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Rock, Bone, and Ruin - An Optimist's Guide to the Historical Sciences (Hardcover)
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Rock, Bone, and Ruin - An Optimist's Guide to the Historical Sciences (Hardcover)
Series: Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology
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An argument that we should be optimistic about the capacity of
"methodologically omnivorous" geologists, paleontologists, and
archaeologists to uncover truths about the deep past. The
"historical sciences"-geology, paleontology, and archaeology-have
made extraordinary progress in advancing our understanding of the
deep past. How has this been possible, given that the evidence they
have to work with offers mere traces of the past? In Rock, Bone,
and Ruin, Adrian Currie explains that these scientists are
"methodological omnivores," with a variety of strategies and
techniques at their disposal, and that this gives us every reason
to be optimistic about their capacity to uncover truths about
prehistory. Creative and opportunistic paleontologists, for
example, discovered and described a new species of prehistoric
duck-billed platypus from a single fossilized tooth. Examining the
complex reasoning processes of historical science, Currie also
considers philosophical and scientific reflection on the
relationship between past and present, the nature of evidence,
contingency, and scientific progress. Currie draws on varied
examples from across the historical sciences, from Mayan ritual
sacrifice to giant Mesozoic fleas to Mars's mysterious watery past,
to develop an account of the nature of, and resources available to,
historical science. He presents two major case studies: the
emerging explanation of sauropod size, and the "snowball earth"
hypothesis that accounts for signs of glaciation in Neoproterozoic
tropics. He develops the Ripple Model of Evidence to analyze
"unlucky circumstances" in scientific investigation; examines and
refutes arguments for pessimism about the capacity of the
historical sciences, defending the role of analogy and arguing that
simulations have an experiment-like function. Currie argues for a
creative, open-ended approach, "empirically grounded" speculation.
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