Geology Quotes - Page 5

• But Geology carries the day: it is like the pleasure of gambling, speculating, on first arriving, what the rocks may be; I often mentally cry out 3 to 1 Tertiary against primitive; but the latter have hitherto won all the bets.

  Charles Darwin

  Gambling, Rocks, Arriving

  Charles Darwin, Frederick Burkhardt, Sydney Smith (1985). “The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1821-1836”, p.232, Cambridge University Press

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• If usually the "present age" is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as thehistory of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.

  Josiah Royce

  Years, Civilization, Long

  Josiah Royce, John K. Roth (1982). “The Philosophy of Josiah Royce”, p.173, Hackett Publishing

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• In geology we cannot dispense with conjectures: [but] because we are condemned to dream let us ensure that our dreams are like those of sane men-e.g. that they have their foundations in truth-and are not like the dreams of the sick, formed by strange combinations of phantasms, contrary to nature and therefore incredible.

  Scipione Breislak

  Dream, Science, Men

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• Can a geology teacher blithely tell his students that the earth is flat, or a European history professor that the Holocaust didn't happen? That's not academic freedom, but dereliction of duty.

  Jerry A. Coyne

  Teacher, Academic Freedom, Holocaust

  "More Creationism Sneaks Into Public Schools". Personal blog, whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com. April 29, 2013.

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• Global warming hysterics generally have limited scientific knowledge, and of geology and meteorology in particular. Their belief is not science; it's more akin to religion. The main epicenter of hysteria is not the scientific community but seems to be Hollywood.

  Doug Casey

  Hysteria, Community, Hollywood

  Doug Casey (2012). “Totally Incorrect”, p.93, Laissez Faire Books

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• To say that there is a soul in stones simply in order to account for their production is unsatisfactory: for their production is not like the reproduction of living plants, and of animals which have senses. For all these we see reproducing their own species from their own seeds; and a stone does not do this at all. We never see stones reproduced from stones; ... because a stone seems to have no reproductive power at all.

  Albertus Magnus

  Science, Animal, Rocks

  Saint Albertus Magnus (1967). “Book of Minerals”

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• The Anthropocene essentially would be the time of human influence on the planet. That's controversial though, because geology is a retrospective discipline. The rocks of the Anthropocene haven't been deposited yet, really.

  Kenneth Lacovara

  Rocks, Discipline, Would Be

  "What's The Anthropocene?". "TED Radio Hour" with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. September 30, 2016.

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• Civilization just takes it as a given that the whole world was flooding. Then science came and you had geology and modern astrophysics, and time became well understood going back billions of years. So enlightened religious people, as a necessity, had to shed the magical elements of the Bible. A little known fact is that Thomas Jefferson did just that. There's something called the Jefferson Bible. It's not widely publicized because it sort of conflicts with certain people's ideas of what the founding fathers were.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Religious, Father, Years

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The six thousand years of human history form but a portion of the geologic day that is passing over us: they do not extend into the yesterday of the globe, far less touch the myriads of ages spread out beyond.

  Hugh Miller

  Science, Years, Yesterday

  Hugh Miller (1857). “An Autobiography: My Schools and Schoolmasters; Or, The Story of My Education”, p.441

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• [My Book] will endeavour to establish the principle[s] of reasoning in ... [geology]; and all my geology will come in as illustration of my views of those principles, and as evidence strengthening the system necessarily arising out of the admission of such principles, which... are neither more nor less than that no causes whatever have from the earliest time to which we can look back, to the present, ever acted, but those now acting; and that they never acted with different degrees of energy from that which they now exert.

  Charles Lyell

  Book, Science, Views

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• [To] explain the phenomena of the mineral kingdom ... systems are usually reduced to two classes, according as they refer to the origin of terrestrial bodies to FIRE or to WATER; and ... their followers have of late been distinguished by the fanciful names of Vulcanists and Neptunists. To the former of these Dr HUTTON belongs much more than to the latter; though, as he employs the agency both of fire and water in his system, he cannot, in strict propriety, be arranged with either.

  John Playfair

  Science, Agency, Class

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• Combining in our survey then, the whole range of deposits from the most recent to the most ancient group, how striking a succession do they present:- so various yet so uniform-so vast yet so connected. In thus tracing back to the most remote periods in the physical history of our continents, one system of operations, as the means by which many complex formations have been successively produced, the mind becomes impressed with the singleness of nature's laws; and in this respect, at least, geology is hardly inferior in simplicity to astronomy.

  Roderick Murchison

  Nature, Mean, Science

  Roderick Impey Murchison (1839). “The silurian system, founded on geological researches in the counties of Salop, Hereford etc”, p.574

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• When autumn returns with its long anticipated holidays, and preparations are made for a scamper in some distant locality, hammer and notebook will not occupy much room in the portmanteau, and will certainly be found most entertaining company.

