The Origins of a New Science of Geology

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Geology, unlike astronomy, physics, or geometry, is of relatively recent origins as a science. It cannot trace its history back to ancient times. Clearly, thinkers in antiquity and medieval times observed and offered explanations for certain terrestrial phenomena, but geology came into being only in the wake of the great intellectual transformations of the 17th and 18th centuries. The ingredients of a specifically geological perspective -- e.g., a view of the earth not as a cosmic region but as an object; a historical outlook on nature, and ideas on how to decipher the earth's superficial parts historically; conviction that the earth's constituents are governed by processes reducible to general understanding -- were gradually assembled over the course of a century and a half, before the spectacular success of geological science became evident in the first part of the 19th century leading up to the work of Charles Darwin. Dr. Taylor is investigating the early development of geological science by focussing on the historical role of natural law as a model for scientific investigation and explanation in the thought of a group of 18th century naturalists. By assessing the importance ascribed by a selection of French scientists during the middle and later decades of the 18th century to recognition of law-like regularities in their efforts to establish a science of the earth, Dr. Taylor hopes to contribute to the historical recovery of the cultural framework of geology's origins. He will examine this groups scientific works and their use of empirical generalizations in scientific argument. Dr. Taylor argues that the Enlightenment's emphasis upon reduction of phenomena to empirical rule was manifested in the ways geological concepts were formualted in the 18th century, as well as in the ways early geologists began to conduct fieldwork and to devise methods for graphic representation of phenomena they thought significant. These studies by Dr. Taylor promise to greatly enhance our understanding of the origins of the science of geology.