Through a glass darkly

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Beerling
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Developmental Biology ◽  
Scientific Basis ◽  
Microscopic Investigation ◽  
Modern Synthesis ◽  
Fossil Plants ◽  
New Era ◽  
Plant Fossils ◽  
Age Of Discovery ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Scientific Truth

Throughout this book we have encountered a varied cast of historical characters, who have pioneered the development of palaeobotanical thought over the past two centuries. Although the fascination of plant fossils has an exceptional pedigree, reaching back to at least the eleventh century, Edward Jacob (Chapter 7) was the earliest of these ‘searchers of scientific truth’ introduced here. Jacob’s eighteenth-century claim to fame lay in his descriptions of the fossilized remains of exotic subtropical floras and faunas in the crumbling sediments around the coastline of the Isle of Sheppey. Jacob was followed by the true palaeobotanical pioneers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who established the scientific basis for the anatomical and microscopic investigation of fossil plants. Through their synthesis of palaeontological knowledge, they established the study of fossils as technical and exacting, rather than a mere hobby. And a common thread linking us with this ‘golden age’ of discovery and description is the notion that the fossils record some aspects of Earth’s ancient climates. It’s a telling reminder that curiosity compels us to ask why certain fossils are where they are and to speculate on what it means. Albert Seward, who examined Scott of the Antarctic’s fossils (Chapter 6), codified this concept best with his celebrated and timely 1892 essay. Seward’s essay opened the eyes of devotees of fossil plants to possibilities beyond the traditional activities of description and classification. The argument of this book is that the emerging modern synthesis sees the dawning of a new era in the study of fossil plants. I am advocating that this modern synthesis arises out of the seamless integration of new knowledge concerning the physiological and ecological behaviour of living plants and ecosystems into the subject of palaeobotany. The promise of incorporating a powerful and exciting third strand, the science of the genetic pathways controlling the form of organisms—evolutionary developmental biology—into our thinking, is on the horizon. If this view is correct, then the study of living plants may be the driving force for unlocking greater riches from fossilized plant remains.

Collective Security Reexamined

1953 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 753-772 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
International Society ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
State System ◽  
Modern State ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Collective Security ◽  
New Era ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

From one standpoint it is a truism to say that collective security is something new under the sun. In past eras and especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, war was conceived of as a duel in which contestants should be isolated and restrained by the rest of international society. When nations engaged in armed conflict their neighbors sought to localize the struggle and alleviate its poisonous effects. However short-sighted their actions in not meeting the conflict directly and turning back aggression at its source, the nations pursuing these policies were sometimes successful for varying periods of time in preserving islands of peace in a warring world.On August 8, 1932, however, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson proclaimed the revolutionary fact that the modern state system was entering a new era in which warring powers were no longer entitled to the same equally impartial and neutral treatment by the rest of society. He announced to the New York Council of Foreign Relations that in future conflicts one or more of the combatants must be designated as wrong-doer and added: “We no longer draw a circle about them and treat them with the punctilios of the duelist's code. Instead we denounce them as lawbreakers.”

Empire and hinterland in lower Central America

Antiquity ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 66 (250) ◽  
pp. 191-203
Author(s):  
Mary W. Helms
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
New World ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Expansion ◽  
Developing Nation ◽  
New Era ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Age Of Discovery

The European discovery of a separate and distinctive ‘new’ world was an event of cosmic proportion not only because of the enormous social, political and economic expansion potential for the developing nation-states of the European peninsula; discovery of this distant realm also required significant reconstruction of basic European cosmography. In the centuries prior to the Age of Discovery, Europe, focussing on Rome and Byzantium, had balanced its own geo-political centricity with cosmological interpretations of mystically paradisiacal or demonic distant lands generally situated to the East, places filled with exotic creatures and things, some dangerous while others constituted kingly riches. A new era began when the ocean to the west, long regarded as a restrictive barrier, became a possible route, a direction, which could lead to the exotica of the East. Realization that this western direction led instead to distinctive new western lands, new places, re-ordered the European cosmological paradigm (Helms 1988: chapter 6).

The Parsi Panchayat in Bombay City in the Nineteenth Century

1970 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Dobbin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Communal Identity ◽  
Traditional Methods ◽  
New Era ◽  
Western Education ◽  
Bombay City ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The Middle Ages

