Time Matters: Geology's Legacy to Scientific Thought -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1: Geological time -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 The historical perspective -- 1.2.1 The march of the scientists -- 1.2.2 The atomic age -- 1.3 Geological time and the age of Mother Earth -- 2: Dating rocks -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 The nature of stratigraphy and the principlesof relative dating -- 2.3 Biostratigraphy -- 2.4 Radiometric dating -- 2.4.1 Potassium -- 2.4.2 Rubidium -- 2.4.3 Uranium -- 2.4.4 Carbon -- 2.4.5 Mass spectrometer -- 2.5 Dating by fission tracks -- 2.6 Magnetism -- 2.6.1 Thermal remnant magnetism -- 2.6.2 Depositional remnant magnetism -- 2.6.3 Palaeo-magnetism and Polar wandering -- 3: The origins of the geological time scale -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Jurassic -- 3.3 Carboniferous -- 3.4 Triassic -- 3.5 Tertiary -- 3.6 Cambrian -- 3.7 Silurian -- 3.8 Devonian -- 3.9 Permian -- 3.10 Mississippian -- 3.11 Quaternary -- 3.12 Ordovician -- 3.13 Cretaceous -- 3.14 Pennsylvanian -- 3.15 Proterozoic -- 3.16 Archean and Hadean -- 4: Plutonism versus Neptunism -- 4.1 Introduction -- 4.2 Neptunism -- 4.3 Plutonism -- 5: Uniformitarianism versus Catastrophism -- 5.1 Introduction -- 5.2 Catastrophism -- 5.3 Diluvialisim -- 5.4 Uniformitarianism -- 5.5 Mass extinctions -- 5.6 Alternating warm and cold conditions -- 5.7 Catastrophes and the nature of science -- 5.8 Palaeogeography and Earth history -- 6: Evolution -- 6.1 Introduction -- 6.2 Darwin and evolution -- 6.3 Punctuated equilibrium and geographic speciation -- 6.4 Intermediates - what are we looking for? -- 7: Evolution versus Creationism -- 7.1 Introduction -- 7.2 Fossils -- 7.2.1 The Medieval view -- 7.2.2 The 17th- and 18th- century view -- 7.2.3 The 19th- century view -- 7.2.4 Mantell versus Owen -- 7.3 Famous Evolution versus Creation debates.

7.3.1 Huxley versus Wilberforce -- 7.3.2 Huxley versus Gladstone -- 7.3.3 The abolition of the equal time laws in America -- 7.3.4 The nature of life and science, and Evolution versus Creationism -- 7.4 Lagerstatten -- 8: Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics -- 8.1 Introduction -- 8.2 Mountain building -- 8.3 Isostasy -- 8.4 Continental Drift -- 8.5 Plate Tectonics -- 9: What have we learnt? -- Bibliography -- Index.