Scrape wikipedia-science: 396 new, 4 updated, 418 total (kb-cron)

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylva,_or_A_Discourse_of_Forest-Trees_and_the_Propagation_of_Timber-0.md

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+---
+title: "Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylva,_or_A_Discourse_of_Forest-Trees_and_the_Propagation_of_Timber"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:35.913900+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesty's Dominions by the English writer John Evelyn was first presented in 1662 as a paper to the Royal Society. It was published as a book two years later in 1664, and is recognised as one of the most influential texts on forestry ever published.
+A second edition with new engravings was published in 1670, and a third edition in 1679 included a geological essay by Evelyn. An expanded fourth edition was published in 1706, with the new segments specifically covering fruit trees and the production of cider.
+
+
+== Editions ==
+
+1662 Sylva paper was presented to the Royal Society on 16 February 1662.
+1664 Sylva First Edition book printed by publisher John Martyn for the Royal Society, and the first book published after the granting of their Royal Charter as publishers in 1662.
+1670 Sylva Second Edition. Various engravings added.
+1679 Sylva Third Edition. Included an essay from Evelyn about soils: Terra, a Philosophical Essay of Earth, being a Lecture in Course.
+1706 Silva Fourth Edition, now spelt Silva, contained new sections Dendrologia, Pomona; Or, An Appendix concerning Fruit-Trees in relation to CIDER and Kalendarium Hortense. This was the last edition during Evelyn's lifetime.
+
+
+=== Posthumous editions ===
+1729 Silva edition.
+Five editions were edited by Alexander Hunter (1729-1809):
+
+1776 (illustrations by John Miller)
+1786
+1801
+1812
+1825
+
+
+=== Recent reproductions ===
+A facsimile of the first edition (1664) was produced in 1972 by the publisher Scolar Press.
+The fourth edition (1706) was republished in 1908 by Doubleday & Co. with a foreword by John Nisbet. This 1908 edition was republished in facsimile by Kessinger Publishing (30 Nov 2007).
+A new edition by Gabriel Hemery with illustrations by Sarah Simblet is published by Bloomsbury to coincide with the 350th anniversary in 2014 of the book's first publication. It is titled The New Sylva: a discourse of forest and orchard trees for the twenty-first century. The authors have their own blog following the book's creation: sylva.org.uk
+
+
+== See also ==
+Hans Carl von Carlowitz
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Sylva, Fourth Edition (1706, republished 1908), vol. 1, text download from Project Gutenberg
+Sylva, Fourth Edition (1706, republished 1908), vol. 2, text download from Google Books
+Sylva, Fifth Edition (republished 1825), vol. 2, text download from Google Books
+Commons:Category:Royal Society Library, includes several photos of the 1st edition of Sylva.

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Symbolic_Species-0.md

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+---
+title: "The Symbolic Species"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Symbolic_Species"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:36.988070+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The Symbolic Species is a 1997 book by biological anthropologist Terrence Deacon on the evolution of language. Combining perspectives from neurobiology, evolutionary theory, linguistics, and semiotics, Deacon proposes that language, along with the unique human capacity for symbolic thought, co-evolved with the brain.
+The Symbolic Species is a multi-disclipinary book that at the time of publishing was seen as groundbreaking. It is considered to have bound together a wide array of ideas in a way that advanced the understanding of professionals in several fields.
+
+
+== Symbolic thought and language ==
+The reasons for the unique cognitive capacity of humans are explored, along with those for the large number of human activities impossible for animals. The human use of language is said to be responsible for both.
+
+
+== Co-evolution ==
+A chicken-and-egg problem is shown to exist between the emergence of symbolic thought and language: language is said to be the medium of symbolic thought, but it is reasoned that mastery of language would first require the ability to think symbolically. The solution of this chicken-and-egg problem, according to Deacon, is the subtle evolutionary process of co-evolution.
+
+
+== References ==

