Terra Incognita: A History of Ignorance in the 18th and 19th Centuries

ISBN-13: 9781509546268 / Angielski / Miękka / 2021 / 188 str.

Alain Corbin; Susan Pickford

Recenzje

'Alain Corbin is one of the most remarkable historians writing about anything anywhere. A master of innovation in his choice of subjects and approaches to history, Corbin here brilliantly tackles "ignorance" in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, what earlier generations did not know. This is a fascinating book, nicely translated.'John Merriman, Yale University'Original as always in his approach to history, Alain Corbin tells the story of the discovery of the earth from 1750 to 1900 by emphasizing earlier ignorance of lands, seas and space. Written in the author's usual lucid and accessible style, the book will appeal to general readers as well as scholars and students of history.'Peter Burke, University of Cambridge'Fascinating'Shepherd Express

Spis treści

Acknowledgements A comprehensive history implies the study of ignorance Part I : Gaps In Enlightenment Knowledge Of The Earth 1. The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 2. The Age of the Earth? 3. Imagining the Earth's Internal Structure 4. The Mystery of the Poles 5. The Unfathomable Mysteries of the Deep Sea 6. Discovering Mountains 7. Mysterious Glaciers 8. A Fascination for Volcanos 9. The Birth of Meteorology 10. Conquering the Skies 11. The State of Scientific Ignorance at the End of the Age of Enlightenment Part II : A Gradual Decline in Ignorance (1800-1850) 12. Understanding Glaciers 13. The Birth of Geology 14. Volcanoes and the Mystery of 'Dry Fogs' 15.The Ocean Depths and the Fear of the Unknown 16. Reading Clouds and the Beaufort Scale 17.The Poles Remain a Mystery 18. The State of Scientific Ignorance in the Early 1860s Part III : Shrinking the Boundaries of Ignorance (1860-1900) 19. Exploring the Ocean Depths 20. The Development of Dynamic Meteorology 21. Manned Flight and the Discovery of the Troposphere and Stratosphere 22. Scientific Volcanology and the Birth of Seismology 23. Measuring the Grip of Ice 24. Solving the Mysteries of Rivers : Fluvialism, Hydrology and Speleology 25. A New Approach to Reading the Globe 26. Was There Open Sea at the Poles? 27. The Earth Sciences Slowly Filter into General Knowledge 28. Measuring Ignorance at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century Notes Index

O autorze

Alain Corbin is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne.