Rudwick, Martin J.S. (Author)
Earth has been witness to mammoths and dinosaurs, global ice ages, continents colliding or splitting apart, comets and asteroids crashing catastrophically to the surface, as well as the birth of humans who are curious to understand it all. But how was it discovered? How was the evidence for it collected and interpreted? And what kinds of people have sought to reconstruct this past that no human witnessed or recorded? In this sweeping and magisterial book, Martin J. S. Rudwick, the premier historian of the earth sciences, tells the gripping human story of the gradual realization that the Earth's history has not only been unimaginably long but also astonishingly eventful. Rudwick begins in the seventeenth century with Archbishop James Ussher, who famously dated the creation of the cosmos to 4004 BC. His narrative then turns to the crucial period of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when inquisitive intellectuals, who came to call themselves “geologists,” began to interpret rocks and fossils, mountains and volcanoes, as natural archives of Earth's history. He then shows how this geological evidence was used---and is still being used---to reconstruct a history of the Earth that is as varied and unpredictable as human history itself. Along the way, Rudwick defies the popular view of this story as a conflict between science and religion and reveals that the modern scientific account of the Earth's deep history retains strong roots in Judaeo-Christian ideas. Extensively illustrated, Earth's Deep History is an engaging and impressive capstone to Rudwick's distinguished career. Though the story of the Earth is inconceivable in length, Rudwick moves with grace from the earliest imaginings of our planet's deep past to today's scientific discoveries, proving that this is a tale at once timeless and timely.
...MoreReview Nicolaas Rupke (2016) Review of "Earth's Deep History: How It Was Discovered and Why It Matters". Metascience: An International Review Journal for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (pp. 159-160).
Review Marco Tamborini (2017) Review of "Show Me the Bone: Reconstructing Prehistoric Monsters in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 458-460).
Review Melissa Charenko (2016) Review of "Earth's Deep History: How It Was Discovered and Why It Matters". Annals of Science: The History of Science and Technology (pp. 335-336).
Review Allison Ksiazkiewicz (2016) Review of "Earth's Deep History: How It Was Discovered and Why It Matters". British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 116-117).
Book
Dingus, Lowell;
Norell, Mark A.;
(2010)
Barnum Brown: The Man Who Discovered Tyrannosaurus Rex
(/isis/citation/CBB001023269/)
Book
Zoë Lescaze;
Walton Ford;
(2017)
Paleoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past
(/isis/citation/CBB945120566/)
Book
Hedeen, Stanley;
(2008)
Big Bone Lick: The Cradle of American Paleontology
(/isis/citation/CBB000831278/)
Thesis
Rieppel, Lukas Benjamin;
(2012)
Dinosaurs: Assembling an Icon of Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001567402/)
Book
Francesco Luzzini;
(2013)
Il miracolo inutile. Antonio Vallisneri e le scienze della Terra in Europa tra XVII e XVIII secolo
(/isis/citation/CBB451473673/)
Book
Cohen, Claudine;
(2011)
La méthode de Zadig: La trace, le fossile, la preuve
(/isis/citation/CBB001221122/)
Chapter
Yamada, Toshihiro;
(2009)
Hooke--Steno Relations Reconsidered: Reassessing the Roles of Ole Borch and Robert Boyle
(/isis/citation/CBB001021040/)
Book
McGowan, Christopher;
(2001)
The Dragon Seekers: How an Extraordinary Circle of Fossilists Discovered the Dinosaurs and Paved the Way for Darwin
(/isis/citation/CBB000100267/)
Book
Ina Heumann;
Holger Stoecker;
Marco Tamborini;
Mareike Vennen;
(2018)
Dinosaurierfragmente: Zur Geschichte der Tendaguru-Expedition und ihrer Objekte, 1906-2018
(/isis/citation/CBB168836588/)
Article
Jordan D. II Marché;
(2019)
“Giant Birds of Old”: An 1837 poem by James Dwight Dana (?) on the supposed makers of the Connecticut Valley's fossil trackways
(/isis/citation/CBB796867178/)
Thesis
Marlena Briane Cameron;
(2017)
Fossil Excavation, Museums, and Wyoming: American Paleontology, 1870-1915
(/isis/citation/CBB144188127/)
Book
Mayor, Adrienne;
(2011)
The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times
(/isis/citation/CBB001550088/)
Book
Belli, Gabriella;
Giacomoni, Paola;
Ottani Cavina, Anna;
(2003)
Montagna: Arte, scienza, mito da Dürer a Warhol
(/isis/citation/CBB000741141/)
Book
Emling, Shelley;
(2009)
The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World
(/isis/citation/CBB001031283/)
Chapter
Frängsmyr, Tore;
(2007)
Between the Deluge and the Ice Age
(/isis/citation/CBB000775028/)
Book
Ilja Nieuwland;
(2019)
American Dinosaur Abroad: A Cultural History of Carnegie’s Plaster Diplodocus
(/isis/citation/CBB424808631/)
Book
Richard Fallon;
(2021)
Reimagining Dinosaurs in Late Victorian and Edwardian Literature: How the ‘Terrible Lizard' Became a Transatlantic Cultural Icon
(/isis/citation/CBB569188287/)
Chapter
Cutler, Alan H.;
(2009)
Nicolaus Steno and the Problem of Deep Time
(/isis/citation/CBB001021043/)
Chapter
Kempe, Michael;
(2006)
Die Gedächtnisspur der Berge und Fossilien. Johann Jakob Scheuchzers Sintfluttheorie als Theologie der Erdgeschichte
(/isis/citation/CBB001221572/)
Book
Fairman, Elisabeth R.;
Art, Yale Center for British;
(2014)
Of Green Leaf, Bird, and Flower: Artists' Books and the Natural World
(/isis/citation/CBB001500458/)
Be the first to comment!