The Map That Changed the World : William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology

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Summary: The tragic story of "The Father of Geology"
Review: Simon Winchester demonstrated with "The Professor and the Madman", his skill at finding stories in cobwebbed corners of 19th Century British history that catch the popular interest. He has done it again with "The Map That Changed the World". It tells the story of William Smith, a seemingly unremarkable man who made one of the most remarkable and important scientific breakthroughs in the 19th century. Smith was an even less likely vessel for genius than the Swiss patent office employee who, a century later, intuited the relationship between energy and matter. He was born the son of an Oxfordshire blacksmith, attended no university, and earned his livelihood as a surveyor, coal mining engineer, and drainer of bogs. But while working in coal mines south of Bath in the 1790's, he made an intellectual leap as great as that of Einstein. Smith observed that the sedimentary layers of the rock formations in every mine shaft that he visited lay upon one another in the same sequence. What followed from that observation forever changed the way men searched for coal, gold, oil, and other minerals. The inductive jump Smith made from his observations was even more revolutionary, for it overturned the prevailing veiw of our planet's age. Most natural scientist of the late 18th century were gentlemanly dilettantes who collected fossils, but tacitly accepted Bishop Usher's dating of the earth's birth as having taken place on Oct 27th, 4004 BC. Smith saw that his fossil-bearing "stratifications" provided a means for studying an earth that was far more than 6000 years old. One might think that Smith would have been heaped with honors and rewards for his discoveries, but his hubris and his lack of social and academic status doomed him as surely as any tragic hero of fiction. Just as Smith's obsessive twenty-year effort to map the sub-surface landscape of Britain was coming to fruition in 1815, he was thrown into debtor's prison. After his release, he spent years as an itinerant workman in Yorkshire. Only in his final years was Smith belatedly hailed as the "Father of Geology" by the British scientific establishment. Winchester does a masterful job of bringing William Smith to life and in making the reader care as passionately about Smith's fate as if he were a character on "The Sopranos". In the process, Winchester shows us the topography of British society at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

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Summary: The Birth of a New Science
Review: Central to the nature of science is the organization of relaible information into verifiable forms which lend themselves to further analysis.

The birth of the industrial society in the mid to late eighteenth cetury gave rise to a huge demand for coal to power the factories which churned out goods for domestic consumption and for export. The coal industry required access into the deep recesses of the English earth. as well as technical advise from, among other professionals, land surveyors.

William Smith, a rather common individual, poorly educated, but possessed of good surveying skills found himself in great demand by the coal producers. After countless trips down mine shafts Smith made a critical observation-the strata for the earth passed through on the passage down the shaft of any one mine was repeated in every mine as well regardless of location.

The practical implication was enormous, for by the examining the exposed and weathered surface of any English landform, one was able to predict with certainty the type of strata which lay immediately below. Further knowing what in that layer, enabled the prediction of the layer which lay directly below that, and so forth. Thus it could be reliably predicted the location of minable minerals below the earth on the basis of surface observations.

Had Smith stopped there he would have still had an important place in the history of the science of geology. However, he studied and classified each of the strata by characteristics, and gave names to them, thus creating a common scientific vocabulary for other scientists to use in confirming his observations.

Smith went even further creating a beautiful map of the geological structure of England and Wales, which elegantly encapsulated his work into a practical and useful tool. This is a superb book on the life and times of a most unlikely giant of science William Smith.

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Summary: A New Map, A New World
Review: In _The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth ofModern Geology_ (HarperCollins), Simon Winchester has done a splendidjob of investigating how people thought of rock layers and fossilsbefore Smith came along, how Smith cogitated better ideas, how hepromulgated them, how he was betrayed, and how he was eventuallyredeemed. This is a great story of a one-man scientificrevolution. Key to the story is that Smith was a nobody. He was theson of the village blacksmith and had limited schooling. He likedlooking at rocks, especially fossils. When he eventually became asurveyor, he had the perfect job. He got it at a perfect time, when hewas able to descend into the coal mines and try to make sense of thestrata, and when surveying was needed for the canals to carry thecoal, canals that enabled him to see what the country all aroundlooked like when sliced into.

