A Natural History of Time

图书信息

作者	Pascal Richet
出版社	University of Arkansas Press
ISBN	9780226712895
出版时间	2009-10-15
字数	89.9万
分类	进口书,外文原版书,法律,政治,宗教

读书简介

The quest to pinpoint the age of the Earth is nearly as old as humanity itself. For most of history, people trusted mythology or religion to provide the answer, even though nature abounds with clues to the past of the Earth and the stars. In A Natural History of Time, geophysicist Pascal Richet tells the fascinating story of how scientists and philosophers examined those clues and from them built a chronological scale that has made it possible to reconstruct the history of nature itself.Richet begins his story with mythological traditions, which were heavily influenced by the seasons and almost uniformly viewed time cyclically. The linear history promulgated by Judaism, with its story of creation, was an exception, and it was that tradition that drove early Christian attempts to date the Earth. For instance, in 169 CE, the bishop of Antioch, for instance declared that the world had been in existence for quote;5,698 years and the odd months and days quote;Until the mid-eighteenth century, such natural timescales derived from biblical chronologies prevailed, but, Richet demonstrates, with the Scientific Revolution geological and astronomical evidence for much longer timescales began to accumulate. Fossils and the developing science of geology provided compelling evidence for periods of millions and millions of years-a scale that even scientists had difficulty grasping. By the end of the twentieth century, new tools such as radiometric dating had demonstrated that the solar system is four and a half billion years old, and the universe itself about twice that, though controversial questions remain.The quest for time is a story of ingenuity and determination, and like a geologist, Pascal Richet carefully peels back the strata of that history, giving us a chance to marvel at each layer and truly appreciate how far our knowledge-and our planet-have come.

目录

Preface

ONE　Time without a Beginning?

TWO　On the Great Book of Moses

THREE　Genesis as Viewed through the Prism of Natural Philosophy

FOUR　Nature’s Admirable Medals

FIVE　The March of the Comets

SIX　Heroic Age, Relative Time

SEVEN　The Long History of Two Barons

EIGHT　The Elasticity of Time

NINE　The Pandora’s Box of Physics

TEN　The Sun, the Earth, Radioactivity— and Kelvin’s Death

ELEVEN　The Long Quest of Arthur Holmes

TWELVE　From the Atomic Bomb to the Age of the Earth

Epilogue

Appendix: Mathematical Complements

Suggestions for Further Reading and Reference

Bibliography