I.–Principles of Geology; or, the Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants considered as Illustrative of Geology. By Sir Charles Lyell Bart, M.A., F.R.S. 10th and entirely revised edition. In two volumes. Vol. II. Illustrated with Maps, Plates, and Woodcuts. 8vo. pp. 649. London: John Murray. 1868.

1868 ◽  
Vol 5 (54) ◽  
pp. 569-572
Keyword(s):  
Charles Lyell ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Principles Of Geology

Geology Emerges as a Science

2021 ◽  
pp. 6-33
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Da Vinci ◽  
Leonardo Da Vinci ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
Principles Of Geology ◽  
The Way

This chapter and the next one cover the way in which geology came to be a science in its own right, spanning the early centuries of geology. Lives of crucial individual scientists from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century are discussed by relating the stories and discoveries of each, commencing with Leonardo da Vinci and continuing with the European geologists, including Nicholaus Steno, Abraham Werner, James Hutton, Charles Lyell, and early fossilists such as Etheldred Benet. Steno, Werner, Hutton and Lyell, and other early geologists revealed and wrote about the basic principles of geology, painstakingly untangling and piecing together the threads of the Earth’s vast history. They made sense of jumbled sequences of rocks, which had undergone dramatic changes since they were formed, and discerned the significance of fossils, found in environments seemingly incongruous to where the creatures once lived, as ancient forms of life. They set the stage for further research on the nature of the Earth and life on it, providing subsequent generations of geologists and those who study the Earth the basis on which to refine and flesh out the biography of the Earth.

scholarly journals II.—Climate and Time

1919 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. M. Deeley
Keyword(s):  
Physical Geography ◽  
The State ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
True Theory ◽  
Principles Of Geology

Sir Charles Lyell in his Principles of Geology, published in 1834, remarks upon the accumulating proofs that the climate of the earth had undergone great changes in the past, and he endeavoured to show that these changes might have been produced by the varying distribution of sea and land. He says, “But if, instead of vague conjectures as to what might have been the state of the planet at the era of its creation, we fix our thoughts steadily on the connexion at present between climate and the distribution of land and sea; and if we then consider what influence former fluctuations in the physical geography of the earth must have had on superficial temperature, we may perhaps approximate to a true theory.”

Humphry Davy as Geologist, 1805–29

1976 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Siegfried ◽  
R. H. Dott
Keyword(s):  
Steady State ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Textual Material ◽  
Humphry Davy ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Principles Of Geology

When Charles Lyell was writing his Principles of geology early in 1830, he interpolated five chapters between a recently written historical account of the science and the main body of textual material whose structure had long been determined. These added chapters contained not only Lyell's effort ‘to express the consequences of the uniformity of nature in the history of the earth’, but also his general arguments against the catastro-phic-progressionist interpretation, which he felt obliged to refute. In Chapter IX, the final one in the introductory sections, Lyell chose as representative of the progressionist view, Sir Humphry Davy, ‘a late distinguished writer’ who had ‘advanced some of the weightiest of these objections’ to Lyell's own steady-state view of the earth. No other defender of the progressionist history of the earth was named in Lyell's chapter, and we might well ask, why Humphry Davy? Was he merely an easy target for Lyell's refutations, a straw man set up by Lyell for his own rhetorical convenience?

scholarly journals III.—The Climate Controversy

1876 ◽  
Vol 3 (10) ◽  
pp. 442-451
Author(s):  
Searles V. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Ocean Currents ◽  
Polar Regions ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Low Latitudes ◽  
Principles Of Geology

No. 4.—The cause suggested under this head was the favourite theory of Sir Charles Lyell. That the existing climates are materially influenced by the distribution of land and water, and by the direction of the great ocean currents, physicists and geologists are agreed. It was the view, however, of Sir Charles, that these conditions were of themselves alone adequate to account for all changes of climate which the earth has undergone, though in his latest editions of the “Principles of Geology” he admitted that other causes have probably contributed. In this work he gave imaginary representations of such a distribution of land and water over the globe as, in his view, would produce the extreme of heat and the extreme of cold. In that intended to represent the extreme of heat, the land is all collected in low latitudes on either side of the Equator, so that the higher latitudes and polar regions are occupied entirely by the ocean; while in that intended to represent the extreme of cold, these conditions are reversed.

