Language of the Earth: A Literary Anthology

340 Pages·2008·2.55 MB·English

by  Frank H. T. Rhodes

Rhodes:LanguageoftheEarth 9781405160674_1_pretoc FinalProof page i 14.2.2008 5:17pm
Language of the Earth
Second Edition
FRANK H.T. RHODES,
EDITED BY
RICHARD O. STONE AND
BRUCE D. MALAMUD
Language of the Earth Edited By Frank H.T. Rhodes, Richard O. Stone and Bruce D. Malamud
© 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-4051-6067-4
Rhodes:LanguageoftheEarth 9781405160674_1_pretoc FinalProof page ii 14.2.2008 5:17pm
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Firstpublished2008byBlackwellPublishingLtd
FirsteditionpublishedbyPergamonPress1981
1 2008
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Languageoftheearth.–2nded./editedbyFrankH.T.Rhodes,RichardO.StoneandBruceD.Malamud.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-1-4051-6067-4(hardcover:alk.paper)
1.Geology.2.Geologists.I.Rhodes,FrankHaroldTrevor.II.Stone,RichardO.,1920–1978.
III.Malamud,B.D.(BruceD.)
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Rhodes:LanguageoftheEarth 9781405160674_2_toc FinalProof page iii 14.2.2008 5:17pm
Contents
Preface ix
Prefacefromthefirstedition xii
Acknowledgmentsfromthefirstedition xv
PART 1: THE EARTH EXPERIENCED 1
1. Eyewitness Accounts of Earth Events 3
1-1 John McPhee: Los Angeles Against the Mountains 4
1-2 Gordon Gaskill: The Night the Mountain Fell 6
1-3 R.G. McConnell and R.W. Brock: The Turtle Mountain Slide 11
1-4 Voltaire: Candide 12
1-5 James R. Newman: The Lisbon Earthquake 15
1-6 Mary Austin: The Temblor 18
1-7 Jonathan Weiner: The Alaskan Good Friday Earthquake 21
1-8 Francis P. Shepard: Tsunami 23
1-9 Haroun Tazieff: Not a Very Sensible Place for a Stroll 24
1-10 Fairfax Downey: Last Days of St Pierre 29
1-11 Hans Cloos: Beacons on the PassageOut 32
1-12 Jon Thorlakson: Eruption of the O¨raefajo¨kull, 1727 35
2. Exploration 38
2-1 Charles Darwin: The Voyage of the Beagle 38
2-2 Simon Winchester: The Map that Changed the World 40
2-3 John Wesley Powell: The Exploration of the Colorado River 42
2-4 William H. Brewer: Mono Lake–Aurora–Sonora Pass 44
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s 2-5 George F. Sternberg: Thrills in Fossil Hunting 45
t
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e 2-6 John E. Pfeiffer: The CreativeExplosion 47
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o 2-7 George Gaylord Simpson: Attending Marvels:
C
A Patagonian Journal 49
2-8 Robert D. Ballard: Explorations 50
2-9 Louise B.Young: The Blue Planet 53
3. Geologists are also Human 54
3-1 Stephen Drury: Stepping Stones 55
3-2 Elizabeth O.B. Gordon: William Buckland 56
3-3 Hugh Miller: The Old Red Sandstone 60
3-4 Sir Archibald Geikie: A Long Life’s Work 64
3-5 Frank H.T. Rhodes: Life, Time, and Darwin 66
3-6 R.A. Bartlett: King’s FormativeYears 69
3-7 M.E. David: With Shackleton in the Antarctic 72
3-8 William H. Goetzmann: The Great Diamond Hoax 76
3-9 Foreword by Luna B.Leopold, Paul D. Komar,
and Vance Haynes: Sand, Wind, and War 79
3-10 Hans Cloos: Ship’s Wake 81
4. Celebrities 85
4-1 H. Stommel: Benjamin Franklin and the Gulf Stream 85
4-2 Thomas Clements: Leonardo Da Vinci as a Geologist 87
4-3 R. Magnus: Mineralogy, Geology, Meteorology 89
4-4 E.T. Martin: Megalonyx, Mammoth, and Mother Earth 93
4-5 William A. Stanley: Three Short, Happy Months 96
4-6 W.G. Collingwood: Mountain-Worship 98
4-7 Herbert C. Hoover: StanfordUniversity, 1891–1895 100
PART 2: INTERPRETING THE EARTH 103
5. Philosophy 105
5-1 James Hutton: Concerning the System of the Earth,
its Duration and Stability 106
5-2 T.C. Chamberlin: The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses 110
5-3 George Gaylord Simpson: Historical Science 113
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5-4 Stephen Jay Gould: What is a Species? 116 ts