From the Middle Ages each of the great merchant castes and communities of Gujarat possessed its own guild (Mahajan) to regulate trade, and a Panchayat to regulate caste matters. The migration of members of these castes to the British city of Bombay in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries caused considerable disruption in the traditional methods of regulating caste affairs. In the Mofussil control over almost every aspect of mundane life had been exercised by the leading shets of the caste. In Bombay, however, the precedence of certain Mofussil villages and Mofussil families was no longer unequivocally recognized. Western-educated caste members began to demand in all areas of life ‘the inauguration of a new era, showing that opinion had taken the precedence of mere hereditary authority’. Even to those without Western education the proximity of the British law courts gave confidence in an appeal against traditional obedience. The fear of the interference of the courts on behalf of an excommunicated man limited the sanctions available to the caste shets to enforce their authority. All these factors circumscribed the power the caste heads could exercise through their traditional Panchayats, and by the middle of the nineteenth century it seemed that the cohesiveness of many castes and communities was breaking down. But there was another side to the coin. While the bonds of caste discipline and authority were being loosened, awareness of communal identity was being heightened by the competitiveness of urban life. Castes and communities became aware of the need to reorganize themselves in order to present a united front on questions affecting the community, and of the need to put caste funds to the best use to maximize the possibilities of secular achievement for the members of the community.

scholarly journals Naming of parts: the use of fossil-taxa in palaeobotany

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-186
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Cleal ◽  
Barry A. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Not Given ◽  
Morphological Similarity ◽  
Fossil Plants ◽  
Living Plant ◽  
Plant Fossils ◽  
Plant Parts ◽  
Sedimentary Deposits ◽  
Phylogenetic Studies ◽  
Code Of Nomenclature ◽  
International Code Of Nomenclature

Fossil plants are extinct plants whose remains (referred to as plant fossils) are found preserved in sedimentary deposits. Plant fossils are classified using fossil-taxa as defined in the International Code of Nomenclature. Fossil-taxa differ conceptually from taxa of living plants in that they often do not refer to whole organisms, but to the remains of one or more parts of the parent organism, in one or more preservational states. There can be complications when two parts of a plant are shown to be connected, or when two preservational states are correlated, and to avoid disrupting the wider palaeobotanical taxonomy it is often best to keep the fossil-taxa separate. Extinct fossil plants reconstructed by piecing together the plant fossils are best not given formal Linnean taxonomic names. There can also be problems using living plant taxa for fossils, even when there is a close morphological similarity of particular plant parts. Fossil-taxa for different plant parts can reflect different taxonomic ranks of the parent plants so care must be taken when using such taxa in floristic or phylogenetic studies. Because of taphonomic factors, a number of “artificial” fossil-taxa have proved useful, despite that they do not fully reflect the systematic positions of the parent plants.

The Evolution of Civilization

2020 ◽  
pp. 46-74
Author(s):  
Stephen Gaukroger
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Basis ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries science was promoted as the key to the progress that was now associated with civilization. In Comte’s influential Cours de Philosophie Positive, society was to be reformed on a resolutely scientific basis, and two kinds of development of a Comtean programme are distinguished: Buckle’s explicitly Comtean attempt to place the historical understanding of civilization on a scientific basis, and Spencer’s attempt to account for the evolution of civilization along biological lines. In this chapter the uptake of these ideas in the East is examined, and the question of the role of technology in the development of civilization is raised.

The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Fire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew C. Scott
Keyword(s):  
Organic Material ◽  
Fossil Plants ◽  
Tea Leaves ◽  
Natural Approach ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
Plant Fossils ◽  
Plant Fragment ◽  
Small Needle ◽  
Agent Of Change ◽  
Coal Measures

When I started my doctoral research in October 1973 I never imagined that I would spend so much of my career thinking about fire. I had not considered fire as an agent of change on Earth, or that charcoal deposits may preserve its long history on the planet. I had never thought of fire as a preservational mechanism for fossil plants, producing charcoal that would show their anatomy so that they could be identified, and help us to piece together the vegetation that must have clothed the land millions of years ago. In all my years of collecting fossils as a child and student I had never found, or at least noticed, any fossil charcoal. I had wanted to look at the ecology of the plants that were found during the Carboniferous, 300 million years ago. The natural approach was to look at the large fossil plants that could easily be found in rocks such as the Coal Measures that are often found scattered on old coal tips. But many smaller plant fragments are also preserved in the rocks. I started a programme of dissolving the rocks in acids and obtaining residues of the fossil plants that remained. The rocks are made up of minerals that dissolve in different acids from the plant fossils, which are made of organic material. It was hard work, and I spent many hours a day picking through the plant fragment residues, which were about the size of tea leaves, trying to identify what the fragments represented. Incredibly, at that time, few researchers had tried to look at plant fossils in this way. I soon noticed a large number of fragments that looked like charcoal, and examined these with an SEM. Under the SEM the astonishing detail in the charcoalified leaves was revealed (BW Plate 6). The small needle-like leaves had two beautifully preserved rows of stomata. But what kind of plant did they come from? I took the material to Bill Chaloner, who was one of the world’s authorities on the lycopods, one of the most common plants found in the coal measures.

