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Carregando... The Ice Finders: How a Poet, a Professor, and a Politician Discovered the Ice Age (edição: 2000)de Edmund Blair Bolles
Informações da ObraThe Ice Finders: How a Poet, a Professor, and a Politician Discovered the Ice Age de Edmund Blair Bolles
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Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. Scientific history, which explores how the Ice Ages went from being a lunatic theory dismissed by every reputable scientist to a valid, generally accepted explanation. Laymen who assume that scientists behave in a generally rational manner and carefully examine facts and evidence to reach conclusions will find this little volume an eye-opener. The Ice Finders describes the birth and acceptance of the theory of the Ice Age (mid-nineteenth century). It focuses on the stories of three men: Louis Aggassiz, a geologist is portrayed as a man in search of details with a vested interest in finding a theory that meshed with his notion of Genesis; Charles Lyell, another geologist has a way of being right even when he's wrong; and Elisha Kent Kane, an explorer who leads a disastrous rescue expedition, but comes back and publishes a book about his travels, making it possible for the world to imagine an immensity of ice. Bolles uses the story to show that scientific progress is not always a straightforward advance. The story is well told, though those without a geology background will have to rely on another source for illustrations of the phenomena described. Additionally, though he shows that progress is not a straight line, Bolles does, time and again, refer to some of today's theories more certainly than I think is called for. "Don't judge a book by its cover" is a saying I have heard ad nauseam up to this point in my life, and yet I keep finding that I forget it. This book was my most recent example of forgetting that wisdom. the subtitle is what originally hooked me only I soon found out that the described "poet, politician, and professor" searching for the Ice Age actually turned out to be three scientists. Much more homogeneous than the poet, politician and professor. The book is set primarily in the 1850's in the scientific circles of England and America. The narrative meanders and often runs into dead ends - much like actual scientific research. The book follows three men, each of whom is notable: Agassiz for his tireless devotion to collecting data, Lyell who first denied then became an ardent supporter, and Kane who was nearly killed after spending two years stuck in the Arctic. Although all three of these men were interesting in their own regards, it was only Kane who was interesting to read about. The other two dragged the book down and made the story much more tedious than it deserved. In the end, three interesting characters and a seeming novel idea were not enough to keep the story as enjoyable as the cover would have made it appear. sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha
Distinctions
"A little more than a hundred fifty years ago scientists, geographers, and explorers still knew almost nothing of the earth's ice fields. Many thought the North Pole was covered by an open sea. The Ice Age was unknown. The most complete list of forces shaping the earth omitted glaciers. The discovery of ice's importance is one of modern science's greatest and least known stories." "In the middle of the nineteenth century three diverse men discovered and named the Ice Ages. The heroes of the tale are an explorer-poet, Elisha Kent Kane (1820-1857), who spent two years trapped on Greenland's north coast, the renowned Swiss professor-author-lecturer, Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), and the Scottish geologist (and master politician) Charles Lyell (1797-1875). With their investigations, these adventurers changed our understanding of natural history and transformed Geology into the foundational science that supports biology, paleontology, oceanography, and, of course, glaciology." "The Ice Finders is a saga of the way scientific investigation and discovery come about, demonstrating that scientists - for all their avowed adherence to the path of order and reason - are just as susceptible as any artist to their own irrational driving passions and private obsessions."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — Carregando... GênerosClassificação decimal de Dewey (CDD)551.792Natural sciences and mathematics Earth sciences & geology Geology, Hydrology Meteorology Historical geology Quaternary; Postpliocene; GlacialClassificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos E.U.A. (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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The author was quite snarky though, so that took a lot from the story.