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5-5 Christine Turner: Messagesin Stone 119 t
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o
5-6 Marcia G. Bjørnerud: Natural Science, Natural Resources, C
and the Nature of Nature 120
5-7 Ian Stewart: Does God Play Dice? 123
6. The Fossil Record 126
6-1 Frank H.T. Rhodes: Earth and Man 127
6-2 Donald Culross Peattie: Flowering Earth 129
6-3 Robert Claiborne: Habits and Habitats 134
6-4 James A. Michener: Diplodocus, The Dinosaur 137
6-5 Berton Roueche´: AWindow on the Oligocene 141
6-6 Samantha Weinberg: A Fish Caught in Time 143
6-7 Richard E. Leakey: Ape-like Ancestors 145
6-8 Loren Eiseley: The Relic Men 146
7. Geotectonics 151
7-1 James A. Michener: From the Boundless Deep &
the Birth of the Rockies 152
7-2 Anna Grayson: When Pigs Ruled the Earth 155
7-3 David Attenborough: The Living Planet 158
7-4 William Glen: The Road to Jaramillo 161
7-5 J. Tuzo Wilson: Mao’s Almanac: 3,000 Yearsof
Killer Earthquakes 163
7-6 Richard H. Jahns: Geologic Jeopardy 167
8. Controversies 171
8-1 William Irvine: Apes, Angels, and Victorians 172
8-2 William L. Straus,Jr: The Great Piltdown Hoax 175
8-3 HowardS. Miller: Fossils and Free Enterprisers 179
8-4 Charles Officer and Jake Page: The K-T Extinction 182
8-5 Sir Archibald Geikie: The Founders of Geology 185
8-6 Don E. Wilhelms: To a Rocky Moon 188
8-7 Edward Schreiber and Orson L. Anderson: Properties
and Composition of Lunar Materials: Earth Analogies 190
8-8 Joel L. Swerdlow: CFCs 192
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en PART 3: LANGUAGE OF THE EARTH 195
t
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C 9. Prose 197
9-1 Isak Dinesen: Out of Africa 197
9-2 T.E. Lawrence: SevenPillars of Wisdom 200
9-3 Ernest Hemingway: Green Hills of Africa 201
9-4 Antoine de Saint-Exupe´ry: Wind, Sand and Stars 202
9-5 John Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Woman 204
9-6 John Muir: Trip to the Middle and North Forksof
San Joaquin River 207
9-7 Mark Twain: Roughing It 209
9-8 Thomas Fairchild Sherman: A Place on the Glacial Till 211
9-9 John McPhee: Basin and Range 213
9-10 John Darnton: Neanderthal 215
9-11 Kim Stanley Robinson: Antarctica 218
9-12 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The Lost World 220
10. Poetry 223
10-1 Sir Archibald Geikie: Landscape and Literature 224
10-2 William Wordsworth: The Excursion 226
10-3 Voltaire: The Lisbon Earthquake 227
10-4 C.S. Rafinesque: The Fountains of the Earth 228
10-5 Timothy A. Conrad: To a Trilobite 229
10-6 A.E. Housman: A Shropshire Lad 230
10-7 Andrew C. Lawson: Mente et Malleo 230
10-8 John Stuart Blackie: Selected Poems 232
10-9 Kenneth Rexroth: Lyell’s Hypothesis Again 233
10-10 A.R. Ammons: Selected Poems 234
10-11 Charles Simic: Stone 236
10-12 J.T. Barbarese: Fossils 236
10-13 Jane Hirshfield: Rock 237
10-14 W. Scott McLean, Eldridge M. Moores,and David
A. Robertson: Poetry Matters: Gary Snyder 238
10-15 TheBook of Job: Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? 242
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11. Art 244 s
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11-1 Jacquetta Hawkes: A Land: Sculpture 245 e
t
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11-2 Jack Burnham: Beyond Modern Sculpture 247 Co
11-3 Elizabeth C. Childs: Time’s Profile: John Wesley Powell,
Art, and Geology at the Grand Canyon 249
11-4 R.A. Bartlett: Thomas Moran: American
Landscape Painter 253
11-5 Diane Ackerman: Earth Calling 255
PART 4: THE CROWDED PLANET 257
12. Human History 259
12-1 John D. Ridge: Minerals and World History 260
12-2 Jacquetta Hawkes: A Land: Architecture 261
12-3 Donald F. Eschmanand Melvin G. Marcus: The Geologic and
Topographic Settingof Cities 263
12-4 Douglas W. Johnson: Topography and Strategy in the War 266
