Principles of Geology, Volume 3

Principles of Geology #3

by Charles Lyell

As important to modern world views as any work of Darwin, Marx, or Freud, Lyell's Principles of Geology has never before been available in paperback. In this third and final volume, Charles Lyell (1797-1875) devotes much attention to the "syntax of geology," that is, to a way of reconstructing the geological past on the basis of the "grammar" of the present processes he has described in the earlier volumes. He defines four periods of the Tertiary—Newer Pliocene, Older Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene—and argues that the deposits dating from each period demonstrate the uniformity of processes and environments throughout the Tertiary, and indeed in earlier periods of earth history.

Martin J. S. Rudwick has compiled a bibliography giving full references for the sources Lyell cites in all three volumes of the Principles .

Genres: Science, Geology

602 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 1991

About the author

Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, FRS was a Scottish geologist who popularised the revolutionary work of James Hutton. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which presented uniformitarianism–the idea that the Earth was shaped by the same scientific processes still in operation today–to the broad general public. He was an influence on the young Charles Darwin.

His scientific contributions included an explanation of earthquakes, the theory of gradual "backed up-building" of volcanoes, and in stratigraphy the division of the Tertiary period into the Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene. He also coined the currently-used names for geological eras, Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic.

Reviews

[for-much-deliberation ... · Rating 4 out of 5]

Volume three of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, emphasising uniformitarianism as the explanation of earth surface processes...