A Plea for Applied Geology

Abstract

The old allusions to science "pure and impure" have lost whatever they may have had of humor or justification.L.

The World that Changed the Map

“…His notion of scientific 'practice' is empirical and literal, rather than anthropological, sociological, or linguistic: he is more concerned with the why of knowledge-making than the how. This is why Torrens's penchant for 'unrecognized' or 'forgotten' practical figures does not make him solely a 'myopic stratigrapher'; in fact, his characterization of geology as rooted in a range of social and economic activities has been further elaborated in recent work by scholars like Simon Knell (2000), Martina Kölbl-Ebert (2002), andPaul Lucier (1999). While The Practice of British Geology is thus of particular value to historians of earth science, it is also relevant to a wider science studies audience for its methodological emphasis on the challenge of finding sources to illuminate the unpublished, even unwritten elements of past scientific and technical practice, and for its historiographical emphasis on the role of practitioners who undertook scientific work for a living, as opposed to the theorists and influential leaders who have received much greater attention.…”