EDUCATOR’S CORNER
panorama of science and exploration by scientists from various walks of life. Here we see interconnected discoveries: How a meteorologist, Wegener, discovered continental drift; how one physicist, Lord Kelvin, got the age of Earth wrong because of the misguided assump- tion that Earth was only steadily cooling through time, while another physicist, Rutherford, used radioactivity not only to disprove Lord Kelvin but also offer a more reliable method to determine the age of rocks; how Darwin’s observations of various species of the finches on the island of Galapagos led to the theory of evolution by natural selection. History is full of such examples.
6. Although the modern science geology, and even the term “geology,” emerged in the late eighteenth century in western Europe (with founding fathers like James Hutton), studies of Earth are much older. Natural his- tory and mining were centuries-old roots of geology. Henry and Carol Fault, a geologist couple, even go as far as saying that “Geology began when early man first picked up a stone, considered its qualities, and decided that it was better than the stone he already had.”4 Indeed, this statement may be true for the origin of science itself. The history of earth science, in this per- spective, is nothing less than the story of humankind’s cultural development, and its study relates geology to fields such as archeology, mythology, anthropology, agriculture, industry, and architecture.
7. Geoscience encompasses both basic and applied areas of research, and historically there has been a kind of synergy between these two. For example, plate tecton- ics helped us understand how and where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur. Likewise, exploration of gemstones and metals advanced mineralogy; explora- tion of oil and gas contributed to stratigraphy and geophysics; and attempts to forecast weather conditions revolutionized meteorology. History thus sheds light on these undercurrents of science, and brings the basic and applied areas of geoscience together.
8. History offers practical benefits to research. By study- ing history, we become aware of forgotten or bypassed concepts, observations, interpretations, and docu- ments. We also understand what worked and what did not, and why. We pay attention to the cross-fertilization of sciences in major discoveries. All these analytical, critical and creative skills may lead to new questions or approaches that help advance our knowledge and methods, and enrich our debates and thoughts.
9. The history of science and the philosophy of science are closely related. It is not possible to discuss and evaluate such philosophical questions as fact, truth, objectivity, explanation, discovery process, scientific method, and so on without referring to the works of scientists and examples from the history of science. The history of earth science contributes to these debates. Consider this, for instance: Why Wegener’s evidence for the assembly and continental drift of Pangaea was not accepted for decades, while evidence of sea-floor spreading resulted in plate tectonic revolution; was this a modern case for what Thomas Kuhn called “paradigm shifts” in the Structure of Scientific Revolution? The history of earth science also sheds light on philosophi-
cal and fundamental issues in earth science itself, such as uniformitarianism, catastrophism, the nature of stratigraphic record, isostasy, the Gaia (living earth) hypothesis, and so forth. Indeed, big questions in earth science cannot be studied without considering their conceptual developments and history of debate.
10. Geoscience, like any other science, strives to discover principles, patterns, and processes in nature; however, these scientific concepts and theories are embedded in historical events, personalities, social contexts, and records. It is thus necessary to train the students with the skills of both scientific thinking and historical thinking. The history of science illustrates these two dimensions.
11. The history of earth science also has valuable uses in education. For one thing, historical anecdotes (“trivia”) make lectures more interesting. For instance, in my geology courses, when I lecture about plate tectonics, I also give a brief biography of Wegener: A German meteorologist who proposed the continental drift hypothesis in the 1910s, visited the US in 1926 to defend his idea in a conference in New York (but at no avail), and froze to death in 1930 at age 50 on his fourth expedition to Greenland (he died while taking food to a group of scientists camped on an icecap, and his grave is still in the ice). Later in the course, in the lecture on the climate change and Köppen’s clas- sification of climates, I mention: “Remember Wegener – the continental drift guy? Well, he was student and son-in-law of the meteorologist Wladimir Köppen, the Russian-German climatologist. Wegener married his daughter Else in 1913, two years before he published his celebrated book The Origin of Continents and Oceans.” With this linkage, curious students may then ask if there are connections between plate tectonics and climate, which provides the best occasion to explain how the assembly and fragmentation of supercontinents indeed control Earth’s climate and may even produce “glacial” (e.g., Permian Pangaea) or “hothouse” (e.g., Cretaceous warm) periods. Aside from entertainment, the history of earth science also teaches the students “how we know what we know.” Indeed, this aspect is the most serious problem in all geology textbooks today; they mainly feed tongue-twister technical concepts and terms (asthenosphere, batholith, isostacy, ophiolite, etc.) without explaining their origins.
12. Finally, reading the history of earth science provides geoscientists with skills of “narrative” speaking and writing to popularize their science and research. Indeed, one of the shortcomings of science education in universities is that graduate students aspiring to be scientists do not learn the art of articulating tech- nical and complex concepts in a plain language to the general public.
I do not intend to overemphasize or oversell the value of history in research and education; nevertheless, in the cur- rent geoscience education, history is severely underrated and ignored, but this is not how geology education began: Charley Lyell’s Principles of Geology, which was the most influential textbook in its field throughout the nineteenth century, began with a lengthy chapter on the historical development of geol- ogy.
4. Henry Faul and Carol Faul, It Began With a Stone: A History of Geology from the Stone Age to the Age of Plate Tectonics (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1983), p. 1.
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