Geology

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521572019.011

10 - Geology

from PART II - ANALYSIS AND EXPERIMENTATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2009

Mott Greene

Edited by

Peter J. Bowler and

John V. Pickstone

Show author details

Peter J. Bowler: Affiliation:
Queen's University Belfast
John V. Pickstone: Affiliation:
University of Manchester

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Geology is the name arrived at in the 1820s for a specific approach to the scientific study of the earth’s outer layers. This new science aimed to discover and date the natural history of this three-dimensional ensemble of layered rock, to learn the origins, variety, and provenance of the rock-forming minerals that composed these layers, and to uncover and understand the natural processes and laws that shaped them. The name “geology” came into general use when the new approach it denoted had already been under way for more than a century (as is almost always the case in science). Thus, while it was still an activity without a fixed name, “geology” had already encountered several robust and preexisting competing approaches to studying the earth, each with its own proprietary interest in the phenomenon. Much of the history of geology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is a story of conflict and accommodation with these antecedent approaches to the study of the surface of the planet. As a result, most writing on the history of geology – and especially that produced since about 1980 – has embraced the idea that geology emerged and grew as a science through a series of great controversies.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 165 - 184

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521572019.011 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, F. D., The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences (New York: Dover, 1954, reprinted);Google Scholar

Burchfield, Joe D., Lord Kelvin and the Age of the Earth (New York: Science History Publications, 1975)CrossRef Google Scholar

Davies, G. J., The Earth in Decay: A History of British Geomorphology, 1578 to 1878 (New York: Science History Publications, 1969).Google Scholar

Dean, Dennis R., James Hutton and the History of Geology (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

Geikie, Archibald, The Founders of Geology (New York: Dover, 1962, reprinted);Google Scholar

Gillispie, Charles C., Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790–1850 (New York: Harper, 1959).Google Scholar

Greene, Mott T., Geology in the Nineteenth Century: Changing Views of a Changing World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

Hallam, Anthony, Great Geological Controversies, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989);Google Scholar

Hamlin, Christopher, “James Geikie, James Croll and the Eventful Ice Age,” Annals of Science, 39 (1982).CrossRef Google Scholar

Jordanova, Ludmilla and Porter, Roy ed., Images of the Earth: Essays in the History of the Environmental Sciences, (Chalfont St. Giles: British Society for the History of Science, 1979).Google Scholar

Laudan, Rachel, From Mineralogy to Geology: The Foundations of a Science, 1650–1830 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987),CrossRef Google Scholar

Lewis, Cherry, The Dating Game: One Man’s Search for the Age of the Earth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

Oldroyd, David R., Thinking about the Earth: A History of Ideas in Geology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

Oldroyd, David R., The Highlands Controversy: Constructing Geological Knowledge through Fieldwork in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).Google Scholar

Rudwick, Martin J. S., The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge among Gentlemanly Specialists (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985);CrossRef Google Scholar

Rudwick, Martin J. S., Worlds before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008);CrossRef Google Scholar

Rudwick, Martin J. S., “Uniformity and Progress: Reflections on the Structure of Geological Theory in the Age of Lyell,” in Perspective in the History of Science and Technology, ed. Roller, Duane H. D. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971).Google Scholar

Rudwick, Martin J. S., Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).CrossRef Google Scholar

Rupke, Nicolaas A., The Great Chain of History: William Buckland and the English School of Geology (1815–1849) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

Schneer, Cecil J. ed., Toward a History of Geology, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969)Google Scholar

Secord, James A., Controversy in Victorian Geology: The Cambrian-Silurian Dispute (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986);Google Scholar

Stafford, Robert A., Scientist of Empire: Sir R. I. Murchison, Scientific Exploration and Victorian Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

von Zittel, Karl, History of Geology and Palaeontology (Weinheim: J. Cramer, 1962, reprinted).Google Scholar

Wilson, Leonard G., Charles Lyell, The Years to 1841: The Revolution in Geology (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971),Google Scholar

Wyse-Jackson, Patrick, The Chronologers’ Quest: The Search for the Age of the Earth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).CrossRef Google Scholar

Book contents

10 - Geology

Summary

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive