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Why study the history of geologic thought?
The history of geology is shaped by the advancement of scientific understanding, but also by culture and beliefs. In geology textbooks, the early naturalists' leaps of understanding are often depicted simply as the "eureka!" moment when they had their breakthrough idea (right or wrong). However, these pioneers struggled to reconcile philosophy, religion and historically accepted writings with their own theories and observations.
It's important to view those early accomplishments in the context of their times, and to recognize how our modern circumstances influence our continuing understanding of geology. It also bears reminding that non-literate and non-European-based cultures brought their own perspectives to their relationship with geology.
Books About the History of Geology
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The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences byCall Number: QE11 .A3
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Uniformity and Simplicity, a Symposium on the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature
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ISBN: 9780813720890Publication Date: 1967 -
The Role of Women in the History of Geology
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE11 .R76 2007ISBN: 9781862392274Publication Date: 2007 -
Geologists and Ideas: A History of North American Geology byCall Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE13 .U6G466 1985ISBN: 9780813753010Publication Date: 1986-01-01
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It Began with a Stone
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE11 .F38 1983ISBN: 0471897353Publication Date: 1983-09-01 -
The Founders of Geology byCall Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE11 .G3 1905Publication Date: 1897, reprinted 1901
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Wonderful life : the Burgess Shale and the nature of history
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE770 .G67 1989ISBN: 0393027058Publication Date: 1990-09-17High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It hold the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived--a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history. -
Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE508 .G68 1987ISBN: 0674891996Publication Date: 1988-01-01...In Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle his subject is nothing less than geology's signal contribution to human thought: the discovery of ?deep time,? the vastness of earth's history, a history so ancient that we can comprehend it only as metaphor.... -
Great Geological Controversies
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE11 .H35 1989ISBN: 0198582188Publication Date: 1990-02-22Here is a new edition of a widely acclaimed account of the great historical controversies in geology--a book that covers many of the most important ideas that have emerged since the birth of the subject. This edition includes a new chapter on the emergence of stratigraphy in the nineteenth focusing on controversies surrounding the Cambrian-Silurian and Devonian. Another new chapter reviews the mass extinction theory, which is still under heated debate. Other chapters have been revised to reflect recent developments and changes in the field. -
Geology and Religion: A History of Harmony and Hostility
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 3) BS657 .G46 2009ISBN: 1862392692Publication Date: 2009-04-01The book discusses this long-standing relationship from a historical point of view, which in the past has been sometimes indifferent, sometimes fruitful and sometimes full of conflict. The relationship continues well into the present. While Christian fundamentalists attack evolution and related palaeontological findings as well as the geological evidence of the age of the Earth, mainstream theologians strive for a fruitful dialogue between science and religion. Much of what is written and discussed today can only be understood, when the historical perspective is added.... -
The Bone Hunters
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE718 .L36ISBN: 0231031521Publication Date: 1973-12-01 -
Drifting Continents and Shifting Theories
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE511.5 .L44 1988ISBN: 0521322103Publication Date: 1988-12-15This innovative book uses the story of how a modern science achieved its present shape and focus to examine the nature of scientific change and its philosophical and social analysis. The 'modern revolution in geology' of the 1960s and 1970s saw the triumph of the global theory of plate tectonics; a decisive turning point in fifty years' controversy and competition, first sparked in 1912 by Wegener's proposal of continental drift. Here, Professor Le Grand interweaves a history of this episode of scientific change with reflective discussions of its historical, philosophical and social circumstances, and of the development of science more generally. -
The Dragon Seekers
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE714.3 .M33 2001ISBN: 0738202827Publication Date: 2001-04-11Set in nineteenth-century England, The Dragon Seekers chronicles the amazing discoveries of the first fossilists, whose findings in geology and paleontology led to the discovery of the age of dinosaurs. The intriguing cast of characters includes Mary Anning, a working-class woman who became one of the most successful fossil collectors of all time; Thomas Hawkins, another amateur collector who "improved upon" fossils in order to increase their market value; the eccentric William Buckland, discoverer of the world's first dinosaur (Megalosaurus), and Richard Owen, an expert anatomist, who synthesized the discoveries of the age and ultimately coined the word "dinosaur" in 1842.... -
The First One Hundred Years of American Geology byCall Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE13.U6 M6 1964Publication Date: 1924, reprinted 1964
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The World in a Crucible: Laboratory Practice and Geological Theory at the Beginning of Geology
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE11 .N49 2009ISBN: 081372449XPublication Date: 2009-02-01 -
A Brief History of Geology
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Call Number: QE11 .O33 2018ISBN: 1107176182Publication Date: 2018-04-19Geology as a science has a fascinating and controversial history. Kieran D. O'Hara's book provides a brief and accessible account of the major events in the history of geology over the last two hundred years, from early theories of Earth structure during the Reformation, through major controversies over the age of the Earth during the Industrial Revolution, to the more recent twentieth-century development of plate tectonic theory, and on to current ideas concerning the Anthropocene.... -
Thinking about the earth : a history of ideas in geology Oldroyd, D. R. (David Roger)
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE11 .O43 1996ISBN: 0674883829Publication Date: 1996-11-01Not quite a history of geology, Thinking about the Earth is a history of the geological tradition of Western science. Beginning with a discussion of "organic" views of the earth in ancient cultures, David Oldroyd traverses such topics as "mechanical" and "historicist" views of the earth, map-work, chemical analyses of rocks and minerals, geomorphology, experimental petrology, seismology, theories of mountain building, and geochemistry.... -
The Earth Inside and Out: Some Major Contributions to Geology in the Twentieth Century
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE11 .E27 2002ISBN: 1862390967Publication Date: 2002 -
The Rejection of Continental Drift
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE511.5 .O74 1999ISBN: 0195117328Publication Date: 1999-04-01In the early 20th century, American earth scientists vociferously opposed the new--and highly radical--notion of continental drift. Yet 50 years later the same idea was heralded as a major scientific breakthrough, and today continental drift is accepted as a scientific fact. Why did Americangeologists reject so adamantly an idea that is now considered a cornerstone of the discipline? And why did they react so much more negatively than their European counterparts? This book, based primarily on archival resources, provides answers to these questions.... -
The Revolution in Geology from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE13.E85 R48 2009ISBN: 0813712033Publication Date: 2009-05-01 -
Earth's Deep History
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE11 .R827 2016ISBN: 022642197XPublication Date: 2016-11-03Earth 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's history has not only been unimaginably long but also astonishingly eventful.... -
Scenes from Deep Time
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Call Number: Books Stacks (Floor 2M) QE705.A1 R82 1992ISBN: 0226731049Publication Date: 1992-12-15How 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....
