Discovering Earth's History

History 388T

course description
   Coal was the basis of the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution marks the beginning of the Anthropocene and climate change. Drill here, drill now? Where was one to find it? 
   In the 1830s and 1840s an entire science, Geology, was established in the in order to determine the sequence in which rock was laid down and to infer what lay below the surface. In the process they discovered that the earth itself had a history, and that history was inscribed in the very ground on which they walked.
   In The Voyage of the Beagle (1830s), young Charles Darwin was a practicing geologist. In The Origin of Species (1859), the mature Charles Darwin was a paleontologist.  We will read both in this course, plus other works of popular science from the nineteenth and the late-twentieth century.

grades

• Report on a geological system                    30%
• Exams (take-home essays)                        50%
  • Midterm 1
  • Midterm
  • Final
• In-class (accountability)                             20%
  • Historical identifications
  • Reading notes

books
1. Alexander von Humboldt, Personal Narrative of a Journey (Penguin) 0-140-44553-6
2. Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology (Penguin) 0-140-43528-x
3. Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (Penguin) 0-140-43268-x
4. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (Penguin) 0-140-43205-1
5. M. J. S. Rudwick, The Great Devonian Controversy (Chicago) 978-0226731025
6. Steven Jay Gould, Wonderful Life (Harvard) 978-0393307009