Bursting the Limits of Time The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution

About this book

In 1650, Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh joined the long-running theological debate on the age of the earth by famously announcing that creation had occurred on October 23, 4004 B.C. Although widely challenged during the Enlightenment, this belief in a six-thousand-year-old planet was only laid to rest during a revolution of discovery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this relatively brief period, geologists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth-and the relatively recent arrival of human life. Highlighting a discovery that radically altered existing perceptions of a human's place in the universe as much as the theories of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud did, Bursting the Limits of Time is a herculean effort by one of the world's foremost experts on the history of geology and paleontology to sketch this historicization of the natural world in the age of revolution.

Addressing this intellectual revolution for the first time, Rudwick examines the ideas and practices of earth scientists throughout the Western world to show how the story of what we now call "deep time" was pieced together. He explores who was responsible for the discovery of the earth's history, refutes the concept of a rift between science and religion in dating the earth, and details how the study of the history of the earth helped define a new branch of science called geology. Rooting his analysis in a detailed study of primary sources, Rudwick emphasizes the lasting importance of field – and museum – based research of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Bursting the Limits of Time is the culmination of more than three decades of research, is the first detailed account of this monumental phase in the history of science.

Contents

List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
A note on footnotes
Introduction
Time and geohistory—Historical parameters—Historicizing the earth—Text and illustrations—Maps of knowledge

Part one: Understanding the earth
1. Naturalists, philosophers, and others
   1.1 A savant on top of the world
      First ascents of Mont Blanc—Science on the summit—Return to  civilization—Conclusion
   1.2 The Republic of Letters and its supporters
      Savants, professional and amateur—The Republic of Letters—A variety of supporters—Conclusion
   1.3 Places of natural knowledge
      Laboratories and museums—Savants in the field—The social life of savants—Scientific publication—Conclusion
   1.4 Maps of natural knowledge
      The literary and the philosophical—Natural history and natural philosophy—Philosophy and theology—Conclusion
2. Sciences of the earth
   2.1 Mineralogy as a science of specimens
      Minerals and other fossils—Identification and classification—Fossils of organic origin—Fossil localities—Prize specimens—Conclusion
   2.2 Physical geography as a spatial science
      Huge solid facts—The primacy of fieldwork—Proxy pictures—Maps as instruments—Conclusion
   2.3 Geognosy as a structural science
      The mining context—Structures and sequences—Primaries and Secondaries—Sequences of Gebirge—Fossils in geognosy—Conclusion
   2.4 Earth physics as a causal science
      The “physics” of specimens—The “physics” of physical geography—The “physics” of geognostic structures—The “physics” of rock formations—Conclusion
   2.5 The question of time
      The short timescale versus eternalism—Volcanoes, valleys, and strata—Estimates of the timescale—Encounters with theologians—Conclusion
3. The theory of the earth
   3.1 Geotheory as a scientific genre
      The meaning of “geology”—The goals of geotheory—Conclusion
   3.2 Buffon’s cooling globe
      Buffon’s first geotheory—Nature’s epochs—The earth’s timescale—Conclusion
   3.3 De Luc’s worlds ancient and modern
      The “Christian philosophe”—De Luc’s binary system—Natural measures of time—Conclusion
   3.4 Hutton’s eternal earth machine
      A deistic geotheory—Cyclic processes—A theory confirmed by fieldwork—Time and eternity—Conclusion
   3.5 The standard model of falling sea levels
      The multiplicity of geotheories—Neptunist geotheory—Conclusion
4. Transposing history into the earth
   4.1 The varieties of history
      The diversification of history—Chronology and biblical history—Chorographers and antiquarians—Herculaneum and Pompeii—Conclusion
   4.2 Fossils as nature’s documents
      Human history and its natural records—The natural history of fossils—Fossils and the earth’s revolutions—Conclusion
   4.3 Volcanoes and nature’s epochs
      The making of a physical geographer—The volcanoes of Auvergne—Epochs of volcanic activity—A lake on the site of Paris—Conclusion
   4.4 Rock formations as nature’s archives
      The volcanoes of Vivarais—Nature’s erudite historian—Censors and critics—Exporting geohistory to Russia—Conclusion
   4.5 Global geohistory
      Causal processes and geotheories—The place of contingency—Saussure as a geotheorist—De Luc as a geohistorian—Conclusion
5. Problems with fossils
   5.1 The ancient world of nature
      The deep past as a foreign country?—Fossils and geohistory—Migration and transmutation—Conclusion
   5.2 Relics of former seas
      Vanished shellfish—Living fossils—Fossil fish and possible whales—Explaining the former world—Conclusion
   5.3 Witnesses of former continents
      Fossil plants—Large fossil bones—The “Ohio animal”—Giant elks and bears—Conclusion
   5.4 The antiquity of man
      Humans in geohistory—Texts and bones—History from artifacts—Conclusion
     
Interlude: From survey to narrative

Part two: Reconstructing geohistory
6. A new science of “geology”?
   6.1 Revolutions in nature and society (1789–91)
      Meanings of revolution—Blumenbach’s “total revolution”—Montlosier’s continuous revolution—Geotheory as a flourishing genre—Conclusion
   6.2 Geotheory as geohistory (1790–93)
      De Luc’s new system—A differentiated “former world”—The role of fossil evidence—A critique of Hutton—Conclusion
   6.3 Theorizing in a time of trouble (1793–94)
      Geotheories and focal problems—Dolomieu’s mega-tsunamis—Dolomieu on the Nile delta—The sciences under the Terror—Conclusion
   6.4 Geotheory politicized (1793–95)
      De Luc and Blumenbach—Cultured despisers of religion—The politics of Genesis—Conclusion
   6.5 “Geology” redefined (1794–97)
      The sciences after Thermidor—Desmarest’s survey of geotheories—La Métherie’s geotheory—Saussure’s Agenda—Dolomieu on “geology”—Conclusion
7. Denizens of a former world
   7.1 A mushroom in the field of savants (1794–96)
      Fossil bones as a focal problem—The young Cuvier—The megatherium—The mammoth—Conclusion
   7.2 Cuvier opens his campaign (1797–99)
      Cave bears and fossil rhinos—Dolomieu and de Luc as Cuvier’s allies—Cuvier’s research program—Hostile critics—Jefferson’s megalonix—Conclusion
   7.3 The Napoleon of fossil bones (1798–1800)
      Savants in wartime—Cuvier and the First Consul—Cuvier’s network of informants—Cuvier’s international appeal—Conclusion
   7.4 Lamarck’s alternative (1800–1802)
      The threat of transformism—The response to Cuvier’s appeal—Mummified animals from Egypt—Lamarck’s Parisian fossils—Conclusion
   7.5 Enlarging a fossil menagerie (1802–4)
      A peaceful interlude—A cumulative case for extinction—Earlier and stranger mammals—Conclusion
8. Geognosy enriche

Customer Reviews

Biography

Martin J. S. Rudwick is a research associate in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and professor emeritus of history at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Worlds Before Adam, The Meaning of Fossils, The Great Devonian Controversy, Scenes from Deep Time, and Georges Cuvier, all published by the University of Chicago Press.