Description
The creation of the Comité français d’histoire de la géologie (COFRHIGEO) in 1976 aimed to convene geologists, philosophers and historians interested in contributing to a written history of geology, which was at that time still in its infancy.
Fifty years later, History of Earth Sciences seeks both to present the research that has illuminated the evolution of ideas about the Earth - from Antiquity to the very beginning of the twentieth century - and to offer students, as well as anyone interested in the development of the Earth sciences, a general, focused and precise text designed as both an introduction and an invitation to pursue the study of this history. In this book, the history concludes with Alfred Wegener’s mobilist theory.
Table of Contents
Presentation of Field "History of Science". xi
Jean-Claude DUPONT
Introduction xiii
Pierre SAVATON
Chapter 1. What Earth Sciences Existed in Greco-Roman Antiquity? 1
Frédéric LE BLAY
1.1. Defining the field: Aristotelian meteorology 2
1.2. The movements of the Earth 6
1.3. Probing the bowels of the Earth: networks and cavities 14
1.4. The subterranean fire hypothesis 18
1.5. The Earth and its materials 21
1.6. Toward a history of the Earth: floods and variations in sea level 26
1.7. Conclusion 31
1.8. References 32
Chapter 2. Studying and Knowing the Earth in the Middle Ages 37
Joëlle DUCOS and Fleur VIGNERON
2.1. The Earth and stones: knowledge scattered across multiple fields 37
2.2. Sources and authors of the medieval west 42
2.3. Medieval debates on the Earth 49
2.4. Conclusion 63
2.5. References 64
Chapter 3. Geology from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment 73
Gaston GODARD
3.1. The origin of fossils and stones 74
3.2. From an immutable Earth to a dynamic Earth 92
3.3. Conclusion 100
3.4. References 101Contents vii
Chapter 4. Crystallography: 17th–19th Centuries 109
Bernard MAITTE
4.1. The first studies 109
4.2. 17th century: the intervention of physicists; Huygens contradicted by Newton 113
4.3. 18th century: from the crystals of the natural sciences to mathematics 116
4.4. René-Just Haüy's study 124
4.5. The early 19th century: the roles of physicists and philosophies of nature 135
4.6. Space groups and Curie's principle 144
4.7. Mineralogy at the end of the century and its development prospects 148
4.8. References 152
Chapter 5. Geology and Visual Discourse: The Birth of the Geological Map 157
Pierre SAVATON
5.1. Statistics and inventories plotted on maps 159
5.2. Physical geography 166
5.3. Geognosy and geognostic maps 168
5.4. Geological maps 176
5.5. From map to map: geological cartography in 19th-century France 183
5.6. Conclusion 186
5.7. References 186
Chapter 6. Birth and Development of Stratigraphy 191
Philippe GRANDCHAMP
6.1. The birth certificate of stratigraphy 191
6.2. The impasse of Wernerian lithostratigraphy 193
6.3. The emergence of paleontological stratigraphy 195
6.4. An alternative path: purely geometric stratigraphy 205
6.5. The invention of a key concept: the stratigraphic stage 211
6.6. Toward the international stratigraphic scale 214
6.7. Conclusion 218
6.8. References 222
Chapter 7. History of Mobilist Ideas: Wegener's Model 227
Philippe Le VIGOUROUX
7.1. The Earth globe: a fixist conception under tension 228
7.2. The invention of mobilism 238
7.3. The reception of Wegener's theory 263
7.4. Conclusion 270
7.5. References 274
List of Authors 281
Index of Terms 283
Index of Names 287