It was in 1815 that Smith's map emerged,"A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales With Part ofScotland." If mounted in one sheet, it was about nine by sixfeet. It was an entirely different representation of Britain thananyone had ever seen before, and the map's novelty and theintellectual acumen which had gone into it were not lost among thosewho knew something of fossils and digging. Unfortunately, among thosewho appreciated the map were members of a learned organization calledthe Geological Society, formed in London in 1807. Smith had madeimportant contributions to the fledgling science, but was pointedlynot invited to join; the founders were more interested in havinggentlemen like themselves at their meetings, and Smith would notdo. Furthermore, these gentlemen treated Smith even worse: theyadmired his map, and coveted it, and stole its ideas to make their owncompetitive copy, and undercut him. Smith landed in debtors' prison,and after that lived a hand-to-mouth existence. Happily, he did getrecognition before he died, a heartwarming ending to a greatstory.

Simon Winchester loves telling it. He can be forgiven forsometimes overstating the importance of William Smith. It is, however,certainly true that Smith's map was part of a new way of looking atthe world. It took its place in the nineteenth century's scientificview of the world's history which freed people from relying on theBible as a scientific guide. Winchester is right repeatedly to tell ofdifferent facets of the map's importance. He has a love of thedramatic, and his words show it: "For the first time the earth hada provable history, a written record that paid no heed or obeisance toreligious teaching and dogma, that declared its independence from thekind of faith that is no more than the blind acceptance ofabsurdity. A science - an elemental, basic science that would indue course allow mankind to exploit the almost limitless treasures ofthe underworld - had at last broken free from the age-oldconstraints of doctrine and canonical instruction."

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Summary: Excellent
Review: I loved the book but only give it four stars because I'm not much for forecasting (like another reviewer above). I like to be surprised, even preferring not to read the flaps of books I know I'm going to read anyway. The author also joggles the time-line a bit by *back*casting. This permits him to tell the best tale he can but also confuses the reader. Readers can see how some facts learned later sort of diminish the facts in the chapter before. But all for the best, I suppose, to make an easy enjoyable and exciting read. The lack of source notes won't matter to most but I did wonder where he received some information. Lastly, I didn't like the eleventh chapter so much -- a bit of a personal journey from the author -- but it did make the next chapter -- the best in the book -- all the more exciting. The design of the book deserves an award, the cover folding out into a large map. But I wish they included a one-to-one size detail of that map and perhaps an engraving of Smith somewhere in the book. A lot of complaints but they are mild and I stick by my title for this review: Excellent. You do not have to be a geologist to enjoy reading about this early geologist.

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Summary: More than Geology
Review: This book is a fascinating read not merely from a histotical or scientific viewpoint but as an biography of a man from humble beginnings and natural curiosity became a founding father of geology. The book is an easy pleasant read showing life at the turn of 19th century with the Industrial Revolution in full swing and how one man tried to map the sub-stata of the British Isles. The chapter headings are nicely illustrated with a selection of fossils which James Smith collected to show how different species lived and died out and how people came to realise that the then common view as given by religion to the age of the earth was incorrect. Geographers and Geologists evrywhere should read this book, but anyone who enjoys reading about human endeavour will appreciate this book.

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Summary: A LITERARY TIME MACHINE
Review: .

If ever you can judge a book by its cover, this is it. The copper embossed dust cover hints at the treasure buried within. From its binding, to the choice of paper to the fine etched illustrations, this is a very classy book.

Winchester takes us aboard one of the most effective literary time machines ever to land on a bookshelf. His writing sweeps us back 200 years to an England that was going through an industrial, scientific and social revolution.

Coal was king. Coal was the fuel for steam power. In turn, steam drove Britannia's economic engines.

William Smith was skilled as a geologist, engineer and cartographer. His observations and maps allowed landowners to discover and exploit the coal resources that lay beneath their land.