12-5 John McPhee: Geologyand Crime 268
12-6 Kenneth E.F. Watt: Tambora and Krakatau 269
12-7 Lord Ritchie-Calder: Mortgaging the Old Homestead 273
12-8 Harlow Shapley: Breathing the Future and the Past 275
13. Resources 277
13-1 Rachel L. Carson: Wealth fromthe Salt Seas 278
13-2 Charles F. Park, Jr: Minerals, People, and the Future 280
13-3 M. Dane Picard: The Bingham Canyon Pit 282
13-4 John G.C.M. Fuller: The Geological Attitude 284
13-5 Michel T. Halbouty: Geology – For Human Needs 286
14. Benevolent Planet 289
14-1 James Lovelock: Gaia 290
14-2 Fritjof Capra: The Web of Life 291
14-3 Charles Morgan: Remember the Land 292
14-4 Gabriele Kass-Simon: Rachel Carson:
The Idea of Environment 293
14-5 Rachel L. Carson: Silent Spring 294
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ts 14-6 S. George Philander: Who is El Nin˜o? 295
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t 14-7 National Research Council: Essay on the Earth Sciences 297
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C 14-8 Diane Ackerman: The Round Walls of Home 299
14-9 Ernest Zebrowski, Jr: The Butterfly Effect 301
14-10 Carl Sagan: Pale Blue Dot 304
Sources 305
Namesindex 315
Subjectindex 320
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Preface
Every life is a continuing encounter with Earth. Every breath is a transactionwith our
planet.Everymealisanassimilationofterrestrialproducts.Everyitemweuse,touch,or
manufacture is a piece of Earth. Every element in our bodies, atom for atom, comes
from Earth’s crust. Every calorie of energy we use comes directly from Earth, and
indirectlyfromEarth’sparentstar,theSun.
WeareformedofthedustoftheEarth,justastheancientscriptureaffirms.Butthat
dust is star dust. We are not only Earth’s children; we are the grandchildren of a star.
‘‘Dustwemaybe,’’MauriceBoydhasremarked,‘‘butthedustofastar,andtroubledby
dreams.’’Andinthosedreamsrestourgreatnessandourhope.
Thisisananthology,abookofwritingsaboutourparentplanet,Earth.Itisnotabook
ofscience,thoughsomewritersarescientists.Itisnotdidactic,thoughwehopeitwillbe
instructive. It is not comprehensive, though it covers an expansive range of topics.Our
purposeinwriting istoinspireinterest,rather thantotellthewholestory;towhetthe
appetite, rather than ‘‘provide all the data’’; to ignite the imagination, rather than
instructindetail.CertainlywehopestudentsofEarthsciencewillfindthebookuseful,
whether as required supplementaryreading in formal courses, or as a diversion froma
surfeit of scientific literature. But our intended audience is wider: because we are all
Earth’schildren,wehopethatthesereportsontheparentplanetwillbeofinteresttothe
general reader and will be read as letters from home. This is a book for browsing, for
tasting,for reflecting.
Theseaccountsofthehomeplanet,theirstyleandtheirviewpoints,areasvariedastheir
authors. We hope that by using the form of an anthology, based as it is on the writings
of authors of many backgrounds, periods and interests, we can capture a sense of the
fascinationandmysteryofthisancientandbeautiful,blueplanet.Wehopethatthereader
willcatchaglimpseofitscontradictorymoods:itsbenevolenceanditsterror,itsresilience
anditsfragility,itstranquilityanditsepisodicviolence,itsregularityanditsunpredictability.
Inthisrespect,theemphasisofthepresentbookdiffersfromthatofthefirstedition.
That work was directed chiefly to students of Earth science; this volume, though
retaining that goal, is consciously more general in its scope and more expansive in its
rangeoftopics.Thefirsteditionaimedtoprovideacontextforthatparticularcategory
ofknowledgewhichweidentifyasEarthscience,toshownotonlyitsrangeandscope,
but also its flavor, style and implications; to show all knowledge as provisional, rather
thaninfallible,asrefinablerather thancompleteandfinished.