Audiobook5 hours
The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood, and the Humble Genius who Discovered a New History of the Earth
Written by Alan Cutler
Narrated by Grover Gardner
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this audiobook
How could a seashell get into a rock? And how could that rock get to the top of a mountain? The "seashell question" plagues 17th century thinkers who fervently believed the planet was young and the human race supreme.
Related to The Seashell on the Mountaintop
Related audiobooks
Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Waiting for Aphrodite: Journeys into the Time before Bones Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making Eden: How Plants Transformed a Barren Planet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unearthed: Love, Acceptance, and Other Lessons from an Abandoned Garden Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ragged Edge of the World: Encounters at the Frontier Where Modernity, Wildlands, and Indigenous People Meet Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerican Covenant: National Parks, Their Promise, and Our Nation's Future Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Still Waters: The Secret World of Lakes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Salmon Way: An Alaska State of Mind Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Broadsides from the Other Orders: A Book of Bugs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Desert Soliloquy: A Perfectly Sane Misanthrope Hides in the Desert Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Shepherd's View: Modern Photographs From an Ancient Landscape Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mighty Storms of New England: The Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Blizzards, and Floods That Shaped the Region Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wind: How the Flow of Air Has Shaped Life, Myth, and the Land Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Exile and Other Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Watermelon Snow: Science, Art, and a Lone Polar Bear Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVirga & Bone: Essays from Dry Places Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5People of the Sturgeon: Wisconsin's Love Affair with an Ancient Fish Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe One that Got Away: A Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWild at Heart: America's Turbulent Relationship with Nature, from Exploitation to Redemption Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Practice of Settlement, Finding a Sense of Place Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOne Water, One Air, One Mother Earth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Nature of Desert Nature: Meditations on the Nature of Deserts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Crazy World of Plants Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Global Forest: Forty Ways Trees Can Save Us Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt's American Wilderness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wanderer: An Alaska Wolf's Final Journey Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Science & Mathematics For You
Radiolab: Journey Through The Human Body Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cosmos: A Personal Voyage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Radiolab: The Feels Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Radiolab: Mixtape: How The Cassette Changed The World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Every Tool's a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Midnight in Chernobyl: The Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Brain Rules (Updated and Expanded): 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thinking in Systems: A Primer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Free Will Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gene: An Intimate History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for The Seashell on the Mountaintop
Rating: 3.7826087681159417 out of 5 stars
4/5
69 ratings8 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is like a Dava Sobel book. Fascinating topic, middling writing.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Acceptable as a popular history, but without any citations or even a full bibliography, and nowhere near a complete biography of the fascinating Nicolaus Steno (it focuses almost strictly on his geologic studies). A few examples of anecdotal mistakes crept in, too, so even though there isn't much out there on Steno, this may be skippable notwithstanding.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Usually science books leave me cold; they are too abstruse and hard to read. This was a happy exception: the biography of the 'father of geology', his theories and how they were gradually accepted by the scientific community, and then by us laypeople. I can't imagine any other explanation than those Steno gave us, for basic geological principles.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The amazing biography of Saint (!?) Nicolas Steno: skilled anatomist, delicate "dissectionist", Lutheran turned devout Catholic, the "Galileo of Geology". This short book comprises an amazing amalgam of fossils, spontaneous generation, sharks and shark teeth, The Medicis, Ammonites, the Reformation, Genesis theories, The 30-years war, Descartes, Newton and a pack of other fascinating characters. With a flicker of ongoing boyhood interest in paleontology, how did I not know about this guy?
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One of the loveliest science history books I have ever read. Gives a great account of the life and times of the 17th C Danish scientist Nicolaus Steno who should (if he is not) be hailed as one of the founders of the science of geology.Loved it!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A wonderful first book for lovers of popular science and history of science.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Seashell on the Mountaintop is on the one hand, a biography of the scientist known in English as Nicolaus Steno, a fascinating man in his own right. But it's also a history of the foundation of the science of geology, and it's a window into the early days of scientific exploration.Steno, a Dane, started as a brilliant anatomist, wandering Europe dissecting and teaching. He was the fist to propose the idea that muscular action comes from the contraction of muscle fibers not the ballooning of the muscle mass, the accuracy of which was not recognized for a hundred years. It was the dissection of a great white shark's head that lead to Steno to recognize that its teeth were identical to "tongue stones" found high up on the mountaintops all throughout Italy. That, along with other marine fossils that had been found in the Alps and the Alpines in Italy, led him to conclude that much of Europe had been covered by water and not just once simply to launch Noah, but again and again. Contrary to both the literal interpretation of the bible and the popular theory that the earth had some sort of "plastic power" that produced stones in the shapes of sea creatures, or anything else. He later publishes a short but more formal thesis of ideas entitled Concerning Solids naturally contained within solids. In which he lays down his four fundamental principles of stratigraphy: law of superposition, principle of original horizontality, principle of lateral continuity, and the principle of cross-cutting discontinuities (oddly omitted from the book). Ideas that for the most part were soundly rejected by his contemporaries for several decades after is death.Steno later abandons his life as a renown scientist to live the life of an improvised priest after converting from Lutheranism to Catholicism. Steno dies rather sadly before he can complete more through treatment of his ideas. Leaving it up to his contemporaries: Hooke, Ray, and Leibniz to convince the scientific community that he was right.Aside from a straight forward biography of Steno a defacto history of the early years of the science of geology right up to Hutton, Cutler also takes the time to explain a brief history of science from the ideas of the pre-Socrates (thinking) to the ideas that emerged during the enlightenment and scientific revolution (doing).
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Outstanding book about the birth of geology. Brilliant discussion of how a very religious person can hold true to their faith, even in the face of evidence to the contrary! Loved it!