this activity was far less susceptible to interruption by illness than his geological writing. He described his inability to make headway on geological projects in almost pathological terms while referring to occasions when he worked on his species notes as “idle” time that had been “frittered away.” Having decided to limit his first geology book to the topic of coral reefs, he used libraries in London to research every known reef in the world in an attempt to bolster his “theory” with “hard unbending facts.” Meanwhile, reviews of his Journal of Researches, which had finally been released two years after the pages were printed, criticized Darwin’s earlier speculative style. Adding to Darwin’s strain, Lyell grew impatient for Darwin to publish the coral reef book and proceeded to publish a new chapter on reefs that expanded on work Darwin had yet to release.Less
This chapter opens part 3, “A Different Approach to Authorship,” by arguing that Darwin’s increasing anxiety was driven by the challenge of fulfilling his obligations as a geological author. With this argument, Sponsel pushes back against the notion that Darwin felt sickened by his private investigations into species. Darwin’s references to being ill while researching species indicate that this activity was far less susceptible to interruption by illness than his geological writing. He described his inability to make headway on geological projects in almost pathological terms while referring to occasions when he worked on his species notes as “idle” time that had been “frittered away.” Having decided to limit his first geology book to the topic of coral reefs, he used libraries in London to research every known reef in the world in an attempt to bolster his “theory” with “hard unbending facts.” Meanwhile, reviews of his Journal of Researches, which had finally been released two years after the pages were printed, criticized Darwin’s earlier speculative style. Adding to Darwin’s strain, Lyell grew impatient for Darwin to publish the coral reef book and proceeded to publish a new chapter on reefs that expanded on work Darwin had yet to release.
