Name: The map that changed the world
ISBN: 9780140280395

The map that changed the world

In 1793, a canal digger named William Smith made a startling discovery. He found that by tracing the placement of fossils, which he uncovered in his excavations, one could follow layers of rocks as they dipped and rose and fell -- clear across England and, indeed, clear across the world -- making it possible, for the first time ever, to draw a chart of the hidden underside of the earth. Determined to expose what he realized was the landscape's secret fourth dimension, Smith spent twenty-two years piecing together the fragments of this unseen universe to create an epochal and remarkably beautiful hand-painted map. But instead of receiving accolades and honors, he ended up in debtors' prison, the victim of plagiarism, and virtually homeless for ten years more. Finally, in 1831, this quiet genius -- now known as the father of modern geology -- received the Geological Society of London's highest award and King William IV offered him a lifetime pension. The Map That Changed the Worldis a very human tale of endurance and achievement, of one man's dedication in the face of ruin. With a keen eye and thoughtful detail, Simon Winchester unfolds the poignant sacrifice behind this world-changing discovery.

What Hacker News says

ajaaltoSep 2020

John McPhee: Annals of the former world, Simon Winchester: The Map that Changed the World, Lutgens et al.: Essentials of Geology

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msisk6Aug 2016

I'd recommend anything by Simon Winchester.

He writes interesting non-fiction books and reads them for the audio versions.

Just this morning on my drive into work I finished "The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible". Before that was "Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers".

Previous books of his include "The Map That Changed the World" about the first geologic map of Britain", "The Meaning of Everything" about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, and "Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded". Good listens, all.

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PeterWhittakerMar 2016

you'll discover there's an unlimited number of measurements you can make

Absolutely correct.

So that can't be how scientists operate

I'm torn between writing "citation needed" and "unwarranted conclusion from stated premises" so I'll go with both.

The head of the department where I did my physics undergrad spent years, decades, measuring everything there was to measure about plasma: Energy input, energy output, temperature of the phase change (plasma is a distinct phase of matter), spectral distribution, etc., etc., etc.

He wrote many papers, primarily on his measurements, and also on how he refined and improved the measurement process. I don't recall at all well, but I don't believe there were overmany hypotheses, let alone theories. He was about data, not models.

There are theorists who spend the bulk of their time with pens and imagination, occasionally - for some, rarely - checking in with the empirically real world.

A very few of these have names we celebrate for changing the shape of the world - Darwin, Newton, Einstein. And these particular luminaries knew the shape of the real world, knew existing theory didn't fit. (Newton is famous for saying he stood on the shoulders giants. Kepler was one such. Kepler measured and measured and measured and devised a relation. No theory, just a relation to link his measurements.)

Without the many scientists who do nothing but measure, measure, measure, scientists many of us would consider tedious drudges, these luminaries could never have known that theory didn't fit data. Or that data didn't fit intuition. Or that data was just plain weird.

Science does indeed proceed this way, bottom up, from measuring anything and everything of interest (to someone - maybe not to most of us, but to someone - I invite you to read The Map that Changed the World).

Science also proceeds from the top down, from theory to measurement. But often because there was another theory that failed to align with existing measurement. Think general relativity and its better prediction of the motion of Mercury, which failed to align with Newtonian Gravitation, which itself would never have arisen had Kepler not spent so many hours measuring, measuring, measuring. (And general relativity was a generalization of special relativity, which was created to explain a particular vexing measurement, the constancy of C. Einstein did not set out to reinvent gravity, he started simply explaining how C might be constant. He got to gravitation when he generalized relativity to non-inertial reference frames (that's what the special meant: inertial reference frames only).

We measure first. Just because we are that curious.

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femtoApr 2015

For anyone interested in the deeper story, The Simon Winchester book, "The Map that Changed the World", referred to in the article is a good read.

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rhplusNov 2012

I enjoyed "The Map That Changed The World", which is the story of how the study of geology developed during the Industrial period of England. It's the story of William Smith, one of the first people to identify strata formations in coal mines and canal trenches and use them to predict patterns elsewhere.

http://amzn.com/0061767905

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Smith_(geologist)

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PeterWhittakerDec 2014

Reminds me of The Map that Changed the World ([1]), a map of England drawn by a professional canal digger who had noticed and documented strata throughout England, Wales, and southern Scotland. It was essentially the first geological map and led both to modern geology and to Darwinian evolution.

Science advances at least partially through the collection of large amounts of data and the distillation of that data into useful forms by dedicated workers like Tharp and Smith.

[1] http://simonwinchester.com/books/the-map-that-changed-the-wo...

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