As important to modern world views as any work of Darwin, Marx, or Freud, Principles of Geology is a landmark in the history of science. In this first of three volumes, Charles Lyell (1797-1875) sets forth his powerful uniformitarian argument: processes now visibly acting in the natural world are essentially the same as those that have acted throughout the history of the earth, and are sufficient to account for all geological phenomena. Martin J. S. Rudwick's new Introduction, summarizing the origins of the Principles, guides the reader through the structure of the entire...
As important to modern world views as any work of Darwin, Marx, or Freud, Principles of Geology is a landmark in the history of science. In thi...
"Arguably the best work to date in the history of geology."-David R. Oldroyd, Science "After a superficial first glance, most readers of good will and broad knowledge might dismiss this book] as being too much about too little. They would be making one of the biggest mistakes in their intellectual lives. . . . It] could become one of our century's key documents in understanding science and its history."-Stephen Jay Gould, New York Review of Books "Surely one of the most important studies in the history of science of recent years, and arguably the best work to date in...
"Arguably the best work to date in the history of geology."-David R. Oldroyd, Science "After a superficial first glance, most readers of g...
"It is not often that a work can literally rewrite a person's view of a subject. And this is exactly what Rudwick's book should do for many paleontologists' view of the history of their own field." Stephen J. Gould, "Paleobotany and Palynology" "Rudwick has not merely written the first book-length history of palaeontology in the English language; he has written a very intelligent one. . . . His accounts of sources are rounded and organic: he treats the structure of arguments as Cuvier handled fossil bones." Roy S. Porter, "History of Science""
"It is not often that a work can literally rewrite a person's view of a subject. And this is exactly what Rudwick's book should do for many paleontolo...
How did the earth look in prehistoric times? Scientists and artists collaborated during the half-century prior to the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species to produce the first images of dinosaurs and the world they inhabited. Their interpretations, informed by recent fossil discoveries, were the first efforts to represent the prehistoric world based on sources other than the Bible. Martin J. S. Rudwick presents more than a hundred rare illustrations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to explore the implications of reconstructing a past no one has ever seen.
How did the earth look in prehistoric times? Scientists and artists collaborated during the half-century prior to the publication of Darwin's Origi...
French zoologist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) helped form and bring credibility to geology and paleontology. Here Martin J. S. Rudwick provides the first modern translation of Cuvier's essential writings on fossils and catastrophes and links these translated texts together with his own insightful narrative and interpretive commentary. "Martin Rudwick has done English-speaking science a considerable service by translating and commenting on Cuvier's work. . . . He guides us through Cuvier's most important writings, especially those which demonstrate his new technique of comparative...
French zoologist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) helped form and bring credibility to geology and paleontology. Here Martin J. S. Rudwick provides the firs...
During a revolution of discovery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, geologists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth--and the relatively recent arrival of human life. 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 illuminate this scientific breakthrough that radically altered existing perceptions of a human's place in the universe as much as the theories of Copernicus and Darwin did.
Rudwick examines here the ideas and practices of earth scientists...
During a revolution of discovery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, geologists reconstructed the immensely long history of the ...
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, scientists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth-and the relatively recent arrival of human life. The geologists of the period, many of whom were devout believers, agreed about this vast timescale. But despite this apparent harmony between geology and Genesis, these scientists still debated a great many questions: Had the earth cooled from its origin as a fiery ball in space, or had it always been the same kind of place as it is now? Was prehuman life marked by mass extinctions, or had fauna and flora changed slowly over...
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, scientists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth-and the relatively recent arri...
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, scientists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth and the relatively recent arrival of human life. The geologists of the period, many of whom were devout believers, agreed about this vast timescale. But despite this apparent harmony between geology and Genesis, these scientists still debated a great many questions: Had the earth cooled from its origin as a fiery ball in space, or had it always been the same kind of place as it is now? Was prehuman life marked by mass extinctions, or had fauna and flora changed slowly over...
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, scientists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth and the relatively recent arri...
Earth has been witness to mammoths and dinosaurs, global ice ages, continents colliding or splitting apart, and comets and asteroids crashing catastrophically to the surface, as well as the birth of humans who are curious to understand it. But how was all this 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 accessible book, Martin J. S. Rudwick, the premier historian of the Earth sciences, tells the gripping human story of the gradual realization that the...
Earth has been witness to mammoths and dinosaurs, global ice ages, continents colliding or splitting apart, and comets and asteroids crashing catastro...