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Territorial_Imperative-0.md

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+---
+title: "The Territorial Imperative"
+chunk: 1/2
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Territorial_Imperative"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:38.121354+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry Into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations is a 1966 nonfiction book by American writer Robert Ardrey. It characterizes an instinct among humans toward territoriality and the implications of this to property ownership and nation building. The Territorial Imperative was influential at the time, and encouraged public interest in human origins.
+The Territorial Imperative is the second book in Ardrey's Nature of Man Series; it is preceded by African Genesis (1961) and followed by The Social Contract (1970) and The Hunting Hypothesis (1976). It was illustrated by Ardrey's wife, the South African actress and illustrator Berdine Ardrey (née Grunewald). Ardrey dedicated The Territorial Imperative to Henry Eliot Howard, who was noted for being one of the first to describe in detail the territorial behaviors of birds.
+
+== Synopsis ==
+The Territorial Imperative develops the theses originally introduced in African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man, which was published five years earlier. In African Genesis, Ardrey posited that man originated in Africa instead of Asia, that he is driven by inherited instincts to acquire land and defend territory, and that the development of weapons was a fundamental turning point in his evolution. The Territorial Imperative further explores these ideas with a special emphasis on man's distinct preoccupation with the concept of territory. It goes on to elucidate the role that plays in modern human society in phenomena such as property ownership and nation building.
+
+== Controversy ==
+The Territorial Imperative caused significant scientific and popular controversy. In it Ardrey restated and developed his challenge to the reigning methodological assumption of the social sciences, that human behavior is fundamentally distinct from animal behavior. As he writes in The Territorial Imperative, "The dog barking at you from behind his master's fence acts for a motive indistinguishable from that of his master when the fence was built." Robert Wokler wrote of Ardrey's challenge to the established life sciences:
+
+What ought to be studied, according to Ardrey, are the relations between individuals that stem from
+the innate and universal attributes of animal life, whereas cultural anthropologists who detect a fundamental discontinuity between mankind and other zoological species are just impervious to the revolutionary ideas of Darwinism which have reverberated throughout all the life sciences apart from their own.
+In 1968, two years after the publication of The Territorial Imperative, Ashley Montagu organized fourteen scientists to write essays in opposition to Ardrey's work (and the similarly aligned work of Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression). That volume became Man and Aggression. Montagu would eventually edit another volume in opposition to Ardrey, and the increasingly heated debate stirred popular interest in human origins. By Carmel Schrire's account, "Ashley Montagu edited two collections of writings aimed at countering the views of both Ardrey and Konrad Lorenz. ... Despite this, Ardrey's popularity did not flag, and his writings opened the fields of paleoanthropology, ethnology, and anthropology to a wide readership."
+The opposition of these two viewpoints became a major theme in the social science of the time. Robin Fox, who authored The Imperial Animal (1972) with Lionel Tiger, wrote of the opposition:
+
+I was a great friend of Robert Ardrey, and had been known publicly to defend his name and honor from the assault of the anti-Ardreyites, including Ashley Montagu. ... Ashley Montagu always carefully distanced himself from what he thought were our erroneous conclusions about human aggression. We returned the favor, even calling him and his school "the Christian Scientists of anthropology" for their refusal to accept the reality of human evil: that it was an essential part of being human and could not be just wished away. We in turn were included eventually among the villains in his "new litany of innate depravity." And so it went.
+Some essays in the Montagu volume, as well as much other criticism of Ardrey's work, claimed that, because it asserted the role of instinctual aggression in determining man's behavior, his work excused aggression or saw the human as innately evil. Ardrey differed, claiming instead that an awareness of human nature was necessary to truly pursue civilization. For example, Ardrey, in a 1971 Penthouse interview, asserted "I don't think human beings are that bad at all—I think they are absolutely marvellous. We've got to stop kidding ourselves, stop lying to ourselves, living with a delusion about ourselves."
+
+== Criticism ==
+A 1966 review by Edmund Leach said Ardrey was "a mine of scientific-sounding misinformation" and his book was "noisy and foolish".
+A 1967 review by Patrick Bateson said "The arguments on which he bases his conclusions are shot through with such elementary mistakes, and his definitions are so loose, that he will surely mislead anyone who takes him seriously . . . Ardrey seems to be scarcely aware of the interactions involved in biological processes and to know nothing of the scientific method." 
+
+A 1970 review by Carroll Quigley said "Ardrey pretends to be a scientist, or at least a science reporter; but in this book there is no more science than there is in a comic strip . . . It is true that Ardrey has read a great deal about animal behavior, but he never seems to grasp what it all means, and his biases prevent him from seeing what is really there."
+A 1970 review by C. E. S. Franks said "however well written they may be, his books are neither scientific works nor the works of a scientist. Robert Ardrey has misunderstood two of the basic concepts of the new biology, "aggression" and "territory", and has misapplied them in discussing human society".

