Geological sciences in classical times; the conception of the universe in the middle age; on the generation of stones; medieval mineralogy; the birth of modern mineralogy and its development from agricola to Werner and Berzelius; the birth of historical geology with the rise and fall of the neptunian theory; figured stones and the birth of palaentology; the origin of metals and their ores; the origin of mountains; earthquakes and the nature of the interior of the earth; the origin of springs and rivers; quaint stories and beliefs.

The world faces an environmental crisis unprecedented in human history. Carbon dioxide levels have reached heights not seen for three million years, and the greatest mass extinction since the time of the dinosaurs appears to be underway. Such far-reaching changes suggest something remarkable: the beginning of a new geological epoch. It has been called the Anthropocene. The Birth of the Anthropocene shows how this epochal transformation puts the deep history of the planet at the heart of contemporary environmental politics. By opening a window onto geological time, the idea of the Anthropocene changes our understanding of present-day environmental destruction and injustice. Linking new developments in earth science to the insights of world historians, Jeremy Davies shows that as the Anthropocene epoch begins, politics and geology have become inextricably entwined.

“Tells the story . . . of how ‘natural philosophers’ developed the ideas of geology accepted today . . . Fascinating.” —San Francisco Book Review Earth has been witness to dinosaurs, global ice ages, continents colliding or splitting apart, and comets and asteroids crashing, 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? 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 long but also astonishingly eventful. Rudwick begins in the seventeenth century with Archbishop James Ussher, who famously dated the creation of the cosmos to 4004 BC. His narrative later turns to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when geological evidence was used—and is still being used—to reconstruct a history of the Earth that is as varied and unpredictable as human history. itself. Along the way, Rudwick rejects the popular view of this story as a conflict between science and religion and shows how the modern scientific account of the Earth’s deep history retains strong roots in Judeo-Christian ideas. Extensively illustrated, Earth’s Deep History is an engaging and impressive capstone to Rudwick’s distinguished career. “Deftly explains how ideas of natural history were embedded in cultural history.” —Nature “An engaging read for nonscientists and specialists alike.” —Library Journal “Wonderfully erudite and absorbing.” —Times Literary Supplement “Fascinating, well written, and novel . . . Essential.” —Choice “Thrilling.” —London Review of Books

Between 1633 and 1642, the French physician and philanthropist Théophraste Renaudot sponsored a series of public conferences in Paris. These conferences offered an open forum for wide-ranging discussions of a variety of topics, including science, medicine, gender, politics, and ethics. No matter the topic, participants consistently used scientific reasoning as a new standard of evidence. The conferences thus recast the rhetorical traditions of the Renaissance and prefigured the social sciences of the Enlightenment. They provide a candid snapshot of intellectual life at the dawn of the scientific revolution in France. In Making Science Social, Kathleen Wellman uses the published conference proceedings to develop a broadly conceived, revisionist interpretation of the intellectual history of seventeenth-century France and of the roots of modern culture and science. Volume 6 in the Series for Science and Culture

Geology 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. Most chapters include a short 'text box' providing more technical and detailed elaborations on selected topics. The book also includes a history of the geology of the Moon, a topic not normally included in books on the history of geology. The book will appeal to students of Earth science, researchers in geology who wish to learn more about the history of their subject, and general readers interested in the history of science.

This volume is concerned with the geological sciences in the 18th century, with special emphasis on France and French scientists. A first focus is on the pioneering geologist Nicolas Desmarest, whose investigations in Auvergne and Italy (among other places) had important consequences in geological theory and practice. Desmarest emerges as a figure of intriguing complexity and refined methodological convictions, defying facile interpretation in terms of, for instance, a simple polarity between vulcanism and neptunism. Widening his inquiry beyond Desmarest, Professor Taylor also endeavors to recover key elements of the presuppositions and thought-patterns of Enlightenment geologists, and to discern how geological investigation worked during this formative period. In the era that modern geological science was beginning to take form, many of the participants are seen as struggling to define their scientific objectives and procedures by drawing from the competing frameworks of physique or natural philosophy, descriptive natural history, and antiquarian scholarship or developmental history. One of the articles (Reflections on Natural Laws in Eighteenth-Century Geology) appears here for the first time in English.