Comments on: Book review – Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: From Heresy to Truth

By: Book review – Mysteries of the Deep: How Seafloor Drilling Expeditions Revolutionized Our Understanding of Earth History | The Inquisitive Biologist

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 15:24:22 +0000

[…] is Powell’s interest in science history and the progression of ideas. His previously reviewed Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences explicitly examined four such episodes and it makes a welcome return here. Next to the […]

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By: Book review – Remnants of Ancient Life: The New Science of Old Fossils | The Inquisitive Biologist

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 14:33:01 +0000

[…] stories, loves the lone genius narrative, and (understandably!) lionizes people such as Alfred Wegener or Lynn Margulis. In reality, science is largely a collaborative effort, now more so than ever. […]

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By: Book review – Land of Wondrous Cold: The Race to Discover Antarctica and Unlock the Secrets of Its Ice | The Inquisitive Biologist

Wed, 06 Oct 2021 13:32:55 +0000

[…] The history of how different scientific disciplines converged on the same understanding of what happened to our planetary climate at this time is incredibly absorbing. D’Arcy Wood walks the reader through the different pieces of the puzzle, showing how new scientific disciplines were born and developed along the way: meteorology, palaeoclimatology, and palaeo-oceanography. He clarifies how palaeomagnetism, the record of Earth’s magnetic field in the past, shows both reversal of its magnetic poles and apparent polar wander. This rather abstract concept of our planet’s magnetic poles moving around over time can in part be explained by the rocks containing this magnetic signal moving around with the continents, something that was only reluctantly accepted. […]

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By: Book review – On the Origin of Evolution: Tracing ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’ from Aristotle to DNA | The Inquisitive Biologist

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 07:46:57 +0000

[…] Similarly, they recognize Wallace as the grandfather of biogeography but leave out how the long-resisted idea of plate tectonics explained palaeobiogeographic patterns. Basically, they completely ignore the […]

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By: Book review – A Curious Boy: The Making of a Scientist | The Inquisitive Biologist

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 11:49:40 +0000

[…] Those interested in the science are served as well. There are some interludes here about graptolites, colonial plankton that does not really resemble anything alive today. Initially he collects their fossils at Abereiddy Bay in Wales as a boy, while a later discovery described here proofs worthy of publication before he has even written up anything about trilobites. The first trilobite collections he makes in Svalbard suggest three distinct communities, corresponding to an onshore-to-offshore depth gradient. When similar communities are retrieved in Nevada, this aligns perfectly with the then-novel theory of plate tectonics. The start of Fortey’s career coincided with this idea finally finding wider acceptance in the geological community. […]

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By: Book review – The Science of Middle-Earth: A New Understanding of Tolkien and His World | The Inquisitive Biologist

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 14:56:31 +0000

[…] the state of science in his time – volcanology in the 1930-50s was not what it is today and the theory of plate tectonics only became accepted decades after his works had been published. Others consider how […]

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By: Book review – Fire in the Sky: Cosmic Collisions, Killer Asteroids, and the Race to Defend Earth | The Inquisitive Biologist

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 12:07:05 +0000

[…] recurrent theme in this book is the reticence of the geological establishment to accept the impact theory. Despite mounting evidence, volcanism remained the preferred […]

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By: Book review – The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey Into Greenland’s Buried Past and Our Perilous Future | The Inquisitive Biologist

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 16:31:38 +0000

[…] the idea of continental drift. But that will be my fascination with the captivating history of the reluctant acceptance of his ideas , and the fact that there are recent biographies on him (see Ending in Ice and the […]

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By: Book review – The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey Into Greenland’s Buried Past and Our Perilous Future | The Inquisitive Biologist

Thu, 13 Feb 2020 18:48:04 +0000

[…] fascination with the captivating history of the reluctant acceptance of his ideas (see my review of Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: From Heresy to Truth), and the fact that there are recent biographies on him (see Ending in Ice: The Revolutionary Idea […]

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By: Book review – Fire in the Sky: Cosmic Collisions, Killer Asteroids, and the Race to Defend Earth | The Inquisitive Biologist

Wed, 13 Nov 2019 17:04:10 +0000

[…] in this book is the reticence of the geological establishment to accept the impact theory (see also Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: From Heresy to Truth, which covers some of this history in its chapter on impacts). Despite mounting evidence, volcanism […]

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