Article ID: CBB001212347

A Peculiarly Personal Encyclopedia: What Desmarest's GéoGraphie-Physique Tells Us About His Life and Work (2013)

unapi

Nicolas Desmarest's Géographie-Physique, his contribution to the Encyclopédie Méthodique, is a surprisingly useful resource for his biographer. The four volumes he completed during his declining years offer insights into his activities over a long period, such as the extent of his travels, and the sorts of phenomena he selected for observation. Leaving aside those articles that he plagiarized, the many entries he wrote testify to the depth of his commitment to a place-specific construction of a new science of the Earth. In comparison with the article `Géographie Physique' that he provided for the Diderot-d'Alembert Encyclopédie (1757), the components of Géographie-Physique also exhibit Desmarest's deepened interest in cultivating knowledge of the Earth's past. Nonetheless his basic conception of physical geography---which he regularly distinguished from both Theories of the Earth and the emerging géologie (whose definition he found elusive)---remained centered on a search for law-like generalizations about the natural world's order, rather than its historical development.

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Authors & Contributors
Taylor, Kenneth L.
McMullan, Luke Anthony
Cooper, Andrew
Scheer, Monique
Pernau, Margrit
Bailey, Christian
Concepts
Encyclopedias and dictionaries
Biographies
Geology
Physiography; physical geography
Reference books
Earth sciences
Time Periods
18th century
19th century
20th century
21st century
20th century, early
17th century
Places
France
Great Britain
United States
Russia
Portugal
North America
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