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Worlds Before Adam (Paperback)
Loot Price: R1,479
Discovery Miles 14 790
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Worlds Before Adam (Paperback)
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In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, scientists
reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth--and the
relatively recent arrival of human life. The geologists of the
period, many of whom were devout believers, agreed about this vast
timescale. But despite this apparent harmony between geology and
Genesis, these scientists still debated a great many questions: Had
the earth cooled from its origin as a fiery ball in space, or had
it always been the same kind of place as it is now? Was prehuman
life marked by mass extinctions, or had fauna and flora changed
slowly over time?
The first detailed account of the reconstruction of prehuman
geohistory, Martin J. S. Rudwick's "Worlds Before Adam" picks up
where his celebrated "Bursting the Limits of Time "leaves off.
Here, Rudwick takes readers from the post-Napoleonic Restoration in
Europe to the early years of Britain's Victorian age, chronicling
the staggering discoveries geologists made during the period: the
unearthing of the first dinosaur fossils, the glacial theory of the
last ice age, and the meaning of igneous rocks, among others.
Ultimately, Rudwick reveals geology to be the first of the sciences
to investigate the historical dimension of nature, a model that
Charles Darwin used in developing his evolutionary theory.
Featuring an international cast of colorful characters, with
Georges Cuvier and Charles Lyell playing major roles and Darwin
appearing as a young geologist, "Worlds Before Adam" is a worthy
successor to Rudwick's magisterial first volume. Completing the
highly readable narrative of one of the most momentous changes in
human understanding of our place in the natural world, "Worlds
Before Adam" is a capstone to the career of one of the world's
leading historians of science.
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