VI.—On the So-called “Plant Fossils” from the Silurian of Central Wales

1883 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-34
Author(s):  
A. G. Nathorst
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Plants ◽  
Plant Fossils ◽  
Mode Of Occurrence ◽  
Geological Magazine

In the Geological Magazine, Dec. II. Vol. IX. November, 1882, my esteemed friend, Mr. W. Keeping, describes (pp. 485–491) some markings from the Silurian beds of Central Wales, which he considers to be fossil plants. The description of those markings, however, so far from supporting the correctness of Mr. Keeping's views, seem, on the contrary, to put it quite beyond doubt that the objects referred to are only trails and burrows of Annelids. It is indeed most surprising that Mr. Keeping, although referring to my paper on trails of different animals, etc., seems to have taken no notice whatever of the statements which are there brought forward as to the mode of occurrence and structure of the worm trails. For if this had been done, I think that the objects referred to would never have been described as fossil plants.

The Discovery of Nitrogen and the Disappearance of Alchemical Nitre: The Rise of Agricultural Chemistry in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. J. Leigh
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Plant Growth ◽  
Soil Fertility ◽  
Sodium Nitrate ◽  
Scientific Basis ◽  
Crystalline Solid ◽  
Agricultural Chemistry ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

So far, we have seen how sophisticated systems of agriculture had grown up in many different places and at various times in order to overcome problems associated with the decline of soil fertility arising from continuous exploitation. In Europe and elsewhere, it was clearly understood that manures and various materials such as potassium (or sodium) nitrate could rejuvenate the soil, and empirically probably little more could have been achieved in this direction. Nevertheless, the supply of the products capable of doing this was clearly limited. Only when the scientific basis of the action of fertilisers and manures had been fully understood could further advances be made, and this only happened with the scientific revolution, which began to flower in the sixteenth century and continues in bloom to this day. The empirical experience of centuries seems to have led to the supposition in Europe that the air was somehow involved in restoring the fertility of soils and in the facilitation of plant growth. However, the reason for this influence could not have been presented in modern terms. A lot of the discussion was centred about the mysterious substance nitre, which was then not simply the salt we recognise today. There are many instances of statements to the effect that nitre was absorbed from the air and even references in the older literature to aerial nitre. Solid nitre was, of course, very well-known in the form of saltpetre and was widely employed as a constituent of gunpowder. This kind of nitre could also be used as a fertiliser, though there was not enough of it around to “waste” by spreading it on the soil. Then, as is often true today, warfare was regarded as a more important use for such a resource. Nitre could be extracted from manures and from ashes, and, because it was a crystalline solid, it certainly was not the mysterious something that was present in the air. There was no understanding of the modern notions of elements and compounds. It would take a long time—two centuries—for a truly scientific approach to agricultural chemistry to be developed, but it is still worthwhile to enquire what exactly writers of treatises in the mid-seventeenth century really meant.

Fossil plants from the Viséan of East Kirkton, West Lothian, Scotland

1993 ◽  
Vol 84 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 249-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. C. Scott ◽  
R. Brown ◽  
J. Galtier ◽  
B. Meyer-Berthaud
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Study ◽  
Black Shale ◽  
Vegetation Type ◽  
Plant Distribution ◽  
Individual Plant ◽  
Fossil Plants ◽  
Similar Material ◽  
Plant Fossils ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Sequence Unit

ABSTRACTPlant fossils are a common and important element in the East Kirkton biota of Brigantian (late Viséan age). The most important taxa are preserved as compressions or anatomically preserved as permineralisations. The basis of the quantitative study of the flora and the distribution of individual plant species was the trenched section excavated for the East Kirkton Project. The largest diversity of compressions have been recorded from loose blocks. In the trenched section, the uppermost ashes contain only lycopsid compressions including Stigmaria. Nodules in the underlying shales yield mainly lycopsid leaf and sporophyll compressions. The uppermost limestones (Units 39-52) contain drifted fragments of pteridosperm fronds mainly Sphenopteridium crassum, S. pachyrrhachis, Spathulopteris obovata and Adiantites antiquus. Permineralised Lyginorachis spp. occur at this level. Large permineralised woody gymnosperm axes have been found loose (including Pitus, 50 cm in diameter). Permineralised axes, mainly reworked, including the gymnosperms Bilignea, Eristophyton, Stanwoodia and possibly Protopitys, have been found in Units 72-88. Poorly preserved permineralised lycopsids are rare, but include Lepidophloios. Loose chert blocks contain root mats of permineralised Stigmaria, together with Lepidocarpon, the sphenopsid Archaeocalamites and the fern Botryopteris. Similar material is found in Unit 83 of the Limestone sequence. Unit 82, the black shale containing many of the articulated vertebrates, contains predominantly pteridosperm frond and pinnule material including Spathulopteris obovata. The distinctive changes in the flora from the base to the top of the trenched sequence reflect mainly ecological and taphonomic controls upon plant distribution and preservation. Evidence suggests a close relationship between climate, fire, erosion, deposition and vegetation type through the sequence and a climatic change, from a drier to a wetter environment, is suggested at the top of the East Kirkton Limestone sequence.

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