Prof. Hugh Eales
Prof Hugh Eales
Prof. Hugh Eales is launching his entertaining and accessible new book on the geology of Southern Africa, Riddles in Stone: Myths, Theories and Controversies About South Africa's Geological Past at the 2007 Wordfest.
About Hugh Eales
South African-born Hugh Eales completed his undergraduate years and M.Sc. at Rhodes University in 1952, before becoming a mining and field geologist in East Africa and Zimbabwe. Returning to Rhodes in 1958 to complete a doctorate, he was in 1970 given the Chair of Geology there, a position he held until retirement in 1993. During these years he served on many national and international bodies, was elected Vice-Chairman of the Mineralogical Association of SA in the year of its foundation (1980), Chairman in 1981, and National Convenor for the CSIR Research Programme on Layered Complexes (1985-88), . In 1978 he founded the School of Exploration Geology at Rhodes , in which some 170 professional geologists from 25 countries world-wide have now earned specialized post- graduate degrees. He has spent sabbaticals at the Universities of Cambridge, Princeton, Wisconsin and Oregon.
Hugh has published some 80 full-length scientific papers and books in a variety of fields His “Introduction to the Bushveld Complex” was cited by the SA Council for Geoscience in 2006 as their best-selling book. As relief from the world of academia, he was President of both the Rhodes University (1989-94) and Grahamstown City (1994-97) Golf Clubs. Other interests include fly fishing (in SA, Ireland and New Zealand) and gardening.
Riddles in Stone: Myths, Theories and Controversies About South Africa's Geological Past
Hugh Eales- Riddles in Stone
Riddles in Stone covers a variety of fascinating controversies and startling differences of opinion that accompanied the evolution of the study of Earth Sciences in southern Africa. Over the centuries, debates have raged amongst geologists, and between geologists and biologists, physicists and theologians, on controversies such as the age of the Earth and its lifespan; the Apocalypse; Noah’s Flood as myth or fact; Continental Drift; the origin of ore deposits of gold, diamonds, copper and platinum; and Schwarz’s well-meaning but forgotten Kalahari Scheme.
This encyclopaedic book is the result of a lifetime’s work. Although scrupulously rooted in scientific literature, it maintains an accessible and entertaining tone and shows how consensus amongst a majority may be proof of nothing. Geologists, challenged to interpret events that took place billions of years ago, often beneath the Earth’s surface, have drawn up theories and hypotheses which may appear either absurdly dated or, from other perspectives, as cutting edge. The introduction of fresh ideas (as in the Plate Tectonic model) or new techniques (as in the dating of rocks using radioactive decay) can re-align the thrust of science, leading to the abandoning of traditional ideas and the embracing of new ones.
This is science as story and research as adventure. If this book had been around when I started exploring my surroundings, I'd probably have ended up a geologist.
?DON PINNOCK, adventurer and natural history writer
This book is riveting and exciting, but also educational and thought provoking. I have been well entertained and have found every page fascinating. The author’s knowledge is encyclopaedic.
?DR. THELMA HENDERSON, former geologist, Assistant Dean at the University of the Witwatersrand and Director for Social Development at Rhodes University
1 86814 447 X/978 186814 447 1 245x170mm 432pp June 2007 Price: R220.00
Please send orders to:
Africa: Book Promotions, PO Box 5, Plumstead 7800, South Africa
Tel: 021 707 5700 Fax: 021 707 5795 orders@bookpro.co.za
US: Transaction Publishers, 300 McGaw Drive, Edison, NJ 08837, USA
Tel: 732 445 1245 Fax: 732 748 9801 www.transactionpub.com
UK/Europe/Australasia: The Eurospan Group
Tel: +44 207 845 0803 Fax: +44 207 379 3313 www.eurospanonline.com
Please send orders to:
Africa: Book Promotions, PO Box 5, Plumstead 7800, South Africa
Tel: 021 707 5700 Fax: 021 707 5795 orders@bookpro.co.za
Preface to Riddles in Stone: Controversies, Theories and Myths About Southern Africa’s Geological Past by Hugh Eales
For several hundred years, geological science has been a battlefield of conflicting ideas. These controversies were not simply minor disagreements here and there, but included a great many clashes of interpretation that grew rapidly into acrimonious and protracted exchanges. The battles were fought within massive grey areas which some would stake their reputations on being white where others saw only black (or red!). Some saw the Earth as growing larger all the time, while others saw it shrinking. Early estimates of the Earth’s age as around 6 000 years have been progressively revised upwards to the current 4 600 million years – a figure that is 766 000 times greater than the initial estimate. Fifty angry years were to pass before those who claimed that the continents wander on the surface of the Earth were able to silence those who obstinately maintained that this was nonsense – a mere ‘fairy tale’. Minerals were once invested with magical properties, and some species believed to be capable of reproducing themselves in the Earth by sexual union, before science showed them to be crystalline solids of atoms chemically bonded together as molecules. Earth science and religious doctrines have fought bitterly over evolution as opposed to Creation, over the Biblical Flood as opposed by geological evidence, and even over which of the Sun and the Earth revolves around the other. Diametrically opposed views have all too often allowed for little compromise or middle ground.
