Talk:History of geology
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You have done some very good research here, and you have given me some ideas for changes to the history of paleontology article ans some others (such as stratigraphy). I do have some suggestions. Since you haven't actually put the article forward, I didn't edit the text.
You give credit for fossil based stratigraphy to Cuvier and Broignart (actually it is Alexandre Brongniart), but other articles on the English wikipedia (and many other sources) credit William Smith. The truth according to the best reference I have (Rudwick The Meaning of Fossils) was that Smith was working indepednently on his geologic map of England at the same time (or slightly before) Cuvier and Broignart were working on the strata arround Paris. It is probably best to mention Smith as well as the other two, and I think I will fix the stratigraphy and history of paleontology arctiles to mention Cuvier and Broignart as well. It is always better when articles don't directly contradict one another. You might consider mentioning Nicholas Steno as well. Smith might not have been aware of Steno's 17th century work, but Cuvier almost certainly would have been aware of it.
One thing you really need to do is go through and make internal links for terms like stratigraphy, catastrophism, uniformitarianism, plate tectonics, and radiometric dating. You did this for your introductory paragraph but for some reason not for the rest of the article.
Another comment is that it would really be better if you seperated references and notes into seperate sections, see history of biology or history of paleontology for examples. It would also be good to give ISBN numbers for sources whenever possible.
Rusty Cashman 10:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I am a little concerned about your coverage of the debate between uniforminatarianism and catastrophism. In particular I think the sentence "Although Lyell’s works were popular and widely read, evidence was found that disproved his theory and the majority of society believed to some extent the principles of Catastrophism."[36] may be a little misleading. Lyell was largely successful in convincing people that the geological history of the earth could be explained by the long term action of forces that could be observed currently. Almost to the point of that becoming geological dogma by the early 20th century. I don't have the source you site, but I suspect that it may be talking about his views about the fossil record and the history of life on earth. Lyell maintained that the patterns of faunal succession that people were observing in the fossil record (ie fishes first then amphibians, then reptiles, then mammals and birds) were artifacts of the fossilization process rather than true indications of progression. He was never successful in convincing most people on this point and new fossil finds were making it less and less tenable as time went on. This distinction between the acceptance of uniforminatarianism in terms of geological processes and the lack of acceptance of Lyell's ideas about the fossil record is an important one.
Rusty Cashman 21:46, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Peer Tutor Nick: I really likedd the article and the amount of detail that was put into introducing and describing all the key aspects of the History of Geology and the way various theories came about. THerewas perhaps only one thing that bthered me when readng the article. The topic about Neptunism and Plutonism only mentions that Plutonism as the opposite of Neptunism. There is no clear explanation for what exactl it is other than the oppostie of the thoery that " the earth’s layers, including basalt and granite, had formed as a precipitate from an ocean that covered the entire earth". What exactly would be the opposite of this? Other than that I beleive the essay was written ver well with enough detail to fully grasp the history of this particular science.
Peer review by Christy
I agree with Nick about the attention to detail in the article. A few things about the intro, though, that I'd like to suggest: briefly define strata in the beginning just to give a clear idea, the sentence in the 1st paragraph starting with "Ancient Greece" is a fragment, and "Uniformitarians" is misspelled. Otherwise, the intro gives a great concise overview of the article. Oh sorry, I forgot one thing: you mention in the Origins section that the reason why geology was thrust into the limelight was because of mining, so I feel that this could be mentioned in the intro ("increased societal interest" = mining). Other than that, I liked the organization, good job!
Peer review by Mike:
The progression of ideas in your article is good, but it would beneficial to split up your longer sections into subsections. Your section on the origins of geology jumps from the time of aristotle to the 17th century to the 18th century. In my opinion, it would be better to split up the origins section, or create two different sections. I also agree with the first reviewer's comments about Lyell, and I feel you should mention him in the overview. Other than than that, great job.
Peer review by Tyler Scheid:
This was another great article that had plenty of sources to back up the information. I really felt that the article was comprehensive and gave a good insight into the history of geology. I think that the article itself is complete enough and gives a great view into the history of geology but I think one thing it lacks is the relationship that geology has to modern science and to our course. I am not sure how deep you should delve into this but I think it would be beneficial to look into the impact that the history of geology has on modern science and possibly the impact that it has had on the development of modern geology. If possible I think it would also be useful to look more into modern geology. You do an extensive job describing the origins and I think it would really make the article complete if a similarly comprehensive look was taken into modern geology. Overall I think this article has plenty of sources and there are only minor “so what?” additions that need to be made.
