Classic Science Papers – a new blog carnival?
June 2, 2008
In case you missed it, the physics blog Skulls in the Stars challenged other science bloggers to put together an in-depth post about an old (pre-1950ish) paper in their field.
There are 25 entries that span several scientific disciplines. Three from the geoblogosphere, including me, are part of that group:
Check out the entire collection … very cool. There is talk of this perhaps becoming its own science blog carnival, which sounds like a great idea. It could also be a fun Accretionary Wedge topic at some point.
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Clastic Detritus 
The classic plate tectonics papers would be worth blogging about for geologists, too. (Vine and Matthews, maybe?) For geology, pre-1950 limits the papers to ones that pre-date our big scientific revolution. That’s not to say that the earlier papers aren’t important, but that’s like telling physicists that they have to blog about papers that pre-date relativity and quantum mechanics, or telling biologists that they’re restricted to papers from before Darwin.
“For geology, pre-1950 limits the papers to ones that pre-date our big scientific revolution.”
That’s certainly true … but, at the same time, that is exactly the value of doing it. Every time I go into old papers, I find nuggets of wisdom that are very relevant to what we think we know now.
Coincidentally, I’ve been reading this book over the past couple of weeks with a view to writing something about the history of plate tectonics, and I was thinking that writing about the classic papers might be a very interesting project. But perhaps it would make a good Accretionary Wedge idea – everyone takes one of the ‘classic’ plate tectonic papers and explains it’s importance.
Chris … I haven’t read that book, but it is on my list. It is in my house waiting in a long line of books I’m supposed to get to!
Blogging about the papers that came out during the plate tectonic revolution would be a great Accretionary Wedge … I’ve been meaning to spend some time looking at the papers that discuss advancements of sea-floor mapping within that context. If you’d like to spearhead that, comment in the “Who’s hosting the next Accretionary Wedge” page on that site.
There are also a lot of great early seismology papers that could be fun to write about…
Thanks for the pointer to that classics. I’d like to add another geologic paper that hid in the Physics section: Henry Darcy’s paper on the fountains of Dijon (1856).
I recommend the Plate Tectonics book that Chris is reading – it’s fascinating. (And it’s interesting to read such different perspectives on how science should be done.)