{"title":"EDUARD SUESS AND PALAEONTOLOGY: HIS ILLUSTRATIONS","authors":"A. Şengör","doi":"10.17704/1944-6187-40.2.461","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The very first scientific paper by the great Austrian geologist Eduard Suess (1831–1914), the dean of geologists internationally during his lifetime, treats the graptolites of Bohemia (the ‘Barrandian’). This paper and most of his subsequent papers on palaeontology are accompanied by superb drawings of his observations in which Suess took great care not to insert himself between Nature as he perceived it in the framework of the knowledge of his day and his readers. In his drawings, he exercised what the great German geologist Hans Cloos later called ‘the art of leaving out’. This meant that in the drawings, the parts not relevant to the discussion are left only in outline, whereas parts he wished to highlight are brought to the fore by careful shading; but even the parts left only in outline are not schematic, instead they are careful reconstructions true to Nature as much as the material allowed it. This characteristic of Suess’ illustrations is seen also in his later field sketches concerning stratigraphy and structural geology and also in his depiction of the large tectonic features of our globe representing a guide to his manner of thinking. His illustrations in his early palaeontological work foreshadowed the later global geologist’s approach to our planet (and the Moon!) as a whole.","PeriodicalId":50560,"journal":{"name":"Earth Sciences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Earth Sciences History","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6187-40.2.461","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"GEOSCIENCES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The very first scientific paper by the great Austrian geologist Eduard Suess (1831–1914), the dean of geologists internationally during his lifetime, treats the graptolites of Bohemia (the ‘Barrandian’). This paper and most of his subsequent papers on palaeontology are accompanied by superb drawings of his observations in which Suess took great care not to insert himself between Nature as he perceived it in the framework of the knowledge of his day and his readers. In his drawings, he exercised what the great German geologist Hans Cloos later called ‘the art of leaving out’. This meant that in the drawings, the parts not relevant to the discussion are left only in outline, whereas parts he wished to highlight are brought to the fore by careful shading; but even the parts left only in outline are not schematic, instead they are careful reconstructions true to Nature as much as the material allowed it. This characteristic of Suess’ illustrations is seen also in his later field sketches concerning stratigraphy and structural geology and also in his depiction of the large tectonic features of our globe representing a guide to his manner of thinking. His illustrations in his early palaeontological work foreshadowed the later global geologist’s approach to our planet (and the Moon!) as a whole.
期刊介绍:
Earth Sciences History promotes and publishes historical work on all areas of the earth sciences – including geology, geography, geophysics, oceanography, paleontology, meteorology, and climatology.
The journal honors and encourages a variety of approaches to historical study: biography, history of ideas, social history, and histories of institutions, organizations, and techniques.
Articles are peer reviewed.