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Territorial_Imperative-1.md

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+---
+title: "The Territorial Imperative"
+chunk: 2/2
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Territorial_Imperative"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:38.121354+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+== Legacy ==
+The Territorial Imperative was widely read and exerted a cultural influence. It quickly became an international bestseller and was translated into dozens of languages. Ardrey's work in general, and The Territorial Imperative in particular, is often credited with arousing popular interest in ethology, anthropology, and human origins. Geoffrey Gorer, for example, in his Encounter review of The Territorial Imperative, writes: "Almost without question, Robert Ardrey is today the most influential writer in English dealing with the innate or instinctive attributes of human nature, and the most skilled populariser of the findings of paleo-anthropologists, ethologists, and biological experimenters." Ralph Graves claims "[Ardrey] today can claim major credit for having introduced the public to the new field of ethology, the study of animal behavior and its relationship to man." Commenting upon Ardrey's legacy on the occasion of his death, the South African anthropologist Dr. Phillip Tobias stated, "He has made an incalculable contribution to the science of human evolution. Thousands of people around the world, especially in the United States, were made aware of the fascination and the importance of studies on man's place in nature [through his writing]."
+The work influenced several notable figures. Stanley Kubrick cited Ardrey as an inspiration for his films 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971). The strategic analyst Andrew Marshall and U.S. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger are known to have discussed The Territorial Imperative in connection to military-strategic thinking.
+Ardrey went on to publish two more books on human origins and the nature of man, The Social Contract: A Personal Inquiry into the Evolutionary Sources of Order and Disorder (1970) and The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man (1976). He continued to publish influential works in the field of anthropology until his death in 1980.
+
+== References ==
+
+== Further reading ==
+Full text
+
+== External links ==
+The Official Robert Ardrey Estate Website
+The Nature of Man Series at the Robert Ardrey Estate Website

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Culture-0.md

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+---
+title: "The Third Culture"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Culture"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:40.452987+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution is a 1995 book by John Brockman which discusses the work of several well-known scientists who are directly communicating their new, sometimes provocative, ideas to the general public. John Brockman has continued the themes of 'The Third Culture' in the website of the Edge Foundation, where leading scientists and thinkers contribute their thoughts in plain English.
+The title of the book refers to C. P. Snow's 1959 work The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, which described the conflict between the cultures of the humanities and science.
+
+
+== Contents ==
+Contributions by twenty-three authors were included in the 1995 book:
+
+physicist Paul Davies
+biologist Richard Dawkins
+philosopher Daniel Dennett
+paleontologist Niles Eldredge
+chaos theorist J. Doyne Farmer
+theoretical physicist Murray Gell-Mann
+biologist Brian Goodwin
+geologist/biologist Stephen Jay Gould
+physicist Alan Guth
+inventor W. Daniel Hillis
+theoretical psychologist Nicholas Humphrey
+geneticist Steve Jones
+biologist Stuart Kauffman
+complex systems specialist Christopher Langton
+biologist Lynn Margulis
+mathematician and computer scientist Marvin Minsky
+mathematical physicist Roger Penrose
+cognitive scientist Steven Pinker
+theoretical astrophysicist Martin Rees
+cognitive scientist Roger Schank
+theoretical physicist Lee Smolin
+biologist Francisco Varela
+evolutionary biologist George C. Williams
+The book influenced the reception of popular scientific literature in parts of the world beyond the United States. In Germany, the book inspired several newspapers to integrate scientific reports into their "Feuilleton" or "culture" sections (such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). At the same time, the assertions of the book were discussed as a source of controversy, especially the implicit assertion that "third culture thinking" is mainly an American development. Critics acknowledge that, whereas in the English-speaking cultures there is a large tradition of scientists writing popular books, such tradition was absent for a long period in the German and French languages, with journalists often filling the gap. However, some decades ago there were also scientists, like the physicists Heisenberg and Schrödinger and the psychologist Piaget, who fulfill the criteria Brockman named for "third culture." The German author Gabor Paal suggested that the idea of the "third culture" is a rather modern version of what Hegel called Realphilosophie (philosophy of the real).
+Also, already during the interwar period, Otto Neurath and other members of the Vienna Circle strongly propagated the need for both the unity of science and the popularization of new scientific concepts. With the rise of the Nazis in Germany and Austria, many of the Vienna Circle's members left for the United States where they taught in several universities, causing their philosophical ideas to spread in the Anglo-Saxon world throughout the 1930s–1940s.
+
+
+== References ==
+John Brockman, The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution, Simon & Schuster: 1995 ISBN 0-684-82344-6
+Gabor Paal, Was ist schön? Ästhetik und Erkenntnis, Koenighausen & Neumann (2003), Würzburg. ISBN 3-8260-2425-7
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+Kelly, Kevin (1998). "The Third Culture". Science. 279 (5353): 992–993. doi:10.1126/science.279.5353.992. S2CID 143224854. Reflections on "the Third Culture" from the editor of Wired.
+
+
+== External links ==
+3rd Culture at EDGE

