| View Larger Image | The Seashell on the Mountaintop | Paperbackby Alan Cutler (Author)
| List Price: | $15.00 | |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Plume | | Page Count: | 240 Pages | | Publication Date: | April 27, 2004 | | Sales Rank: | 495,210th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Seventeenth-century scientists were baffled: How did the fossils of seashells find their way to the tops of mountains? Nicolaus Steno, hailed by Stephen Jay Gould as "the founder of geology," solved the puzzle, looking directly at the clues left in the layers of the Earth. Paradoxically, at the same time his ideas were undermining the Bible’s authoritative claim as to the age of the planet, Steno was entering the priesthood and rising to bishop. He would ultimately be venerated as a saint and beatified by the Catholic Church in 1988. A thrilling tale of scientific investigation and the portrait of an extraordinary genius, The Seashell on the Mountaintop is the story of how a scientist-turned-priest forever changed our understanding of the Earth and created a new field of science. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 27 reviews)
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Engaging and Informative by Yothgoboufnir  5 Stars
June 18, 2009
This book successfully achieves a rare combination of the two ingredients most non-technical science books attempt to unite: 1) compelling elements of human narrative and 2) clearly and accurately delivered science.
The book focuses on a man who went by the name of Steno (among others). Steno noticed that much received knowledge in his life turned out to be empirically false, and so he dedicated himself to rebuilding factual knowledge of nature from the ground up. During his career Steno established a core of principles that have driven the field of geology ever since.
In Steno's work, the book shows what goes on during the birth of a science -- or, the birth of science. Though geology is not especially glamorous, especially nowadays when the earth's vast age is no longer scientifically novel, I recommend this book to anyone interested in the breadth of the scientific endeavor. Even persons whose interests don't really extend to geology will have much to appreciate in the essentially scientific story of Steno turning from folk knowledge to empirical, logical science.
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The Birth of a Science by M OReilly (Virginia) 5 Stars
June 13, 2009
This book details the life and times of a brilliant Danish anatomist, turned geologist, turned priest, bishop, then saint. His contemporaries were the likes of Sir Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, the philosophers Leibniz, Spinoza and Voltaire. But this book is more than a biography of Nicholaus Steno: it is a magnificent tapestry depicting the interplay of faith (or atheism) with the scientific data known at the time and the personalities of those with competing theories to explain a simple phenomenon. Why are seashells found on the tops of mountains?
It is difficult to imagine today why and how this simple fact generated a debate spanning some 150 years and how Steno's simple but elegant explanation was all but lost for many of them. Alan Cutler has done an admirable job bringing to life the debates, questions, and controversies that faced the scientists of the seventeenth century.
This incredibly readable book is indeed the story of the birth of a science. We now know it as geology. If you are at all interested in this topic you will love this book!
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Fascinating History of Science by Jay Young (Austin, TX USA) 5 Stars
February 13, 2008
Ever wonder why there are seashells in rocks or in buildings made out of rocks? Nicholaus Steno did too, and through his inquiry and investigation, discovered the geologic concept of "deep time"- discovering the age of the earth by examining the sedimentary layers.
Steno was a Danish scientist who originally went into anatomy. His brilliant lectures demolished Decartes' theories on the brain, and paved the way for new understandings of anatomy. His interest in fossils was sparked by a shark's head that he was using for one of his lectures. The "tongue stones" in the shark's mouth looked remarkably similar to the ones that he had seen in rocks. At the time, most people thought that fossils literally grew inside rocks, through "plastic forces of nature." (The scientific world had not yet outgrown Aristotle's physics.) Steno argued that the fossils could not possibly grow inside rocks, because they weren't distorted the way that objects that actually did grow inside rocks were. He eventually came to the conclusion that the seashell fossils inside the mountains were the result of the ocean once covering entire areas, and that sediments, in which fossils were trapped, layered on top of each other. Steno's discovery made Bishop Ussher's creation date of 4004 BC untenable, since it would have taken the seas far longer to recede than Noah's flood was supposed to have lasted.
This book is highly recommended for anyone who is interested in the history of scientific discovery, and how someone's curiosity can change the way people think about the world.
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A Pleasure to Read by Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) 5 Stars
October 20, 2006
We are privileged to live in a Golden Age of writing about the history of science. Several other reviewers have already sung the praises, aptly, of this book, so I will merely recommend a few other titles. If you enjoy this book, you'll also enjoy: The Ice Finders; The Man Who Discovered Time; Out of the Flames; The Lunar Men; World on Fire.
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A gem by S. M. Barr 5 Stars
August 29, 2006
Only a small minority of books on science or scientists manage to discuss the historical relation between science and religion with anything approaching balance and accuracy. This book is excellent in that regard. Cutler does not appear to be religious himself, yet he has a very sound grasp of the complex historic interplay between science and religion. The book is very readable, and gives a fascinating picture of how people in various ages saw the history of the earth.
I cannot refrain from correcting some mistakes of Mr. Raul Goulden below. First, Steno/Stensen was never sent to the city of which he was made "titular bishop". That never happens. Mr. Goulden misunderstands what is meant by a "titular bishop". Every bishop in the Catholic Church is given, in addition to his actual diocese, a purely ceremonial title as bishop of some diocese that is no longer in existence. (There is a kind of custom that dioceses never go out of legal existence, so that dioceses that existed in ancient times, but where there is no longer a city or where the population is now Muslim, say, still exist "on the books".) Stensen was never actually sent to a place in the Muslim world, as Goulden supposes. He was given a real diocese in northern (predominantly Lutheran) Europe. There he labored in very difficult conditions for the salvation of souls and the better treatment of the poor. There was nothing tragic about the end of his life, but rather (from a Christian point of view) something quite glorious. Second, Steno/Stensen did not convert because of love of ritual, but, as Cutler makes very clear in the book, for serious theological reasons, and after a deep study of early Church history.
Back to science: as a scientist who has read many books on science history and many biographies of scientists, I can attest that this is one of the very best. A gem.
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