Cuvier and Brongniart, William Smith, and the Reconstruction of Geohistory

Autor:	Martin Rudwick
Rok vydání:	1996
Předmět:	Sequence (geology) History and Philosophy of Science General Earth and Planetary Sciences Art history Relation (history of concept) Geology Epistemology
Zdroj:	Earth Sciences History. 15:25-36
ISSN:	1944-6187 0736-623X
DOI:	10.17704/eshi.15.1.h25k254u61374h00
Popis:	During the "great flowering" of geology around 1800, the rapidly increasing use of fossils was important not only in stratigraphical correlation but also for providing "archives of nature": they enabled the history of the earth to be reconstructed in detail as a sequence of contingent events. Here I analyse the classic work of Georges Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart on the Paris basin, and the contemporary work of William Smith in England, in relation to their fusion of certain research practices that had earlier been distinct. I argue that the French work, while significantly influenced by Smith, was decisively important in its own right as an exemplar of a newly empirical practice of geohistorical reconstruction.
Databáze:	OpenAIRE
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