scholarly journals Two critical books in the history of loess investigation: ‘Charakteristik der Felsarten’ by Karl Caesar von Leonhard and ‘Principles of Geology’ by Charles Lyell

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 447-451
Author(s):  
Ulrich Hambach ◽  
Ian Smalley
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
The Third ◽  
Worldwide Distribution ◽  
The World ◽  
Short Piece ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rhine Valley ◽  
Principles Of Geology ◽  
Short Section

Abstract The two critical books, launching the study and appreciation of loess, were ‘Charakteristik der Felsarten’ (CdF) by Karl Caesar von Leonhard, published in Heidelberg by Joseph Engelmann, in 1823-4, and ‘Principles of Geology’ (PoG) by Charles Lyell, published in London by John Murray in 1830-3. Each of these books was published in three volumes and in each case the third volume contained a short piece on loess (about 2-4 pages). These two books are essentially the foundations of loess scholarship. In CdF Loess [Loefs] was first properly defined and described; section 89 in vol. 3 provided a short study of the nature and occurrence of loess, with a focus on the Rhine valley. In PoG there was a short section on loess in the Rhine valley; this was in vol.3 and represents the major dissemination of loess awareness around the world. A copy of PoG3 (Principles of Geology vol. 3) reached Charles Darwin on the Beagle in Valparaiso in 1834; worldwide distribution. Lyell and von Leonhard met in Heidelberg in 1832. Von Leonhard and Heinrich Georg Bronn (1800-1862) showed Lyell the local loess. These observations provided the basis for the loess section in PoG3. Lyell acknowledged the influence of his hosts when he added a list of loess scholars to PoG; by the 5th edition in 1837 the list comprised H.G. Bronn, Karl Caesar von Leonhard (1779-1862), Ami Boue (1794-1881), Voltz, Johann Jakob Noeggerath (1788-1877), J. Steininger, P. Merian, Rozet, C.F.H. von Meyer (1801-1869), Samuel Hibbert (1782-1848) and Leonard Horner (1785-1864); a useful list of loess pioneers. The loess is a type of ground that has only recently been established, and it seems, the peculiarity of the Rhine region, and of a very general but inconsistent spread.” H.G. Bronn 1830

Inventing the Present: Historical Roots of the Anthropocene

2011 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Davis
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
Physical Force ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
Geological Processes ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Historical Transition

In 1833, Charles Lyell proposed that the current post-glacial geological epoch be termed Recent. In the late 1860s, Paul Gervais suggested Holocene as a more appropriate name for the same epoch. In 2000, Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer jointly proposed that a new epoch beginning in the late eighteenth century should be named Anthropocene to connote that the human-determined geological signature is now, and for the foreseeable future will be, the predominant physical force shaping the Earth. Such a conclusion by geoscientists will not, and perhaps should not, pass unnoticed by politicians, environmentalists and other academic disciplines. Based upon a review of the early debates over the role of a deity in geological causation, the power of classification and nomenclature, and distinctions between organic and inorganic in geological processes, this paper traces the historical transition from Recent to Holocene to Anthropocene and concludes that the conceptual space for creating the modern Anthropocene was carved during the nineteenth-century foundation of geology.

scholarly journals IV.—The Sea Against Rain and Frost; or the Origin of Escarpments

1866 ◽  
Vol 3 (20) ◽  
pp. 63-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Mackintosh
Keyword(s):  
Present Form ◽  
The Other ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
Wide Difference ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Difference Of Opinion

As every part of the crust of the earth has at one time been the surface, it follows that all questions connected with the origin of the present “form of the ground” must be very impotant, and that on their issue the progress of Geology must in a great measure depend. But on this subject a very wide difference of opinion at present exists. According to one party, consisting of Professor Ramsay, Mr. Jukes, Mr. Geikie, Colonel Greenwood, Dr. Foster, and others, the more abrupt inequalities of the earth's surface have been produced by subaërial or atmospheric causes. According to the other school, embracing Sir Charles Lyell, Sir Roderick Murchison, Professors Sedgwick and Phillips, Mr.Edward Hull, etc., the sea has been the principal denuding or excavating agent.

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