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_Explainer-0.md

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+---
+title: "Thing Explainer"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_Explainer"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:39.252272+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words is a 2015 illustrated non-fiction book created by Randall Munroe, in which the author attempts to explain various complex subjects using only the 1,000 most common English words. The word "thousand" is not one of those most-used words, thus things are described using "the ten hundred words people use the most often." Munroe conceptualized the book in 2012, when drawing a schematic of the Saturn V rocket for his webcomic xkcd.
+
+
+== Synopsis ==
+In Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe explains the function and mechanics of 54 subjects using only the 1,000 most commonly used words in the English language. The book covers a wide range of topics, including pencils ("writing sticks"), cameras ("picture takers"), microwave ovens ("food-heating radio boxes"), airplane engines ("sky boat pushers"), and atom bombs ("machines for burning cities"). Besides technology, Munroe also explains human organs and conceptual subjects such as the periodic table. The book challenges its readers to figure out what the technical name is of the subjects it describes, and was described by Jack Schofield of ZDNet as a "puzzle game."
+The book is illustrated using stick figures and includes a large number of nerdy jokes. Peter Gleick wrote for The Huffington Post that science communicators often use many uncommon and long words when describing complex topics, and that Thing Explainer explores "how to explain ideas and offer information in a simpler way."
+
+
+== Conception and development ==
+The concept of Thing Explainer took root in 2012, while Munroe was playing space simulator Kerbal Space Program. Here, he was giving the rockets he designed silly names, such as "Up Goer" and "Skyboat," and he began wondering if he could explain how a rocket ship works using such simplified language. Munroe drew a rendering of the Saturn V rocket using blueprints from NASA's archives and annotated it with simplified descriptions, such as labeling the boosters as the spot where "lots of fire comes out." Munroe published this drawing in his webcomic xkcd under the title "Up-Goer Five".
+"Up-Goer Five" became the basis of Thing Explainer. In an interview with The New York Times, Munroe stated that "the word limit is fun, because it forces you to think about it some more." Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) on November 24, 2015, the book was initially sold for $25 USD. Wired described Thing Explainer as the followup to Munroe's 2014 book What If?.
+HMH began collaborating with Munroe in 2016 to incorporate parts of Thing Explainer in United States high school textbooks. 2016 editions of HMH's chemistry, biology, and physics textbooks include both old and new diagrams, charts, and stick figures by Munroe, as part of the HMH Science Dimensions program.
+
+
+== Reception ==
+Reviewing the book, Naomi Alderman of The Guardian praised the detailed illustrations in Thing Explainer, describing it as "a beautifully designed journey through the intricacies of daily life." Alderman said that Munroe produced sentences of "startling clarity" writing the book, describing ideas precisely and in a compelling manner. However, she also noted that some of the passages in the book are more difficult to comprehend due to the restriction, which she called "part of the joke", saying that the book has "a cryptic crossword feel." Stephen Shankland of CNET stated that Thing Explainer is "fun if you enjoy puzzles, annoying if you just want to learn." Shankland described the book as "clever, instructive, [and] thought-provoking," but stated that the book can come across as awkward if its reader does not take the book in the right spirit.
+Science communicator Peter Gleick stated that Munroe's description of the color of light is one of the best explanations of the topic he had seen, and that school teachers could learn from the book. Blogger Cory Doctorow called the schematics Munroe used in the book as "a deceptive, seductive way of presenting the inscrutable and chaotic innards of our daily world," and proclaimed delight at watching the "linguistic backflips" Munroe goes through to express complex and technical ideas, while praising how clear the book can be.
+
+
+== References ==

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throwim_Way_Leg-0.md

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+---
+title: "Throwim Way Leg"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throwim_Way_Leg"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:41.611628+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Throwim Way Leg is a 1998 book written by Australian scientist Tim Flannery. It documents Flannery's experiences conducting scientific research in the highlands of Papua New Guinea and Indonesian Western New Guinea. The book describes the flora and fauna of the island and the cultures of its various peoples. The title is an anglicised spelling of the New Guinean Pidgin "Tromoi Lek," to go on a journey.
+Flannery recounts his 15 trips to New Guinea beginning in 1981, when he was aged 26. He identifies at least 17 previously undescribed species during this period.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Throwim' Way Leg: Tree-Kangaroos, Possums, and Penis Gourds excerpt and text search
+There Goes the Neighborhood NY Times review of Throwim Way Leg

