Chapter 5: The Stone-Breakers

Please either use this thread to discuss the above referenced chapter of "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson.

Bryson sets up a neat contrast with this chapter and the previous one on measuring the earth. It's remarkable to consider that Isaac Newton was pretty accurate in his estimate of the weight of the earth, using no instruments whatever. Later amateurs (every scientist was one) such as Mitchell and Cavendish came even closer with the aid of crude instruments. Yet in assessing the age of the earth, even the brightest luminary, Lord Kelvin, was hopelessly off-base. Measuring extent and weight is comparatively easy; we do it all the time and have little trouble agreeing on naming discrete units which express what we're measuring or weighing. But with age, all our efforts to measure the time we were not here to experience have an arbitrary quality, and this is also true of our own history, where we label historical eras in the same arbitrary fashion. We know there was not a dividing line between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and that the labels are only for convenience of discussion. Bryson gives a rundown of the labels that are variously and inconsistently applied to the eras of geological time (there are in fact no eras, but we need to classify). This ends up sounding comical and somewhat parochial, with the English deriving the names of periods from local geography.

In terms of cosmological time, a million years is completely inconsequential. Even in earth terms, we can only give a range of millions of years--perhaps tens of millions--when we go back toward the origins of the earth.

A thought I had in reading this chapter was that, say what you will about the British class system, the useless aristocracy came up big in the science department and used its leisure time rather well. The clergy also played a role in geology, astronomy, and especially biology. Either situation is very hard to picture happening today, of course.

DWill wrote:there are in fact no eras

In The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert presents a very good case for the existence of geological eras, with the transitions between eras marked by the major extinction events.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event

Robert Tulip wrote:

DWill wrote:there are in fact no eras

In The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert presents a very good case for the existence of geological eras, with the transitions between eras marked by the major extinction events.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event

There are many different ways to organize history, whether it's human history or that of the earth. Extinction events weren't considered as criteria when geological classification was first being done. Relying on the age of rock strata was then, and I believe is still, considered the standard way. If there is another proposed method using mass extinctions, that supports the point I was trying to make about our habit of classifying--that we can get more than one result and claim them all to be accurate in their own ways. This is not arbitrariness; it just reflects the richness of the data.

The wonderful thing about this chapter is how Bryson makes the dry as dust topic of geology captivating and amusing. Bryson sets himself as the Boswell to Lyell’s Johnson. For those unfamiliar with this analogy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Boswell explains that such a notable as Sherlock Holmes exclaimed, in relation to Watson as his biographer, that Holmes would be lost without his Boswell. I think of James Gleick as a modern Boswell, turning the dustish topic of chaos theory into a gripping narrative in the fascinating book Chaos.

Bryson encourages us to laugh at the father of geology, one James Hutton, born in 1726. As an example of Hutton’s decidedly unboswellian ungripping, frankly somnolescifying prose, Bryson seeks to entice us with the observation from Hutton’s 1795 masterwork, A Theory of the Earth with Proofs and Illustrations , discussing . . . something: “The world which we inhabit is composed of the materials, not of the earth which was the immediate predecessor of the present, but of the earth which, in ascending from the present, we consider as the third...”

Luckily, Hutton’s Boswell, Professor of Mathematics John Playfair, rescued his ideas, due to Hutton’s ability to express himself better in conversation than in writing, and we now have all the wonderful legacy of geology, in the modern metal and energy industries that are the foundation of world prosperity today.

I'd be interested in asking Bryson whether he had a purpose other than entertainment in showing the very human sides of the scientists. His approach is like that of the high school history teacher who shows students the personalities and fallibilities of otherwise wooden textbook characters.

Can you guess what happens when "somnolescifying" is googled, Robert? A certain booktalk post comes up.

DWill wrote:His approach is like that of the high school history teacher who shows students the personalities and fallibilities of otherwise wooden textbook characters.

As a retired teacher today, I wish that I had learned the importance of story earlier in my career. My wife and I came to appreciate the power of this approach to teaching when we took on teaching assignments in Nunavut, the Inuit territory in Canada's far North. We were teaching in a fly-in community where most of our students spoke their first language of Inuktitut at home and with friends.

After a couple of months of frustration teaching in a second language to the students, my wife decided to change her approach to teaching her Canadian History class. She would use their high interest in family and relationships to strengthen her history lessons. She delved into the personal histories of the historical characters with interesting anecdotes (the students especially enjoyed the stories of our first prime minister and his drinking binges, in and out of parliament) and linked the stories to the historical facts and concepts she was trying to convey. According to the school principal, that was the most successful class in many years.

Bryson clearly understands the power of story to create and maintain a high level of interest.

DWill wrote:I'd be interested in asking Bryson whether he had a purpose other than entertainment in showing the very human sides of the scientists.

Science is a human activity, a fascinating quest for knowledge. The stories of the quirky personalities, including how Hutton’s dull writing on geology can hold brilliant insight, help the reader to relate to the humanity of science, the passion of scientists for facts and their rigorous explanation as revealing the order of nature. The way geology was able to explain how rocks occur and change over deep time is a major story for our planet, providing the context for the evolution of life, and also providing the foundation for economic exploitation of metal and energy.

DWill wrote:His approach is like that of the high school history teacher who shows students the personalities and fallibilities of otherwise wooden textbook characters.

Yes, describing characters whom students can relate to is a way to realise that scientific endeavour is both an ordinary and an extraordinary thing. Filling out the personality is the way to turn dry facts into vivid engaging stories full of plot and tension, and to show the process of getting knowledge is not simple, but that accidents of history and circumstance must combine to deliver progress.

DWill wrote:
Can you guess what happens when "somnolescifying" is googled, Robert? A certain booktalk post comes up.

Neologication should not put you to sleep.