My original title for this book was Some Good and Some Bad Calls in Earth Science, with a particular focus on South Africa, as a collection of some of the ideas that lie submerged and largely forgotten in the literature of geology, but colleagues suggested that this gave an impression of mere frivolity. In defence of my original title, which I still prefer, ‘Bad Calls’ are in my lexicon predictions or statements that were made, perhaps in good faith, but which have turned out to be wrong, controversial or merely mischievous. As an illustration of what I would regard as a ‘Bad Call’ drawn from the field of history, the name ‘Holy Roman Empire’, slated by Voltaire as neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire, would be a good example. The prediction in 1890 that the streets of London would be six feet deep in manure by 1920 because of all the horse-drawn traffic would be another.
This is not a textbook or reference book, nor does it pretend to give answers to the questions raised. It falls, perhaps, somewhere between what an older generation would recognise as a ‘Commonplace Book’ – a collation of the thoughts and beliefs of others which, for one reason or another, are perceived as memorable or significant – and a history of the development of some ideas in Earth science. My aim is to show how complex the planet on which we live is, and how few ‘final answers’ can be accepted with confidence. It is at the same time an attempt, however inadequate, to show that the evolution of geology as a science has produced a literature that should captivate any addict of ‘popular science’, without leaving him or her irretrievably lost in the technical language of the specialist. In the writing of it, I have used a broad brush rather than a fine nib, to exclude much tedious detail. The claim of physicists that ‘physics is phun’ is countered here with ‘geology is global’. This is as much a ‘bedside book’ for geologists, biologists and geographers as it is a volume written in non-technical language for the miner, investor, layperson, or student. Given that the emphasis is as much on entertainment as on enlightenment, it is a pot-pourri of scientific controversy and myths waiting to be debunked.
In the emergence of Earth science as a reputable science, rather than a field for mere common-room speculation, we learn that today’s dogma may be the heresy of tomorrow. If there is one thing the evolution of Earth science has taught us, it is that consensus amongst the majority, at any given time, is not proof of anything. Any science that calls for the interpretation of events that occurred hundreds of thousands to billions of years ago, and commonly at depths below the surface which we cannot ever hope to reach, must rely heavily on laws and observations based on the phenomena we see around us today. Therein lies the rub. There is no guarantee that things in the past – the force of gravity, the composition of the atmosphere, the climates of the world, the length of the day, the geographic position of the poles, the size of our Earth, or the map of the globe – were then as they are today. I leave it to you to decide whether Hutton’s and Lyell’s doctrine of Uniformitarianism (that the present gives us the key to what happened in the past) is to be trusted or not.
Most, but not all, of the pages that follow relate to South African geology, or concepts that originated elsewhere but became the foundations on which our interpretation of the geological history of this country was based. Some items come from my long-past days as a student, some from years as a mine and field geologist in Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa, sabbaticals and conferences in Britain, Europe and the United States of America (USA), and the rest from standing at the front of a university classroom. It is quite likely that my contribution will be slated by colleagues for not also including ‘this’ or ‘that’ from the past. In pre-emptive reply, I can only plead that the problem I faced lay in what to include and what to leave out of a relatively short book.
When I was an undergraduate, there was a story about a history student who made a bizarre collection of ‘versatile facts’ to be learned before each examination – facts that could be worked into any essay, no matter what the topic, but which ought surely to impress the examiner by displaying a convincing breadth of general knowledge. For example, he learned the date on which the first camel was shipped into Ireland, and this he considered could be used to great effect in offerings such as: ‘This piece of legislation relating to industrial practices was debated in the British parliament in the year 18~~, curiously enough, thirteen years before the first camel was introduced into Ireland.’ This kind of approach to examinations cannot be recommended as sound strategy for student readers, but the pages that follow will at least serve the purpose of giving a background to some of the wayward ideas that have surfaced during the development of Earth science.
Hugh V. Eales
Grahamstown
May 2007
