Scientists Don't Believe Anything, But I Believe I Liked This Book: The Planet in a Pebble

I would make a rotten book reviewer. My problem is that unless I'm reading a cliff-hanger type mystery by a Douglas Preston-Lincoln Child-Nevada Barr-Tony Hillerman type, I read books the way a wine connoisseur tastes wine. Sip by sip, enjoying the taste, the smell, the body of the liquid. So it was with "The Planet in a Pebble" by Jan Zalasiewicz, which I read a chapter and a paragraph at a time in my rare leisure moments at the end of the semester. I suck at deadlines, but I am happy to say I wasn't given one by Oxford University Press, who provided me with a review copy.

A number of other geobloggers clearly read a lot faster than I do, and Magma Cum Laude, Geology in Motion, Maitri's Vatulblog, Dave's Landslide Blog, and others have already commented on the book, and I can't add much to their analysis: they liked the book and so did I. I would echo their comments about why the publishers didn't include the actual pebble on the cover, and why there were so few photographs or diagrams in the book, but these were very minor criticisms. The book is well worth your time for many reasons. I started blogging here at Geotripper in an effort to translate the wonders of the earth sciences and geology to interested people who might not have a full background in the workings of science. A few weeks ago you may remember this post in which I talked about the rock in the photo above, and how it originated miles away in another time. It was short excursion of the imagination in geologic terms, encompassing no more than 100 million years. Jan Zalasiewicz has taken this idea that every rock tells a story into a journey across the vast expanses of time and space, into "realms that no spaceship will ever penetrate" and ending with a "diaspora without compare", covering a time period from 13.7 billion years in the past to untold billions of years into the future, but all within in the confines of a single slate pebble found along a coastline in Wales. The origin and gathering of the atoms that make up the pebble, the origin and development of the Earth, the formation of continents and ocean basins, the inner workings of the Earth's crust and the chemical interactions that take place there, and the connection and effects of life through time on the rock, these are all part of the story of a single rounded chunk of gray rock. It is a fascinating story, but the value of this book extends much further than providing a few hours of entertaining reading.

We have a problem with "belief" these days. As has been discussed in some of my previous blogposts on the subject, many a story about scientific discovery begins with the statement "scientists believe". The word "believe" has many meanings, but in today's society (American, anyway), it has religious connotations, and is opinion-based in usage. We pick the facts we believe in the same way we choose food in a buffet line. If a scientific finding is uncomfortable to us, or challenges our assumptions, we choose not to believe it. What is missing in most media reports is a full understanding about how researchers arrive at the conclusions (or tentative conclusions) that they have made. Because of this fundamental misunderstanding we have controversies in our society that should not be happening: political conflicts over global warming and its human origin is one example, and the prevalance of belief in creation-science and intelligent design is another.

Therein lies the great value of Zalasiewicz's book: pretty much every statement he makes about the history of the pebble (and by extension, the Earth and the Universe) is backed up with a cogent description of how we know each fact. From a simple magnifying glass to the most technically advanced "atom-counting machines" as he calls them, the story of the Earth is told with data, not conjecture and preconceptions. If this sounds like dry reading, I assure you it is not. How I wish textbooks could flow the way Jan's prose does; I dream of the day that students want to pick up their texts and read about the wonders of earth processes.

I've noticed some blogposts recently remarked on the passing of Carl Sagan fourteen years ago. He was a translator of science, one who understood the wonders of the cosmos and could communicate them to the society at large. We need more people like him today, and authors like Jan Zalasiewicz are doing a great job, if this book is any measure.

The Planet in a Pebble: A Journey into Earth’s Deep History
By Jan Zalasiewicz
Oxford University Press, 234 pp.
2010
ISBN 978-0-19-956970-0

A Quiz on Earth History: Can You Pass? A Comment on Science Education

Which is older, the dark dike, or the lighter sedimentary rocks?

How would you do on this test (taken from a chapter in Carlson, Plummer and Hammersly's excellent Physical Geology: Earth Revealed textbook)?

1. “ Geological processes operating at present are the same processes that have operated in the past” is the principle of a. correlation b. catastrophism c. uniformitarianism d. none of the preceding

2. “ Within a sequence of undisturbed sedimentary rocks, the layers get younger going from bottom to top” is the principle of a. original horizontality b. superposition c. crosscutting d. none of the preceding

3. If rock A cuts across rock B, then rock A is rock B. a. younger than b. the same age as c. older than

4. Which is a method of correlation? a. physical continuity b. similarity of rock types c. fossils d. all of the preceding

5. Eras are subdivided into a. periods b. eons c. ages d. epochs

6. Periods are subdivided into a. eras b. epochs c. ages d. time zones

7. Which division of geologic time was the longest? a. Precambrian b. Paleozoic c. Mesozoic d. Cenozoic

8. Which is a useful radioactive decay scheme? a. 238U-206Pb b. 235U-207Pb c. 40K-40Ar d. 87Rb-87Sr e. all of the preceding

9. C-14 dating can be used on all of the following except a. wood b. shell c. the Dead Sea Scrolls d. granite e. bone

10. Concentrations of radon are highest in areas where the bedrock is a. granite b. gneiss c. limestone d. black shale e. phosphate-rich rock f. all of the preceding

11. Which is not a type of unconformity? a. disconformity b. angular unconformity c. nonconformity d. triconformity

12. A geologist could use the principle of inclusion to determine the relative age of a. fossils b. metamorphism c. shale layers d. xenoliths

13. The oldest abundant fossils of complex multicellular life with shells and other hard parts date from the a. Precambrian b. Paleozoic c. Mesozoic d. Cenozoic

14. A contact between parallel sedimentary rock that records missing geologic time is a. a disconformity b. an angular unconformity c. a nonconformity d. a sedimentary contact

If you have a degree in geology, these questions on earth history should give you no problem; they represent basic principles in the science. If you are a student in a basic geology class, they would be challenging, but with a bit of study, you should get most of them right. And if given as an open-book test with no time limit, they should be no problem at all...except if you are a student in my distance learning class. They barely break 50% most of the time. It isn't that they are bad students; they do fine on most of the other chapters. It mystifies me why they do badly on this one chapter, year after year, but I suspect the reason lies in the student's previous K-12 education.

Earth history and evolution have always been a required part of the primary and secondary curriculum, especially in California, but I get the feeling they don't get a strong emphasis in the classroom, perhaps out of fear of controversy from creationist parents, or due to the beliefs of the classroom teachers themselves. Because we end up not teaching our students why science accepts the evidence for an ancient Earth, students are left with statements like "scientists believe the Earth is millions of years old" as if it were a 50-50 choice. It's this idea of belief in scientific findings that has brought us to this dismal moment in our country's history when we can't mobilize to fight global warming because politicians and their followers choose to believe it isn't happening. Because people like Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and Senator Jim Inhofe are accepted as climate experts. They aren't; they are appallingly ignorant or devastatingly cynical (or both).

There was an interesting moment last weekend at our Wild Planet Day celebration, though. A father was showing his daughter our skeleton of the sabertooth cat. She wasn't much more than 7 years old, but he said to her, "is this creature millions of years old, or thousands?" I kind of sat back, waiting for the assumed explanation of how scientists are wrong and that the earth is only 6,000 years old. But, to my surprise, he said "the dinosaurs lived millions of years ago, but the mammals like this sabertooth lived thousands of years ago". A small but satisfying moment to be sure. And too rare these days.

If you haven't had a class in geology, don't feel bad if you don't know the answers. I've listed them in the comments.

What do you think about the earth science education our children are getting these days? Am I totally off base?