Encyclopedia of Geology, Five Volume Set, Volume 1-5
Encyclopedia of Geology Series
By Richard C.Selly, Robin Cocks, lan Plimer
Publisher : Academic Press
Number Of Pages: 2750
Publication Date: 2004-12-16
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0126363803
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780126363807
Binding: Hardcover
Description of book
Back in 1970, I had a geology class given by a talented teacher; I then started to love that wonderful field for itself. Having now a work to do over the years to come, in which geology plays a significant part, I had the following choice for renewing and extending knowledge: buying this costly encyclopedia, or buying a book on tectonics, one on petrology… The second alternative would have been cheaper, but the encyclopedia gives a more rounded out view of the field, as relevant, and more importantly, as delocalized over the whole planet (this is no US-centered manual).
Geology has the privilege to peer deeply over our dual foundations:
– physical, as the place we live on, has been shaped by a long, complex tectonic history, and as the rocks now present have been previously ejected, deposited, folded, ****morphosed, wheathered and perhaps re-deposited again…
– biological, as life has unfolded from bacteria / cyanobacteria, all the way up to flowering plants and primates.
Geologists are admirably keen observers of natural evidences: this is exemplified on each page. They seek to integrate together the many dimensions of space, as they intercross with the multitude of temporal cycles concerning the 3 kingdoms in nature: mineral, vegetal, and animal (and now human as well). Therefore as physical, chemical, biological, and let us say also, geographical (even astronomical) processes are together at play, only a work of such wide inclusiveness and expertise as this encyclopedia can propose and give the proper food, to our astonished mind, in learning to build such a synthetic picture.
Of course the pursuit of such a vision demands quite a lot of work on our part, and the 5 volumes get moved quite a lot on more than one table! In this the comprehensive, detailed index of the 5th volume is invaluable: no geological dictionary that I know of, gives references to all the main tectonic formations of the world, and this can otherwise be quite painful for the non-professional. These names, that thus also refer to geographical ********s, have an invaluable presence in this index.
In a future edition:
* the beautiful geological maps (mostly in color) of the continental (or national in some cases) configurations would definitely be heightened in value by showing on their margins, at no greater cost it seems, the rough ********s of latitudes and longitudes, so that we may spontaneously use a geographical atlas for comparison with more accuracy.
* In mineralogy, it is simply a shame that the chart of the 32 three dimensional crystallographic point groups of symmetry is not displayed: this indeed depicts -excluding the exceptional chemicals capable of been built into crystals, while inhering the 5-fold symmetry– the mathematical foundation upon which all minerals are ideally being structured into an absolute spatial order… The mineral kingdom is the only one for which such an essential order has been discovered, one that is shared by nearly all minerals on earth (and at least partly beyond).
With these books, I will marvel for the rest of my life.
….
التحميل