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiHKAL-0.md

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+---
+title: "TiHKAL"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiHKAL"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:42.756086+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+TiHKAL: The Continuation, also known as Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved, is a 1997 book written by Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin. It is about a family of psychoactive drugs known as tryptamines, which includes psychedelics, other hallucinogens, and entactogens. The book has two halves, and the second part of the book contains detailed entries on 55 tryptamines. TiHKAL is a sequel to PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved) (1991).
+
+
+== Content ==
+TiHKAL, much like its predecessor PiHKAL, is divided into two parts. The first part, for which all rights are reserved, begins with a fictionalized autobiography, picking up where the similar section of PiHKAL left off; it then continues with a collection of essays on topics ranging from psychotherapy and the Jungian mind to the prevalence of DMT in nature, ayahuasca and the war on drugs.
+The second part of TiHKAL, which may be conditionally distributed for non-commercial reproduction (see § External links, below), is a detailed synthesis manual for 55 tryptamines (many discovered by Alexander Shulgin himself), including their chemical structures, doses, durations, and commentary. It includes entries on compounds including simple tryptamines like dimethyltryptamine (DMT), psilocin, and 5-MeO-DMT, α-alkyltryptamines like α-methyltryptamine (AMT), β-carbolines or harmala alkaloids like harmaline, the iboga alkaloid ibogaine, and lysergamides like LSD. Whereas PiHKAL had 179 entries on phenethylamines, TiHKAL has only 55 entries. Shulgin has made the second part freely available on Erowid while the first part is available only in the printed text.
+Members of Shulgin's research who contributed to the experience reports included Shulgin himself, Ann Shulgin, Myron Stolaroff, and Jean Stolaroff, among others.
+
+
+== Response ==
+As with PiHKAL, the Shulgins were motivated to release the synthesis information as a way to protect the public's access to information about psychedelic compounds, a goal Alexander Shulgin has noted many times. Following a raid of his laboratory in 1994 by the United States DEA, Richard Meyer, spokesman for DEA's San Francisco Field Division, stated that "It is our opinion that those books [referring to the previous work, PiHKAL] are pretty much cookbooks on how to make ‘controlled drugs’. Agents tell me that in clandestine labs that they have raided, they have found copies of those books."
+
+
+== Notable compounds ==
+Some compounds in TiHKAL, including dimethyltryptamine (DMT), psilocybin (4-PO-DMT), psilocin (4-HO-DMT), bufotenin (5-HO-DMT), 5-MeO-DMT, α-methyltryptamine (AMT), lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), harmaline, and ibogaine, are widely known and/or used hallucinogens.
+
+
+== Tryptamines listed ==
+
+In addition to TiHKAL, Shulgin has also described the properties of psychedelic tryptamines in humans in literature reviews.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Bibliography of Alexander Shulgin
+PiHKAL (Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved) (1991)
+The Shulgin Index, Volume One: Psychedelic Phenethylamines and Related Compounds (2011)
+List of psychedelic literature
+Substituted tryptamine
+Substituted β-carboline and harmala alkaloid
+Azepinoindole and iboga alkaloid
+Substituted lysergamide
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Erowid Online Books: TiHKAL: The Continuation by Alexander & Ann Shulgin
+"Shulgin in Spanish" Project – Information on the first complete translation of PiHKAL and TiHKAL into Spanish
+TiHKAL • Info: A Visual Index and Map of TiHKAL: The Continuation by Alexander & Ann Shulgin
+Transform Press – Publisher of TiHKAL
+TiHKAL - Wikipedia Massviews Analysis (Wikipedia Page Views of Individual TiHKAL Entries)

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time's_Arrow,_Time's_Cycle-0.md