  Archibald Geikie

  Notebook, Holiday, Autumn

  Sir Archibald Geikie (1858). “The Story of a Boulder: Or, Gleanings from the Note-book of a Field Geologist”, p.9

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• Lately we have been getting facts pointing to the "oceanic" nature of the floor of so-called inland seas. Through geological investigations it has been definitely established that in its deepest places, for instance, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, the Earth's crust is devoid of granite stratum. The same may be said quite confidently about the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Could the interpretation of these data be that inland seas were the primary stage of the formation of oceanic basins?

  Vladimir Belousov

  Ocean, Science, Sea

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• Geology is rapidly taking its place as an introduction to the higher history of man. If the author has sought to exalt a favorite science, it has been with the desire that man-in whom geological history had its consummation, the prophecies of the successive ages their fulfilment-might better comprehend his own nobility and the true purpose of his existence.

  James Dwight Dana

  Science, Men, History

  James Dwight Dana (1869). “Manual of Geology: Treating of the Principles of the Science, with Special Reference to American Geological History, for the Use of Colleges, Academies, and Schools of Science”, p.9

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• I am convinced, by repeated observation, that marbles, lime-stones, chalks, marls, clays, sand, and almost all terrestrial substances, wherever situated, are full of shells and other spoils of the ocean.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  Ocean, Science, Rocks

  Georges Louis Leclerc comte de Buffon (1785). “Natural History, General and Particular”, p.13

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• If catastrophic geology had at times pushed Nature to almost indecent extremes of haste, uniformitarian geology, on the other hand, had erred in the opposite direction, and pictured Nature when she was 'young and wantoned [sic] in her prime', as moving with the lame sedateness of advanced middle age. It became necessary, therefore, as Dr. [Samuel] Haughton expresses it, 'to hurry up the phenomena'.

  William Johnson Sollas

  Nature, Moving, Science

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• Experiments in geology are far more difficult than in physics and chemistry because of the greater size of the objects, commonly outside our laboratories, up to the earth itself, and also because of the fact that the geologic time scale exceeds the human time scale by a million and more times. This difference in time allows only direct observations of the actual geologic processes, the mind having to imagine what could possibly have happened in the past.

  Reinout Willem van Bemmelen

  Science, Past, Differences

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• Geological facts being of an historical nature, all attempts to deduce a complete knowledge of them merely from their still, subsisting consequences, to the exclusion of unexceptionable testimony, must be deemed as absurd as that of deducing the history of ancient Rome solely from the medals or other monuments of antiquity it still exhibits, or the scattered ruins of its empire, to the exclusion of a Livy, a Sallust, or a Tacitus.

  Richard Kirwan

  Knowledge, Science, Rome

  Richard Kirwan (1799). “Geological essays”, p.5

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• Geology is part of that remarkable dynamic process of the human mind which is generally called science and to which man is driven by an inquisitive urge. By noticing relationships in the results of his observations, he attempts to order and to explain the infinite variety of phenomena that at first sight may appear to be chaotic.

  Reinout Willem van Bemmelen

  Science, Men, Fire

  "The Scientific Character of Geology". The Journal of Geology, Vol. 69, No. 4, p. 454, July 1961.

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• The laws of physics and chemistry must be the same in a crucible as in the larger laboratory of Nature.

  Alfred Harker

  Science, Law, Crucible

  Alfred Harker (2011). “The Natural History of Igneous Rocks”, p.282, Cambridge University Press

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• Shall it any longer be said that a science [geology], which unfolds such abundant evidence of the Being and Attributes of God, can reasonably be viewed in any other light than as the efficient Auxiliary and Handmaid of Religion?

  William Buckland

  God, Science, Light

  William Buckland (1836). “Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology”, p.593

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• A rock or stone is not a subject that, of itself, may interest a philosopher to study; but, when he comes to see the necessity of those hard bodies, in the constitution of this earth, or for the permanency of the land on which we dwell, and when he finds that there are means wisely provided for the renovation of this necessary decaying part, as well as that of every other, he then, with pleasure, contemplates this manifestation of design, and thus connects the mineral system of this earth with that by which the heavenly bodies are made to move perpetually in their orbits.

  James Hutton

  Moving, Mean, Science

  James Hutton (1795). “Theory of the Earth: With Proofs and Illustrations”

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• Anyone who has examined into the history of the theories of earth evolution must have been astounded to observe the manner in which the unique and the difficultly explainable has been made to take the place of the common and the natural in deriving the framework of these theories.

  William Herbert Hobbs

  Science, Unique, Earth

  William Herbert Hobbs (1921). “Earth Evolution and Its Facial Expression”

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• Generally speaking, geologists seem to have been much more intent on making little worlds of their own, than in examining the crust of that which they inhabit. It would be much more desirable that facts should be placed in the foreground and theories in the distance, than that theories should be brought forward at the expense of facts. So that, in after times, when the speculations of the present day shall have passed away, from a greater accumulation of information, the facts may be readily seized and converted to account.

  Henry De la Beche

  Distance, Science, Information

  "Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations" edited by Carl C. Gaither, Alma E. Cavazos-Gaither, Springer Science & Business Media, (p. 863), January 5, 2012.

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