Smith's science went well beyond that of defining the strata containing the valuable coal. He devised the concept of stratigraphy, which would allow the relative age and spatial distribution of sedimentary rocks to be quantified.

It was this work, that inspired Smith's fellow geologist Charles Lyell to write "The Principles of Geology". When Charles Darwin went on his voyage of discovery it was the geological insights of Lyell and Smith that allowed Darwin to conceive of the vastness of the geological time scale. It is Winchester's thesis that Smith's map changed the world because of this direct influence on the most revolutionary scientific thinker of the 19th Century.

In the mid-1800s thanks to Darwin, geology was considered to be "The Father of Sciences".

The beauty of Winchester's writing is his evocation of the world in which Smith lived 200 years ago. His description of the English landscapes brings home to us the relationship between the underlying rocks and the aesthetics of the natural scenery we see around us.

Winchester's skills as a travel writer shine through. He surveys not only the landforms but also the social and political landscapes of this era. His clever use of the vocabulary of the era gives us a world inhabited by such people as beadles, tipstaffs and summoners. We travel in a conveyance called a myrmidon. His research is impeccable. We learn that there was an actual prison in London called "The Clink", and that the game of rackets or squash was invented in a debtors jail.

This book deserves its status as on of the great books of 2001. It should encourage readers to go back to Winchester's early work, particularly his travel writing. For readers who wish to learn more about Smith's influence on science should read Lyell's "Principles of Geology" which still in print as a Classic. This is the book that Charles Darwin took on his voyage of discovery. "The Map That Changed the World" will take you on your very own voyage of discovery.

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Summary: Simon has don it again!
Review: As in the Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester has grapsed the moments and the emotions of his subject and spread them eloquently across the page. I wont spoil any of the story for you here. If you enjoy reading history without the dates and generals, read this book. If you enjoy a story of triumph over nonsense, read this book!

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Summary: Exquisite Intellectual, Scientific and Social History!
Review: This book deserves more than five stars!

I enjoy intellectual, scientific, and social history, and was delighted to see all three forms combined in one outstanding book. The result provides many interesting and helpful perspectives on the development of three-dimensional geological maps and their later use in the sciences of geology and biology, and in looking for mineral reserves.

The details of this book are lovingly developed. Let's begin with the illustrations. The jacket dust cover can be unfolded to display a large, colored replica of William Smith's first geological map of Great Britain. Each stratum is colored in so it is darkest near the bottom and lightest near the top. You also get two smaller versions on color plates within the book. In identifying similar strata, he relied on differences in ammonite fossils, and 18 line drawings open 18 chapters so you can see how these compare to one another. You also get line drawings of oolitic limestone in which fossils are often found, and the types of fossils used as weighing stones and marbles on the farm where Mr. Smith grew up.

To make the connection to Mr. Smith's thought process, the author has visited many of the sites where Mr. Smith made his initial observations that led him to develop the concept of the modern geological map. One particularly interesting one is a chapter about the author's own youth and finding a perfect fossil sample.

Mr. Smith was not part of the gentry, which regularly provided the scientific advances of those days. Mostly self-taught, he was first a surveyer and later learned enough engineering to work on canals and projects like draining swamps. The gentry alternately encouraged and spurned him, which made the task more difficult.

Mr. Smith's thought process basically involved noting that the order of strata in collieries were often the same. Mr. Smith began to theorize that the strata were connected over vast sections of land. Later work with canals proved him right, where he could expose considerable lengths of land to see the connections. Close observation led him to realize the potential use of fossils for strata identification at a time when The Origin of Species had not been written and Darwin was still a Creationist.

From there, he worked mostly alone over decades to fill in the geological map with his own observations. It was an enormous task that no one would today consider doing alone! The problems of getting the first maps published are well described, as well.

The book also puts the challenge that this work made to Creationism into a helpful perspective. The illustrations include a Bible page showing the date of the Creation as 4004 B.C.

