The Chronologers' Quest The Search for the Age of the Earth

About this book

The debate over the age of the Earth has been ongoing for over two thousand years, and has pitted physicists and astronomers against biologists, religious philosophers against geologists. The Chronologers' Quest tells the fascinating story of our attempts to determine the age of the Earth. The Chronologers' Quest investigates the many novel methods used in the search for the Earth's age, from James Ussher and John Lightfoot examining biblical chronologies, Comte de Buffon and Lord Kelvin determining the length of time for the cooling of the Earth, to the more recent investigations of Arthur Holmes and Clair Patterson into radioactive dating of rocks and meteorites.

The Chronologers' Quest is a readable account of the measurement of geological time. It will be of great interest to a wide range of readers, from those with little scientific background, to students and scientists in a wide range of the earth sciences.

Contents

List of illustrations
List of tables
Preface
Acknowldegements

1. The ancients: early chronologies
2. Biblical calculations
3. Models of Aristolean infinity and Sacred theories of the Earth
4. Falling stones, salty oceans, and evaporating waters: early empirical measurements of the age of the Earth
5. Thinking in layers: early ideas in stratigraphy
6. An infinite and cyclical Earth and religious orthodoxy
7. The cooling Earth
8. Stratigraphic laws, uniformitarianism and the development of the geological column
9. 'Formed stones' and their subsequent role in biostratigraphy and evolutionary theory
10. The hour-glass of accumulated or denuded sediments
11. Thermodynamics and the cooling Earth revisited
12. Oceanic salination reconsidered
13. Radioactivity: invisible geochronometers
14. The universal problem and duck soup

Sources
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Patrick Wyse Jackson is a lecturer in Geology and curator of the Geological Museum in Trinity College, Dublin, and is a member of the International Commission on the History of Geology.