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EDUCATOR’S CORNER Why History Matters Rasoul Sorkhabi, Ph.D., CPG-11981


Dr. Rasoul Sorkhabi is a professor at the University of Utah’s Energy & Geoscience Institute, Salt Lake City. Email: rsorkhabi@egi.utah.edu


“Nothing has really happened unless it has been recorded.”


- Virginia Wolf


In 1897, the eminent British geologist Archibald Geikie was invited by Johns Hopkins University to deliver a series of lectures on “The Founders of Geology.” Geikie began: “In science, as in all departments of inquiry, no thorough grasp of a subject can be gained, unless the history of its development is clearly appreciated.”1 The history of earth science has no place in the current geoscience programs in universities. The vast majority of geology departments do not offer a course on the history of earth science. Even geoscience textbooks focus on concepts with little information on the history. In this way, geology and geophysics students are graduated with little appreciation of the history of their own science. Of course, a few names such as James Hutton, Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, and Alfred Wegener are glorified in the textbooks, but the history of earth science itself remains terra incognita for students. To resolve this situation, it is imperative to ask: Why should we care about the lives and works of scientists who died decades and centuries ago? Why history matters? Ironically, even the books on the history of geology do not analyze this question itself and instead chronicle the history of science from the ancient Greek philosophy to plate tectonics. However, it is first necessary to address this question and highlight the value of studying the history of earth science. Along this line of thinking, the following 12 points are briefly discussed.


1. Thanks to telecommunication technologies, mass media, the internet, and social media we are in the midst of an explosion of information, real-time report- ages, and online access to worldwide sources. In today’s world, the daily news is outdated fast. However, precisely because of this, the importance of histori- cal research, perspective and synthesis in every field of knowledge has increased, not diminished. History offers us a platform to stand back and view the train of ideas, experiments, players, advances or failures in our area of interest.


2. History is inescapable. Everything we use– our lan- guages, theories, laboratories, microscopes, maps, and so forth are all products of evolutionary and historical progression. Therefore, the question is not really why


history is relevant but whether what we do or use is with a historical awareness or not. Obviously, a histori- cal awareness enriches our experience.


3. History is also a community’s attempt to preserve its heritage by “recording” it, “researching” the ups and downs, and “recognizing” pioneers and pathfinders who paved the way. Will and Ariel Durant, a historian- philosopher couple, in The Lessons of History write: “The heritage that we can now more fully transmit is richer than ever before … History is, above all else, the creation and recording of that heritage; progress is its increasing abundance, preservation, transmission, and use.”2


4. Geoscience deals with rocks, minerals, landscape, water, tectonic forces, ore deposits, and so forth. History brings a human touch to this “dry and hard” science; it shows that science is not a static body of knowledge but has evolved through the works, thoughts and contribu- tions of generations of scientists. Students, researchers, and the general public can then find intimacy with the subject. They realize that scientists were humans, who, like others, experienced life problems, psychological struggles, failures, and hard work.


5. All natural sciences essentially study various parts of Earth – its chemical elements, physical particles and forces, flora and fauna, and so forth. Earth science, however, studies Earth as a unified planetary system; it is thus an integrative field. That is why the history of earth science is also a chronology of how various branches of science have developed, interacted, and contributed to our understanding of Earth. Today, science has become so specialized that there are hun- dreds of minute disciplines in every branch of science. (I once counted more than 100 fields in earth science). An expert in one field rarely reads works of experts in another (even closely related) field. Most PhD gradu- ates enter the world of science thinking that their field of research began with their supervisors. The history of earth science illustrates how these small and large branches of science are interconnected and share the same trunk and roots of the tree of knowledge that began “almost in the beginning [when] there was curiosity.”3 No field like earth Science offers this vast


1. Sir Archibald Geikie, The Founders of Geology (Macmillan, London 1905), p. 1. 2. Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968), p. 101. 3. Isaac Asimov, Asimov’s New Guide to Science (Basic Books, New York, 1984), p. 3.


42 TPG • Apr.May.Jun 2021 www.aipg.org


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