Publisher Description

Humans have tried to figure out what formed the landscape of the earth for thousands of years. How were mountains created? Where did lakes and rivers come from? What lies under the surface of the earth? And one concept that greatly aided the scientific advance of the earth sciences was that of geological cycles. Once scientists understood that many geological actions are cyclic, the scientific knowledge of the earth exploded. These ideas are central to the nature of the earth sciences, and appreciating how scientists arrived at these ideas is essential for understanding the nature of the earth sciences.

Author Biography

David Oldroyd is Honorary Visiting Professor in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of New South Wales and was Secretary-General of the International Commission on the History of Geological Sciences for eight years. A recipient of awards for his historical work from the Geological Society of London, the Geological Society of America, and the Australian Commonwealth, he is the author of numerous articles and several books, including (in the geosciences): The Highlands Controversy: Constructing Geological Knowledge through Fieldwork in Nineteenth-century Britain, Sciences of the Earth: Studies in the History of Mineralogy and Geology, Thinking about the Earth: A History of Ideas in Geology, Earth, Water, Ice and Fire: Two Hundred Years of Geological Research in the English Lake District, and (with Jan Kozak and Victor Moreira) The Iconography of the Lisbon Earthquake.

Table of Contents

Figure 2.1. Leonardo's "theory of the Earth" from his "Codex Leicester." (Leonardo d Vinci, 2000, 31)Figure 3.1a. Four stages in the Earth's development (Descartes 1656, 151).Figure 3.1b. Further development of the Earth (Descartes 1656, 155).Figure 3.2. Steno's scheme for the geological history of Tuscany (1669, unnumbered page, preceding ).Figure 3.3. Frontispiece to Burnet's Theory of the Earth (1684).Figure 3.4. Figure from Burnet's Theory of the Earth (1684, 57).Figure 3.5. Formation of oceans and mountains due to collapse structures (Burnet 1697, 227).Figure 4.1. The Earth, its envelope of water, and the initial directions of motion of freely falling objects at different latitudes, based on Hooke's account in his Posthumous Works.Figure 5.1. The "geostrophic cycle."Figure 5.2. Cross section of northern part of Arran, drawn by John Clerk, Jr., 1787.Figure 5.3. Geological sketch map of northern Arran showing likely line of section for Clerk's drawing (Figure 5.2).Figure 5.4. Unconformity at Loch Ranza, Arran, as figured by Archibald Geikie (1899).Figure 5.5. Profile of unconformity observed by Hutton near Jedburgh in 1787.Figure 5.6. Unconformity at Siccar Point.Figure 5.7. The evolving continuum of mineral substances from the residues of living organisms, according to Lamarck's Hydrogeology.Figure 6.1. The "Temple" of Serapis at Pozzuoli near Naples.Figure 6.2. Illustration of Lyell's theory of "random" creation and extinction of species.Figure 7.1. Development of canyon profiles according to the hardness of strata (Dutton 1882, plate 40, facing p. 250).Figure 7.2. Evolution of a landscape according to Davis, from Holmes (1944, 187).Figure 8.1. Part of the Earth's pentagonal arrangement of mountain ranges (Élie de Beaumont 1852, vol. 3, plate 5).Figure 8.2. Cooling, contracting globe (Dana 1847a, 181).Figure 8.3. Depiction of Dana's ideas on mountain building, as reconstructed by Dott (1997, 299).Figure 8.4. Folds and dislocations due to (a) lateral compression (b) subsidence, according to Suess.Figure 8.5. Suess's model of mountain building (S¸engör 1982, 400, fig. 4).Figure 8.6. Breakup of Pangea, according to Wegener's Origin of Continents and Oceans (1966, 18–19).Figure 8.7. Convection currents within the Earth's mantle, producing continental drift (Holmes 1929, 579).Figure 8.8. Development of geosynclines and the formation of mountains (Holmes 1929, 582).Figure 8.9. Convection currents within the Earth (Holmes 1944, 506).Figure 8.10. Magnetization of the rocks of the ocean floor off the coast of western Canada (Mason and Raff 1961, 1268).Figure 8.11. The "ideal" Bouma sequence, as depicted by Bouma (1962, 49).Figure 8.12. Hypothetical form of the deposition cone of a turbidity current and hypothetical filling of a basin by turbidites.Figure 9.1. Global changes in temperature over time (Agassiz 1837).Figure 9.2. Earth's orbit around the Sun, illustrating the phenomenon of precession.Figure 9.3. Changes of the Earth's alignment in space, at periods of high orbital ellipticity, as depicted by Croll (1875, frontispiece).Figure 9.4. Milankovic's radiation graphs for 55°, 60°, and 65°N, as published in Köppen and Wegener (1924, plate facing p. 256).Figure 9.5. Components of the variations of the Earth's motion in space, through time (Berger 1988, 636).Figure 10.1. Sediment record in a sinking basin undergoing oscillations in base level (Barrell 1917, 796).Figure 10.2. Sedimentation cycles (Udden 1912, 27).Figure 10.3. Correlations of strata in western Illinois (Wanless 1931, 189).Figure 10.4. Ideal cyclothem (Willman and Payne 1942, 86).Figure 10.5a. Cyclothems (Holliday Drive, Kansas City, by the southern bank of the Kansas River, near its junction with the Missouri River).Figure 10.5b. Limestone with shale partings (Holliday Drive, Kansas City).Figure 10.6. De Geer examining varves in Vermont, 1920.Figure 11.1. Generalized section from the Pacific to the Rockies (northwestern United States) (Wheeler 1958, 1052).Figure 11.2. Time-stratigraphic diagram, representing the sequences depicted in Figure 11.1 (Wheeler 1958, 1053).Figure 11.3. Time-stratigraphic relationships for sequences of the North American craton (Sloss 1963, 110).Figure 11.4. The Vail curve, as unveiled in 1977, with two levels of resolution (Vail et al. 1977a, 84).Figure 11.5. Conversion of data obtained from seismic stratigraphy into part of a Vail curve (Vail et al. 1977a, 78).Figure 11.6. The "averaging" of sea-level curves from four different regions to yield a global sea-level curve, right-hand drawing (Vail et al. 1977b, 90).Figure 11.7. Profile of a typical sequence and a corresponding Wheeler diagram (Haq et al. 1987, 1157).Figure 12.1. Part of the geomagnetic time scale (Hoffman 1988, 55).Figure 12.2. Variations of oxygen isotope composition with depth for two species of foraminifera for a Caribbean core (V12–122) (Broecker and Van Donk 1970, 175).Figure 12.3. Comparison of oxygen isotope ratios and magnetic polarities for Lamont Core V28–238 (Shackleton and Opdyke 1973, 48, fig. 9).Figure 13.1. Nieuwenkamp's "persedimentary" model of the continuous rock series (Nieuwenkamp 1968, 366, fig. 1).Figure 13.2. The "crust–ocean factory" (Garrels and Mackenzie 1971, 330).Figure 13.3. The "steady-state flow net" (Garrels and Perry 1974, 313).Figure 13.4. Comparison of d13C carbonate and d34S sulfate isotope curves for Phanerozoic time (Holser et al. 1988, 139, 140).Figure 13.5. Comparison through the Phanerozoic of d13Ooxidized and d13Oreduced, reduced carbon/total carbon, and sea levels (Pigott 1981, fig. 15).