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+---
+title: "Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle"
+chunk: 1/3
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time's_Arrow,_Time's_Cycle"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:43.948341+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time is a 1987 history of geology by the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, in which the author offers a historical account of the conceptualization of Deep Time and uniformitarianism using the works of the English theologian Thomas Burnet, and the Scottish geologists James Hutton and Charles Lyell.
+
+== Deep Time ==
+Gould ranks the development of the concept "deep time," which involved deliberately rejecting the biblical description of earth's past for nearly incomprehensible eons, with the revolutions associated with Copernicus and Charles Darwin.  To illustrate this, Gould picked three major figures in the history of geology, one traditional villain (Thomas Burnet) and two traditional heroes (James Hutton and Charles Lyell).
+
+== Flimsy 'cardboard' ==
+Standard textbook accounts of the achievements of these three figures have long provided what Gould describes as a "self-serving mythology."  These flimsy "cardboard" accounts vaunt the superiority of empiricism and inductivism over the scientific nemesis of religious bigotry.
+This legend, as perpetuated by geology textbooks over the last century, claims that geology remained in the service of the Mosaic story of creation so long as armchair geological theorists refused to place fieldwork ahead of scriptural authority.  Thomas Burnet was just such an archetypical religious spokesman.  A century later, Hutton heroically broke with this biblical zealotry by arguing that geological evidence must rest upon a solid empirical foundation.  The Earth's strata, when carefully examined, betray "no vestige of a beginning—no prospect of an end."   But Hutton was far ahead of his time. So it was not until Charles Lyell published the Principles of Geology that geologists finally came to accept Hutton's basic message and banished miraculous intervention, catastrophes, and biblical deluges from their science.
+Having elaborated this bit of scientific melodrama, Gould proceeds to demolish it by showing that the actualities of Hutton's and Lyell's work were the opposite of the textbook legend.  His intention is not simply to debunk the textbook legend, which has already been debunked by historians such as Martin J. S. Rudwick.  He sets out to rectify the error and show the real sources of inspiration in the development of deep time which have not been properly understood.
+
+== Kuhnian revolutions ==
+Gould is deeply influenced by Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962).  Kuhn argued, in part, that science is a social activity and that theories are intellectual constructions imposed on data, not demanded by them.   Along with Kuhn and other philosophers and sociologists of science, Gould has recognized that mental constructs (metaphors, analogies, personal philosophies, imaginative leaps)—not empirical discoveries—are what bring about scientific advance.   "Facts" are so embedded in a paradigm that they simply do not have the kind of independent probative power they were once thought to possess.
+The development of the idea of deep time is by no means fieldwork, as the textbook myths would have us believe.   Rather, Gould pinpoints a powerful pair of metaphors—time's arrow and time's cycle—by which humankind has always tried to grasp the concept of time. Time's arrow captures the uniqueness and distinctive character of sequential events, whereas time's cycle provides these events with another kind of meaning by evoking lawfulness and predictability.
+More importantly, this metaphorical pair of ideas was essential to the thinking of the three geological protagonists; and the paired concepts therefore offer the key, now obscured by textbook mythology, to unlocking their thinking about time.
+
+== Burnet ==
+Burnet's theory is a one-cycle theory in which biblical narrative (time's arrow) runs its course within a wider conception of "the great year" and "great circle of time and fate" that bring about the return of Paradise.
+It is his belief in Scripture that made Burnet a pariah in the history of geology.  Yet Burnet was hardly the religious fanatic he is painted to have been within the context of his contemporary scientific thought.
+In contrast to textbook legend, Burnet was adamant about explaining the Biblical history of the earth entirely within the frame of natural science, devoid of all appeals to miracles or divine intervention. Thus this "bad guy" of geological textbook history was actually more devoted to rational, miracle-free science than the greatest scientists of his age.

