Contents
Acknowledgements Vll
A Comprehensive History Implies the Study of Ignorance I
Part I Gaps in Enlightenment Knowledge of the Earth
I. The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 17 5 5 II
2. The Age of the Earth? 22
3. Imagining the Earth's Internal Structure 29
4. The Mystery of the Poles 37
5. The Unfathomable Mysteries of the Deep 44
6. Discovering Mountains 50
7. Mysterious Glaciers 58
8. A Fascination with Volcanoes 62
9. The Birth of Meteorology 73
IO. Conquering the Skies 84
II. The State of Scientific Ignorance at the End
of the Age of Enlightenment 87
Part II A Gradual Decline in Ignorance (1800-18 50)
12. Understanding Glaciers 93
13. The Birth of Geology 97
14. Volcanoes and the Mystery of 'Dry Fogs' 103
15. The Ocean Depths and the Fear of the
Unknown 109
16. Reading Clouds and the Beaufort Scale II3
17. The Poles Remain a Mystery 121
18. The State of Scientific Ignorance in the Early 1860s 126
Part III Shrinking the Boundaries of Ignorance (1860-1900)
19. Exploring the Ocean Depths 131
20. The Development of Dynamic Meteorology 136
2I. Manned Flight and the Discovery of the Troposphere and Stratosphere 142
22. Scientific Volcanology and the Birth of Seismology 145
23. Measuring the Grip of Ice 150
24. Solving the Mysteries of Rivers: Fluvialism, Hydrology and Speleology 153
25. A New Approach to Reading the Globe 161
26. Was There Open Sea at the Poles? 166
27. The Earth Sciences Slowly Filter into General Knowledge 175
28. Measuring Ignorance at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century 188
Notes 193
Index 210