Review

The book examines the historical and theoretical contexts for the development of cyclic theories in the geosciences (chapters 1-6); the practical utilization of cyclic theories in the geosciences, namely, geophysics, geochemistry, structural geology, soil science, oceanography/hydrology, glaciology, and the atmospheric sciences (chapters 7-13); and the summarization and meta-theoretical discussion of the centrality of cyclicity in the geosciences (chapter 14)….[p]rovides an apt introduction and overview of cyclic theories and cyclicity in geoscience. List of illustrations; time line; international stratigraphic chart; glossary; further reading list. Recommended. General readers; lower-division undergraduates through professionals. * Choice *
For high school and college students and the general reader, Oldroyd outlines the history of cyclic theories in geoscience, beginning with the ancient world and the Renaissance. He then details the ideas of Robert Hooke, James Hutton, and Charles Lyell, and the historical development of concepts involving the Earth's landscape, the solar system, glaciation, cycles in the strata, sequence stratigraphy and eustasy, the geomagnetic time scale, and geochemical cycling. * SciTech Book News *

Promotional

Shows the importance of the history of geological cycles for understanding earth sciences today.

Long Description

Humans have tried to figure out what formed the landscape of the earth for thousands of years. How were mountains created? Where did lakes and rivers come from? What lies under the surface of the earth? And one concept that greatly aided the scientific advance of the earth sciences was that of geological cycles. Once scientists understood that many geological actions are cyclic, the scientific knowledge of the earth exploded. These ideas are central to the nature of the earth sciences, and appreciating how scientists arrived at these ideas is essential for understanding the nature of the earth sciences. Earth Cycles: A Historical Perspective, a volume in the Greenwood Guides to Great Ideas in Science, traces the history of this tremendously powerful concept from the ancient philosophers to the present day. The volume covers: Ancient beliefs about the nature of the earth and the myth of the Eternal Return James Hutton, Charles Lyell, and the other founders of the science of geology, who based the history of the earth on the notion that there is "no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end" Theories about the cycles of volcanic eruptions The history of the recurrence of "ice ages" The idea of the recurrence of catastrophic episodes in earth history due to interaction with objects in space Jargon and mathematics is kept to a minimum, and the volume includes a timeline, a glossary, and a bibliography, making Earth Cycles an ideal resource for students researching the earth sciences and the history and nature of the scientific understanding of the world around us.

Review Quote

"The book examines the historical and theoretical contexts for the development of cyclic theories in the geosciences (chapters 1-6); the practical utilization of cyclic theories in the geosciences, namely, geophysics, geochemistry, structural geology, soil science, oceanography/hydrology, glaciology, and the atmospheric sciences (chapters 7-13); and the summarization and meta-theoretical discussion of the centrality of cyclicity in the geosciences (chapter 14)….[p]rovides an apt introduction and overview of cyclic theories and cyclicity in geoscience. List of illustrations; time line; international stratigraphic chart; glossary; further reading list. Recommended. General readers; lower-division undergraduates through professionals." - Choice

Promotional "Headline"

Shows the importance of the history of geological cycles for understanding earth sciences today.

Description for Reader

Earth Cycles: A Historical Perspective , a volume in the Greenwood Guides to Great Ideas in Science , traces the history of this tremendously powerful concept from the ancient philosophers to the present day. The volume covers: Ancient beliefs about the nature of the earth and the myth of the Eternal Return. James Hutton, Charles Lyell, and the other founders of the science of geology, who based the history of the earth on the notion that there is no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end. Theories about the cycles of volcanic eruptions. The history of the recurrence of ice ages. The idea of the recurrence of catastrophic episodes in earth history due to interaction with objects in space. Jargon and mathematics is kept to a minimum, and the volume includes a timeline, a glossary, and a bibliography, making Earth Cycles an ideal resource for students researching the earth sciences and the history and nature of the scientific understanding of the world around us.

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