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+---
+title: "Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle"
+chunk: 2/3
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time's_Arrow,_Time's_Cycle"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:43.948341+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+== Hutton’s endless cycles of deep time ==
+Before James Hutton, most geological theorists had dealt only with processes of decay.   The earth was created and its geologic structures just wore down through catastrophic events like weathering and especially the biblical Flood.
+Hutton introduced the concept of repair into geology and, with it, the notion of deep time.  The textbook myths see this as a triumph of science and empiricism over religion, but it was nothing of the kind.
+Hutton's theory of the earth as a geological clockwork of eroding continents balanced against uplifting ocean basins was not based on field observations but on a priori conceptions inspired jointly by religious considerations and "the most rigid and uncompromising version of time's cycle ever developed by a geologist."
+Hutton's theory grew out of what may be called "the paradox of the soil."  Good soil, the product of the "denudation," or eroding, of rock strata, eventually loses its richness to the plant life it sustains.  Were there no geological source for continual new soil then the world would bear the intolerable stamp of an imperfectly designed abode for man's existence. Hutton's homocentric and teleological concept of the world therefore demanded that the soil, new soil, should never run out. This requirement in turn demanded the uplift of new strata to become the sources for soil replenishment.
+So Hutton set out to find evidence for uplift (which he naturally did, since he was looking for it). He found much evidence interpreted to be repeated uplifts of the Earth's crust. This led him inexorably to the idea of deep time.
+So rigid was Hutton's vision of an endlessly cycling earth having "no vestige of a beginning" and "no prospect of an end" that he lost all interest in the historical nature of geological change.  The Divine benevolence entailed in these cycles was everything to Hutton. Such is an unlikely hero for empiricist geology, who nevertheless became one.
+Gould reconstructs the process of mythification of Hutton and sees it as involving several stages.
+First, Hutton's long and turgid Theory of the Earth (1795) was popularized by his friend John Playfair (1802). Not only did Playfair make up for Hutton's difficult prose, but he also modernized Hutton's theory by soft-pedaling both his "denial of biblical history" and his repeated appeals to final causes. Subsequently, Charles Lyell, who needed an empiricist hero for his own account of the warfare between science and religious bigotry, bolstered Hutton's image as a fieldworker who had no conceptual bias. Finally the legend was consolidated in the writings of later geologists, who rarely bothered to read Hutton in the original.
+
+== Lyell’s uniformitarianism ==
+It is important to bear in mind that Charles Lyell was trained as a lawyer. His rhetorical skills were considerable and they are crucial to understanding his impact upon the history of geology.
+When pleading for his favorite client, which became known as the "uniformitarian" theory of geology, he portrayed the previous history of his discipline as a gradual overcoming of primitive superstitions, wild speculations, and biblical allegiances. In doing so he created his own legend as an arch-empiricist free of all bias and preconception.
+But Lyell was not selling just evidence and fieldwork over previous dogma and speculative theory. Rather he foisted upon his contemporaries a "fascinating and particular theory rooted in…time's cycle" by conflating a number of distinct elements under the single banner of "uniformitarianism," the regularity of physical laws with the irregularity of history.
+
+=== The philosophical assumptions ===
+First, Lyell argued for the uniformity of nature's laws (that is, the notion that laws do not change with time or place).  Second, he argued for the uniformity of process, which simply means always explaining past changes by currently known causes even if catastrophic interpretations may be just as explanatory.  Contrary to legend, Lyell's catastrophic opponents accepted both of these philosophical aspects of "uniformity."
+What Lyell's critics did not accept were two further substantive hypotheses about the world that he included under the heading of good (uniformitarian) science.
+
+=== The substantive hypotheses ===
+These claims were that rates of geological change are always uniform and gradual and that the general state of the world also remains uniform (that is, there is no progression or directionality in the long run). Far from using Hutton's field data to show that the earth has passed through vast epochs of change, Lyell drew on the peculiarly static spirit of Hutton's vision to conceive an earth that, although unimaginably old, had changed hardly at all.
+The last of these claims was the most peculiar of all within Lyell's vision of earth history.  It led him to deny all evidence of progression in the fossil record and hence to reject not only Lamarck's theory of evolution but also contemporary catastrophist notions, in which "higher" organisms were thought to replace "lower" ones after mass extinctions.  If fossils seemed to belie this, if mammals were absent from older rocks, it was simply because fossils were rare and scattered.
+In showing how Hutton and Lyell were dedicated not to modern notions of geological dynamism but to antique ones of geological steady-state, Gould points out that Lyell was even less of an empiricist than most of his catastrophist and creationist opponents.
+For Lyell was constantly forced to deny the literal evidence of the geological record, which shows whole groups of organisms being abruptly replaced by different sets of organisms in adjacent strata.  His gradualist reading of the geological record therefore required his constant "interpretation" of the recalcitrant evidence in order to reconcile it with his notions of time's stately cycle and a world without abrupt changes.

