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The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science Sainthood and the Humble Genius Who Discovered a New History of the Earth
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The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science Sainthood and the Humble Genius Who Discovered a New History of the Earth Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥
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Fascinating History of Science
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Ever wonder why there are seashells in rocks or in buildings made out of rocks? Nicholaus Steno did too, and through his inquiry and investigation, discovered the geologic concept of "deep time"- discovering the age of the earth by examining the sedimentary layers.
Steno was a Danish scientist who originally went into anatomy. His brilliant lectures demolished Decartes' theories on the brain, and paved the way for new understandings of anatomy. His interest in fossils was sparked by a shark's head that he was using for one of his lectures. The "tongue stones" in the shark's mouth looked remarkably similar to the ones that he had seen in rocks. At the time, most people thought that fossils literally grew inside rocks, through "plastic forces of nature." (The scientific world had not yet outgrown Aristotle's physics.) Steno argued that the fossils could not possibly grow inside rocks, because they weren't distorted the way that objects that actually did grow inside rocks were. He eventually came to the conclusion that the seashell fossils inside the mountains were the result of the ocean once covering entire areas, and that sediments, in which fossils were trapped, layered on top of each other. Steno's discovery made Bishop Ussher's creation date of 4004 BC untenable, since it would have taken the seas far longer to recede than Noah's flood was supposed to have lasted.
This book is highly recommended for anyone who is interested in the history of scientific discovery, and how someone's curiosity can change the way people think about the world. |
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