The subtle social interactions are also interesting, as Mr. Smith was considered someone to meet with for some purposes and not for others. He was snubbed during the founding of the Geological Society and the same people later plagiarized his work! Mr. Smith overspent his financial resources in pursuing the project, and fell into a ruinous debt and a disastrous marriage. The combination led him into debtor's prison just before the first map was published. He came out of prison to find his home boarded up and his possessions gone. He proceeded to live in obscurity for the next 12 years until scholarly praises for his work once again drew attention to him. In his last few years, he received honors (such as the first Wollaston Medal and a pension from the king).

I also enjoyed reading about the books that Mr. Smith read to learn about how to create maps and overlay survey results. The process in use in those days often meant that he had to carry 40 maps with him while he traveled around the countryside to check outcroppings.

Anyone who has studied geology will want to read this book. People who are fascinated by what one dedicated person can do will find the story inspirational. Those who enjoy understanding how important ideas developed will enjoy how observation led to new conclusions by Mr. Smith. Those who are interested in how evolution became accepted will enjoy how the explantion for fossils changed from God's way of showing his omnipotence to their being seen as the crystalized remnants of ancient sea creatures.

After you finish enjoying this magnificent volume, I encourage you to look around and consider where the current explanations don't match what actually seems to be going on. For example, many people have forecast problems of various sorts that have never occurred, while many actual problems have arrived unannounced. Why are these misperceptions occuring?

Help make the view of our world clearer for all!

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Summary: Geologist's Dream - Readers Beware
Review: "The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology," by Simon Winchester, proved to be a bit of a disappointment. It's a wonderful book, and I'm sure for those who make their life in geology it's an excellent read, but for me it was a let down.

The problem may be that Winchester is too good a writer, or too accurate a biographer, to put down any details of which he's not 100% certain. Add to that the fact that the source materials focus on William Smith's professional work almost to the exclusion of any personal detail, and you have what should be a compelling personal journey that winds up reading more like a geology text in too many chapters.

Smith's place in history was assured by his 1815 publication of a map of England showing the geological strata and graphically demonstrating his theories that one could tell the age of the rocks from examining the fossils found within. This was radical stuff in 1815, and the work that led to this map took Smith some 30 years. Along the way he picked up a wife, who was possibly crazy, and adopted a nephew, who became his assistant, had business and financial troubles, which led to his being held in debtor's prison, and had a long running class-based feud with England's scientific establishment, which led to his works not being properly recognized for many years after their publication.

Unfortunately, only the last aspect of Smith's life is covered in any detail because that's all he wrote about in his own journal, or is covered in other source material. About the wife we're told that she was a burden to him, often sick, probably crazy, and possibly even a nymphomaniac. We're told all that, but we're never given examples, or are told how Smith felt about her. Did he love her anyway? Did they ever try to have children of their own? Did she embarrass him publicly? We don't know. About the nephew we're told that Smith took over his care when his sister and brother-in-law died, and that he became his assistant, but we're told nothing of their personal relationship. Was their's a close, familial relationship, or only one of master or mentor to apprentice? We don't know. And such is the frustration with the book (mine, at least).

What's left is endless descriptions of the various layers of the earth's crust, and how Smith could tell if an outcropping belonged to the Jurassic or Cretaceous periods.

I picked up this book because I loved Winchester's previous "The Professor and the Madman" so much. That's a book that's rich in personal detail, and is as important and fascinating in the descriptions of the lives of the subjects as it is in the descriptions of their professional works. "The Map that Changed the World" is likely stunning for students of geology, but may bore beyond belief the reader who doesn't care or know about item one of earth science.

So - In the end, I suppose a mixed review. If you get this joke (and think it's funny): "Subduction leads to orogeny" - or, if you have a bumper sticker that says "Stop Plate Tectonics" - Then this is a five star book that you will love every page of. If you don't even care to look up any of those words, then this is a three star book you should avoid. Which averages out to four stars: An occasionally fascinating and well-written book that is often dry and disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful book
Review: I bought this as a gift, it almost wasn't. Its a lovely thing, a fine example of book binding. I read snippets of it as I wrapped Chirstmas presents, what I saw I liked. Recommended.