Earth Sciences 2240F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Georges Cuvier, Sediment Transport, Catastrophism
9 Apr 2015
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Chapter 1: philosophy: problems with observations and interpretation. Back in the day churches always determined what the final outcomes of any investigations were to be, why investigate, study or even discuss them. Scientists introduced the concept of evolution or the process of change in order to understand how the world works. A danish natural philosopher, nicolaus steno was one of the first people to try to understand the earth"s surface. He understood the history of earth based on the processes he could see happening (weathering, sediment transport by water, production of layered sediments in lakes, etc. ). He wanted to know in what way the present condition of anything discloses the past condition of that same thing. Steno is called the father of stratigraphy (study of layers of rocks and sediments). Baron georges cuvier came along and dealt a large death blow to steno"s mapping principles from his own work and teachings.
