donn (04/25/83)
When I was in high school, I knew I would grow up to be a geologist. This prophecy, like many others, failed to come true, but I still have a warm feeling in my heart for amateur geology. The same experience occurred to John McPhee, who grew up to be a writer for the New Yorker; and as a tribute he has written two very interesting books about geology and geologists called BASIN AND RANGE and IN SUSPECT TERRAIN (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux). BASIN AND RANGE tells how he explored the Basin and Range country of Nevada and Utah with a Professor Deffeyes of Princeton University, looking for old silver mine tailings which can be reprocessed to extract tons of silver that earlier, less efficient processing methods missed. This story serves as a frame to an eloquent evocation of the age of the Earth and its history in stone, and the tale of how geology arose as a science to make sense of these things. McPhee does a splendid job of explaining how Hutton and others actually went to observe rocks in the field and make systematic studies of erosion and deposition, to reach the conclusion that the same forces which are shaping the world today were doing so millions of years in the past. This created a great controversy in its day; the prevailing school of "neptunism", which held that all topographic features could be explained by Noah's flood and other Biblical events, was populated by professors in frock coats and stiff collars who hated to get their shoes dirty -- the notion of actually studying rocks in the field was deemed pointless or ridiculous. People were also resistant to the concept of "deep time" (McPhee's term for the time scale of geologic history); it really is a fearful thing to realize that human history is such an insignificant and transient flicker on the face of the Earth. McPhee instills a real feeling for "deep time" in the reader and in doing so elicits a deep respect for the Earth and its immensity. IN SUSPECT TERRAIN is intrinsically somewhat less interesting to me since it discusses the geology of the Eastern U.S., while I am a notorious Western chauvinist (would you believe that San Diego is the farthest east I have ever lived in this country?). McPhee travels along Interstate 80 from New Jersey to Ohio with a geologist from the USGS who is sometimes named Harris, whose specialty is measuring the temperature at which limestone was cooked from the color of certain fossils. As it turns out, this temperature is an important indicator of potential oil deposits, since the formation of oil requires certain specific and sensitive conditions of temperature. Harris is an interesting character herself and McPhee has an amusing interlude as the two of them explore the geology of Manhattan Island and her native Brooklyn. Harris is a geologist who thinks that plate tectonic theory is much too fashionable and she demonstrates that there are many things about the structure of the Appalachians which tectonic theory does not explain, at least not very well. The title of the book refers to the miniature continents which tectonicists now believe accreted to the North American continent during the course of the formation of the Appalachians and previous (!) mountain ranges in the East; they are called "suspect terrain" because they may not be part of the original continental mass. Harris claims that this hypothesis is an easy way out because it is difficult to disprove, and even so there are predictions which it makes that may not be correct. In addition to the discussion of tectonic theory, McPhee spends quite a bit of time covering another major shaper of the Northeast U.S.: the Ice Ages. He finds that even after the fall of neptunism it was difficult for people to accept that large parts of the world were covered in sheets of ice that were miles thick in places. He does a competent job of sketching the life and personality of Louis Agassiz, the great propagandist for the Ice Ages, and very nicely points out the interesting ice-formed topographies that can be found in the Northeast. These are the only John McPhee books I have read so far, apart from the first part of COMING INTO THE COUNTRY (which I have foolishly lent to someone else before finishing). Does anyone have some suggestions about what other books of his to read? I have heard some good things about THE CURVE OF BINDING ENERGY... And I didn't mention science fiction even once, Donn Seeley UCSD Chemistry Dept. RRCF ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn (619) 452-4016 sdamos!donn@nprdc