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

Investigates the methods used to determine the Earth's age from those with little scientific background to scientists in Earth sciences.

Patrick Wyse Jackson (Author)

9781108462532, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 March 2018

309 pages
23 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.5 kg

"...interesting and accessible to a general audience ... Jackson lays out the information clearly and chronologically, making it an excellent resource for researchers."
Sky & Telescope

The debate over the age of the Earth has been ongoing for over two thousand years, and has pitted physicists and astronomers against biologists, and religious philosophers against geologists. The Chronologers' Quest tells the fascinating story of our attempts to determine the age of the Earth. This book investigates the many novel methods used in the search for the Earth's age, from James Ussher and John Lightfoot examining biblical chronologies, and from 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.

List of illustrations
List of tables
Preface
Acknowledgements
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.

Subject Areas: Earth sciences [RB], Popular science [PDZ], History of science [PDX]