The Seashell On The Mountaintop

Apr 22, 2025 3:17 PM

Author:Alan Cutler

Dubbed ' the founder of modern geology' by Stephen Jay Gould, the 17th century Danish scientist Nicolaus Steno was the first man to to suggest that the existence of fossils demanded a much longer history for the earth than the roughly six thousand years suggested by the Bible. Steno's work was ignored for over a century; he himself dropped his geological studies; he converted to Catholicism and later became a bishop; in 1988 he was beatified by the Pope. Alan Cutler tells the story of this passionate and fascinating man, exploring his remarkable ideas on science and religion and the way his work was eventually to transform Western ideas of time. Steno's influence was enormous; Cutler's book is the first to give him his due, and to set him alongside Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin.

Reviews

Barrow conducts a tour of many of the most interesting topics in recent popular science, giving most of them a new twist in the telling... Trying to improve our understanding of just what is possible, and what is not, seems a vital part of the enterprise our kind of consciousness has called science

—— Financial Times

[An] illuminating, well-written account... One can only wonder how Barrow can possibly make all these [concepts] fit together into a coherent story about the limits to science. Well, contrary to all expectations, he does make them fit, and in only 250 pages! So for about as good an account as youre going to get of where science stops, read this book

—— Nature

Delightful and fascinating... Impossibility is a thoughtful, careful, and insightful book that is presented in a skillfully woven narrative, guiding the reader gently through the thicket of logic, physics, and mathematics... If you are fascinated by the limits of knowledge, you will be richly rewarded by this book

—— New Scientist

Eating Less is likely to succeed where diet books fall. The utter simplicity of its message and techniques makes it easy to start and continue with a programme that revolutionises your attitude to eating and weight.

—— Sarah Litvinoff

Gillian Riley's approach is clear, simple and powerful...Simply the best

—— leslie Kenton

A fitting tribute to his career, as it combines, in both style and substance, the different themes of his life's work. Blending genuine literary talents with impeccable scientific credentials, Gould crafts an elegant entreaty for scientists and scholars to spend less time complaining about each other and more time combining their considerable resources. We need both the fox and the hedgehog in any intellectual menagerie - the persistent pluralist

—— Alan C. Hutchinson , Globe and Mail

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