It's this year's Earth Science Week - see the American Geosciences Institute and Geological Society of London sites). I have periodically attempted to join the celebrations with posts on the "Nine big ideas" and the associated videos, Earth Science Literacy, and the outstanding "known unknowns" of earth science - please have a re-visit.
These were largely ruminations on what geology is about, the "philosophy" of the science, and a little advocacy for greater awareness. The question of why geology, what makes it fascinating, were subtexts, so my attention this year has been caught by a piece from September 2015 by Julia Turner, editor in chief of Slate. Titled "Your World, Rocked: A good introduction to geology course is actually a course in time," it is an eloquent (and personal) testimony to the value (sometimes not so obvious) of even a modest exposure to how our home planet works. It is, of course from the perspective of US education, but that matters not at all - its message is universal. The "rocks for jocks" amusement in the introduction is purely American - and so true. I taught Geology 101, otherwise known as "rocks for jocks" for several years, with many rewards and frustrations. Chief amongst the latter were the many kids who told me how much they enjoyed it, having had no idea at all about geology, and regretted that they were too far down their academic path (having left the science requirement until last) to pursue it further. I doubt that problem has gone away - to the loss of the science. There were many kids who were a joy to teach and interact with (although here I do not include the young woman who entered my office, closed the door, and declared that "Professor Welland, I'd do anything for an A"). But I digress....
In celebration of Earth Science Week, and in the hope that it might persuade just one young person to take a geology class, I am taking the liberty of reproducing in its entirety Julia Turner's piece from Slate:
A good introduction to geology course is actually a course in time.
By Julia Turner
Let me start by defending geology’s honor. Is there any other discipline that a rhyme so easily reduces to ridicule? Nearly every campus has some version of “rocks for jocks,” the intro geology course touted as the easiest way for granite-brained humanities majors to fulfill their science requirements without significant intrusion on their time or erosion of their GPAs.
But you shouldn’t take geology because it’s easy. (It isn’t necessarily easy—the geology class I took, from a bright-eyed elfin woman with the pleasing, rocklike name of Jan Tullis, certainly wasn’t.) You should take geology because it will fundamentally transform the way you see the world.
I mean this literally. Understanding geology gives you a new way to interpret the visual data of the planet. Sometimes this can feel like X-ray vision or a sixth sense. The color of the soil can tell you what it’s made of. The lightning bolts of white across that cliff the highway blasted through? Quartz veins, a sign of metamorphic activity, way back, when fissures opened up in bending, cracking stone, and mineral-laden water coursed through. Looking out of a plane window at the contours of a mountain range, you can tell from shape alone whether the peaks are old or new—or rather, which are very very old and which are just old. (It’s the opposite of human aging: cragginess is a sign of relative youth, and smoothness comes only with time.) And the words! Schist. Nickeliferous. Gneiss. Each one with its own dense poetry.
Geology helps the land tell you stories. I remember flying once and noticing funny little slab-like mountains, each one distinct from the next, lying in parallel rows. Where once I would have seen only mystery, now I could imagine how those mountains came to be—a sedimentary bed, layer upon flat layer of different types of rock, broken and thrust upward by the movement of the plates, revealing a cross section in which the softer rocks had eventually eroded away, leaving only these orderly little slabs.
Geology is a gorgeous way to contemplate the abyss.
But geology does more than give you something to think about when you examine pebbles on a beach or go swimming in a quarry. You should also take geology because there is no better way to gain perspective on the fleetingness of life. Any good intro geology course is actually a course in time. You’ve heard the statistic: If the whole planet has been around for a single 24-hour day, the dinosaurs showed up at 10:56 p.m. and we just before 11:59. But imagine spending hours holding that thought in your mind, learning what happened during all the time that preceded us. Understanding, in a real way, how long the planet has been around; how slow, patient, and indifferent the movement of the rocks beneath us has been; how insignificant in the scheme of things our fervid civilizations and wars and inventions really are—this is a head trip better than any you’ll experience during the concert at Spring Fling..
Taking geology actually had a funny side effect for me. I came into the class an avid environmentalist. I was a child of the ’90s. I cared about whales. I recycled. I spent a semester on a farm. I wanted to keep humans from changing and destroying the planet. But geology complicated my understanding of this desire. The planet has been changing for millennia. It’s been destroyed and remade again and again. The temperature used to be different. The continents were in different places. Different creatures roamed the land. The environmentalist instinct to preserve the planet exactly as it is began to seem not altruistic, but selfish. The planet is a tough cookie. This pile of rocks doesn’t need saving. What we were trying to save, it seemed, was the version of the planet that works best for ourselves. And, sure, future generations and all the other species that currently live here. Still a worthy goal, of course. Perhaps an even worthier one, when you consider how unusual and unlikely Earth’s menagerie is. But geology made me think about it in a new way.
College students often enter university with an outsized view of their own significance. It’s good to study things that make you realize how unimportant you are. As a history major, I took a lot of classes that helped me understand how small my life is in the span of human existence. But there are a few courses—geology, astronomy, perhaps particle physics—that force students to confront true vastness, that make you consider the insignificance not just of your life, but of your entire species. Geology is a gorgeous way to contemplate the abyss.
This is valuable, in the end, because it both helps you care less and makes you care more. What’s a bad day in the scheme of things? But then again, why not make each one count? Something to consider, next time you contemplate the contours of the land.
Indeed.
re the stunning image at the head of this post:
Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Image by Reto Stöckli (land surface, shallow water, clouds). Enhancements by Robert Simmon (ocean color, compositing, 3D globes, animation). Data and technical support: MODIS Land Group; MODIS Science Data Support Team; MODIS Atmosphere Group; MODIS Ocean Group Additional data: USGS EROS Data Center (topography); USGS Terrestrial Remote Sensing Flagstaff Field Center (Antarctica); Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (city lights)
This spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet. These images are freely available to educators, scientists, museums, and the public.
Much of the information contained in this image came from a single remote-sensing device-NASA’sModerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS. Flying over 700 km above the Earth onboard the Terra satellite, MODIS provides an integrated tool for observing a variety of terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric features of the Earth. The land and coastal ocean portions of these images are based on surface observations collected from June through September 2001 and combined, or composited, every eight days to compensate for clouds that might block the sensor’s view of the surface on any single day. Two different types of ocean data were used in these images: shallow water true color data, and global ocean color (or chlorophyll) data. Topographic shading is based on the GTOPO 30 elevation dataset compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey’s EROS Data Center. MODIS observations of polar sea ice were combined with observations of Antarctica made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s AVHRR sensor—the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer. The cloud image is a composite of two days of imagery collected in visible light wavelengths and a third day of thermal infra-red imagery over the poles.
