The New Science of Geology: Studies in the Earth Sciences in the Age of Revolution (Variorum Collected Studies)

The science of geology was constructed in the decades around 1800 from earlier practices that had been significantly different in their cognitive goals. In the studies collected here Martin Rudwick traces how it came to be recognised as a new kind of natural science, because it was constituted around the idea that the natural world had its own history. The earth had to be understood not only in relation to unchanging natural laws that could be observed in action in the present, but also in terms of a pre-human past that could be reliably known, even if not directly observable and its traces only fragmentarily preserved. In contrast to this radically novel sense of nature's own contingent history, the earth's unimaginably vast timescale was already taken for granted by many naturalists (though not yet by the wider public), and the concurrent development of biblical scholarship precluded any significant sense of conflict with religious tradition. A companion volume, Lyell and Darwin, Geologists: Studies in the Earth Sciences in the Age of Reform, was published in 2005. Cover 1 Series 3 Half Title 4 Title 6 Copyright 7 Contents 8 Introduction 10 Notes on the articles 16 Bibliography 18 Acknowledgements 20 EARTH-HISTORY AND THE HISTORY OF GEOLOGY 22 I Geologists’ time: a brief history 22 II The shape and meaning of earth history 29 III Minerals, strata and fossils 55 IV The emergence of a new science 79 V The emergence of a visual language for geological science 1760-1840 91 CUVIER AND EARTH-HISTORY 154 VI Jean-André de Luc and nature’s chronology 154 VII Cuvier and Brongniart, William Smith, and the reconstruction of geohistory 173 VIII Researches on Fossil Bones: Georges Cuvier and the collecting of international allies 196 IX Georges Cuvier’s paper museum of fossil bones 208 GEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF LYELL 226 X Encounters with Adam, or at least the hyaenas: nineteenth-century visual representations of the deep past 226 XI A year in the life of Adam Sedgwick and company, geologists 248 XII Travel, travel, travel: geological fieldwork in the 1830s 274 XIII The group construction of scientific knowledge: gentlemen-specialists and the Devonian controversy 284 XIV The glacial theory 309 Index 332 Earth,sciences;,Geologie;,Geschichte,1750-1850;,Sciences,de,la,terre;,earth,sciences Earth sciences,Geologie,Geschichte 1750-1850,Sciences de la terre,earth sciences Earth-history And The History Of Geology -- Cuvier And Earth-history -- Geology In The Age Of Lyell. Martin J. S. Rudwick. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.