The “historical sciences”—geology, paleontology, and archaeology—have made extraordinary progress in advancing our understanding of the deep past. How has this been possible, given that the evidence they have to work with offers mere traces of the past? In Rock, Bone, and Ruin: An Optimist’s Guide to the Historical Sciences (MIT Press, 2018), Adrian Currie explains that these scientists are “methodological omnivores,” with a variety of strategies and techniques at their disposal, and that this gives us every reason to be optimistic about their capacity to uncover truths about prehistory. Creative and opportunistic paleontologists, for example, discovered and described a new species of prehistoric duck-billed platypus from a single fossilized tooth. Examining the complex reasoning processes of historical science, Currie also considers philosophical and scientific reflection on the relationship between past and present, the nature of evidence, contingency, and scientific progress. Currie draws on varied examples from across the historical sciences, from Mayan ritual sacrifice to giant Mesozoic fleas to Mars’s mysterious watery past, to develop an account of the nature of, and resources available to, historical science. He presents two major case studies: the emerging explanation of sauropod size, and the “snowball earth” hypothesis that accounts for signs of glaciation in Neoproterozoic tropics. He develops the Ripple Model of Evidence to analyze “unlucky circumstances” in scientific investigation; examines and refutes arguments for pessimism about the capacity of the historical sciences, defending the role of analogy and arguing that simulations have an experiment-like function. Currie argues for a creative, open-ended approach, “empirically grounded” speculation.
...MoreBook Adrian Currie (2018) Rock, Bone, and Ruin: An Optimist's Guide to the Historical Sciences.
Book
Sabrina Ferri;
(2015)
Ruins Past: Modernity in Italy, 1744-1836
(/isis/citation/CBB160123196/)
Thesis
Vandome, R C;
(cited 2010)
Intellectual Transformations in American Geology, Palaeontology and Anthropology, 1850--1900
(/isis/citation/CBB001567249/)
Book
Adrian Currie;
(2018)
Rock, Bone, and Ruin: An Optimist's Guide to the Historical Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB457045771/)
Book
Cohen, Claudine;
(2002)
The Fate of the Mammoth: Fossils, Myth, and History
(/isis/citation/CBB000201330/)
Article
Chris Manias;
(2017)
Progress in life's history: Linking Darwinism and palaeontology in Britain, 1860–1914
(/isis/citation/CBB426710736/)
Article
James Justus;
Samantha Wakil;
(2021)
The algorithmic turn in conservation biology: Characterizing progress in ethically-driven sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB088304027/)
Book
Brush, Stephen G.;
Segal, Ariel;
(2015)
Making 20th Century Science: How Theories Became Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB001422652/)
Book
Parsons, Keith M.;
(2014)
It Started with Copernicus: Vital Questions about Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001510107/)
Article
Marco Tamborini;
(2017)
The reception of Darwin in late nineteenth-century German paleontology as a case of pyrrhic victory
(/isis/citation/CBB021564496/)
Article
Alter, Stephen G.;
(2007)
The Advantages of Obscurity: Charles Darwin's Negative Inference from the Histories of Domestic Breeds
(/isis/citation/CBB000771335/)
Book
Corbey, Raymond;
Roebroeks, Wil;
(2001)
Studying Human Origins: Disciplinary History and Epistemology
(/isis/citation/CBB000102537/)
Book
Roy Plotnick;
(2022)
Explorers of Deep Time: Paleontologists and the History of Life
(/isis/citation/CBB989071366/)
Article
Barbara Pezzoni;
Marta Licata;
(2017)
Gli studi paleozoologici di Vincenzo Fusco
(/isis/citation/CBB230445317/)
Book
Massimo Tarantini;
(2012)
La nascita della paletnologia in Italia (1860-1877)
(/isis/citation/CBB491933042/)
Article
Koen B. Tanghe;
(2019)
The Fate of William Whewell's Four Palætiological Domains: A Comparative Study
(/isis/citation/CBB753568488/)
Book
Osgood, Richard;
Monks, Sarah;
Toms, Judith;
Baboula, Eva;
(2000)
Bronze Age Warfare
(/isis/citation/CBB000102154/)
Article
Cleal, Christopher J.;
(2009)
The Forests before the Flood: The Palaeobotanical Contributions of Edmund Tyrell Artis (1789--1847)
(/isis/citation/CBB000932613/)
Article
Caspari, Rachel;
Wolpoff, Milford H.;
(2012)
The Dubois Syndrome
(/isis/citation/CBB001210306/)
Article
Thomas Sharpe;
(2022)
Henri De la Beche's 1829-1830 litograph, duria antiquior
(/isis/citation/CBB971607561/)
Book
Donald R. Prothero;
(2018)
The Story of Life in 25 Fossils: Tales of Intrepid Fossil Hunters and the Wonders of Evolution
(/isis/citation/CBB293277728/)
Be the first to comment!