Is the Earth too old? The impact of geochronology on cosmology, 1929–1952

Brush, Stephen G.

doi:10.1144/gsl.sp.2001.190.01.12

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…More recently, attention has focused on the inability of scientists (Brush 2001), science educators (Petcovic and Ruhf 2008), college students (Catley and Novick 2009; Libarkin 2006; Truscott et al 2006), and the general public (Hofstadter 1996) to comprehend time in billions of years. Our deficiencies involve concepts about both absolute time (time in years; Catley and Novick 2009) and relative time (events in an accurate sequence; Libarkin 2006).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Is the Age of the Earth One of Our “Sorest Troubles?” Students’ Perceptions About Deep Time Affect Their Acceptance of Evolutionary Theory

2010

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recently, attention has focused on the inability of scientists (Brush 2001), science educators (Petcovic and Ruhf 2008), college students (Catley and Novick 2009;Libarkin 2006;Truscott et al 2006), and the general public (Hofstadter 1996) (2) Students' inability to accept an old Earth is a barrier to evolution acceptance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is the Age of the Earth One of Our “Sorest Troubles?” Students’ Perceptions About Deep Time Affect Their Acceptance of Evolutionary Theory

2010

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“…But by the early 1930s, most scientists in both countries essentially accepted the geological timescale provided by Holmes, and little reference was made to any timescale provided by sedimentation or denudation rates. Now only the astronomers seemed to question the validity of radiometric dates (Brush 2001).…”

Section: The Storehouse Of Creationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Celebrating the age of the Earth

Knell

Lewis

2001

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The age of the Earth has been a subject of intellectual interest for many centuries, even millennia. Of the early estimates, Archbishop Ussher’s famous calculation of 4004 bc for the date of Creation represents one of the shortest time periods ever assigned to the Earth’s age, but by the seventeenth century many naturalists were sceptical of such chronologies. In the eighteenth century it was Nature that provided the record for Hutton and others.But not all observers of geology enquired about time. Many, like William Smith, simply earned a living from their practical knowledge of it, although his nephew, John Phillips, was one of the first geologists to attempt a numerical age for the Earth from the depositional rates of sediments. For more than fifty years variations of that method prevailed as geology’s main tool for dating the Earth, while the physicists constrained requirements for a long timescale with ever more rigorous, and declining, estimates of a cooling Sun and Earth.In 1896 the advent of radioactivity provided the means by which the Earth’s age would at last be accurately documented, although it took another sixty years. Since that time ever more sophisticated chronological techniques have contributed to a search for the oldest rocks, the start of life, and human evolution. In the attempt to identify those landmarks, and others, we have greatly progressed our understanding about the processes that shape our planet and the Universe, although in doing so we discover that the now-accepted age of the Earth is but a ‘geochemical accident’ which remains a contentious issue.

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“…On the time-scale difªculty, seeKragh 1996, pp. 73-79, 271-275, andBrush 2001. The anomaly only disappeared in the 1950s, when it was realized that the Hubble constant is much smaller than originally assumed.…”

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confidence: 92%

“The Most Philosophically Important of All the Sciences”: Karl Popper and Physical Cosmology

Kragh

2013

Perspectives on Science

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Problems of scientiªc cosmology only rarely occur in the works of Karl Popper. Nevertheless, it was a subject that interested him and which he occasionally commented on. What is more important, his general claim of falsiªability as a criterion that demarcates science from non-science has played a signiªcant role in periods of the development of modern physical cosmology. The paper examines the historical contexts of the interaction between cosmology and Popperian philosophy of science. Apart from covering Popper's inspiration from Einstein and his views on questions of cosmology, it focuses on the impact of his thoughts in two periods of controversy of modern cosmology, the one related to the steady state theory and the other to the recent multiverse proposal. It turns out that the impact has been considerable, and continues to be so, but also that the versions of Popperian methodology discussed by cosmologists are sometimes far from what Popper actually thought and wrote.

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Is the Earth too old? The impact of geochronology on cosmology, 1929–1952

Abstract: Estimates of the Earth's age have had significant impacts, not only on geology but also on biology, astronomy and biblical creationism.

Cited by 10 publications

References 90 publications

Is the Age of the Earth One of Our “Sorest Troubles?” Students’ Perceptions About Deep Time Affect Their Acceptance of Evolutionary Theory

Is the Age of the Earth One of Our “Sorest Troubles?” Students’ Perceptions About Deep Time Affect Their Acceptance of Evolutionary Theory

Celebrating the age of the Earth

“The Most Philosophically Important of All the Sciences”: Karl Popper and Physical Cosmology

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