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+title: "Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle"
+chunk: 3/3
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time's_Arrow,_Time's_Cycle"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:43.948341+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+=== From steady state to progressionism ===
+Nor was Lyell's eventual conversion to evolution a strictly empirical affair. When he finally took this step publicly, in 1868, it was not because he had been persuaded by Darwin's theory of natural selection. In fact, Lyell rejected that theory, accepting only a general evolutionary process without its celebrated Darwinian mechanism.
+Admitting nonmiraculous progression (that is, evolution) in turn allowed him to preserve three of his four uniformities (uniformity of law, process, and rate) while giving up only uniformity of state.  This was as Gould notes, "the most conservative intellectual option available to him."
+Charles Lyell may have lost the battle over progressionism to Darwinism, but through rhetoric he won a battle against catastrophism, which enabled his hypothesis of the uniformity of rate to become a textbook shibboleth.
+The catastrophists of Lyell's day, Gould nevertheless maintains, were right all along.  The literal fossil evidence of major rapid changes in previous faunas does not need to be interpreted away, as Lyell tried to do by appealing to the imperfection of the geological record.
+Gould sees supreme irony in the recent hypothesis of the Berkeley scientists Luis and Walter Alvarez that mass extinctions were caused by asteroidal or cometary impacts (a hypothesis now made plausible by the discovery of a worldwide iridium layer deposited at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary); for this is precisely the sort of wild "cosmological" speculation that Lyell derided in seventeenth-century writers like William Whiston.
+Gould concludes Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle by insisting that arrows and cycles are "eternal metaphors" in the understanding of time. In a thoughtful complement to his discussion of the history of geology, he shows how these two metaphors have figured in the art and sculpture associated with major biblical themes.  Both metaphors, he concludes, are needed "for any comprehensive view of history."
+
+== Notes ==
+
+== References ==
+The article is based upon the following book reviews:
+
+Sulloway, Frank (May 28, 1987). "The Metaphor and the Rock: A Review of Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle by Stephen Jay Gould". The New York Review of Books. 34.
+Wallace, David R. (1987). "It's an Old, Old, Old, Old World". New York Times.
+"Stephen Jay Gould Books". National Center for Science Education. Retrieved 2011-08-14.
+
+== Further reading ==
+Additional book reviews include:
+
+Retzinger, J. P. (1989). "Book Review". Iowa Journal of Literary Studies. 10 (1): 158–161. doi:10.17077/0743-2747.1334.
+Taylor, Kenneth L. (1987). "Review". Isis. 78 (4): 608–609. doi:10.1086/354574. JSTOR 231940.
+Wood, Robert Muir (May 7, 1987). "The real history of geology". New Scientist (1559): 55.
+
+== External links ==
+Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle on-line
+
+== Details ==
+Publisher: Harvard University Press
+ISBN 0-674-89198-8 (Hardback 1987)
+ISBN 0-674-89199-6 (Paperback 1988)
+Language: English

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+title: "Transcendence (Vince book)"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendence_(Vince_book)"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:45.056463+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time is a non-fiction book by Gaia Vince published in 2019. It describes how human evolution was shaped by genetic, environmental and cultural factors. It has been reviewed by several science publications, including Nature.
+
+
+== Summary ==
+Vince offers a synthesis of the contemporary research in genetics, anthropology, palaeontology, archaeology and neurology to describe the peculiar evolution of the human race. To Vince, genetics, the environment and culture all contributed to human evolution, each factor influencing the other two. For example, she shows how language is influenced not only by the evolution of the voice box, but also by climate. She describes how language, in turn, influences the way we think and may even have some effects on gene selection.
+She identifies an increased energy consumption as one of the ways by which we have evolved into the planet-dominating species we are now. Humans have learned to multiply the amount of energy at their disposal, from cooking to reduce time spent consuming food, all the way to the use of machines and electronics.
+Vince elaborates on the social, cooperative nature of the human animal. Contrary to chimpanzees, humans chose to form social groups and reproduce beyond their family or clan, even with neanderthals. A large part of the brain keeps track of relationships with an increasingly greater number of acquaintances.  By imitation, storytelling and instruction, humans access and share the species' common knowledge pool: survival techniques such as foraging and cooking, but also social norms and prejudices.
+Referring to concepts she introduced in her first book, Vince examines the global impact humanity has on the planet, and the implications of resource scarcity on future human development. She paints a picture of a highly coherent and stratified society (a superorganism) where only some individuals have the means of living a fulfilling existence, leaving those at the margins highly vulnerable.
+
+
+== Critical reception ==
+Writing for Nature, Tim Radford calls the book a "hugely enjoyable sprint through human evolutionary history". Rather than new science, Vince's offers a review of paleontological research that reads like "a mosaic of tersely introduced evidence", but one worth reading.
+In Geographical, Alan Lane invites the reader to see the book as "a vital argument that future humanity will be greater than the sum of its parts. And that great does not always mean good."
+For The Wire Science, M.R. O'Connor compares Vince's style to Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker, Bill Bryson, and Yuval Noah Harari, calling it "approachable, smart, and very ambitious". Vince is "uniquely talented" in weaving together research from a variety of disciplines. She is, however, prone to make unsupported statements or generalizations and the conclusion about the future of humanity seem rather vague after such a detailed account of our past evolution.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Race and intelligence
+David Reich
+
+
+== References ==