Customer Reviews

The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science Sainthood and the Humble Genius Who Discovered a New History of the Earth

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Written with obvious gusto, and containing witty and elegant prose that seems to flow by effortlessly, this is popular science at its very best. Nicolaus Steno (aka Niels Stensen in his native Danish) was a gifted dissectionist with a deft touch. He discovered the glands that produce tears (before this discovery, it was thought that when a person got extremely upset their brain leaked water, and this water came out through the eyes as tears!). Branching out from his anatomical studies, he studied seashells embedded in mountains and came to the conclusion that the sediments had been produced in the oceans. He also theorized that either the oceans had once been higher, or the mountains had been uplifted. These conclusions were far from obvious at the time, as the periods necessary to produce thick layers of sediment and to raise mountain ranges would be quite lengthy....which would conflict with interpretations of the Bible which stated that the world was about 6,000 years old. In order to avoid this conflict, many people- rather than admit that seashell fossils were actually seashells- came up with the notion that the "shells" had actually grown right inside the rock. Therefore, they weren't really seashells! Steno was a very religious man (he was born a Protestant but converted to Catholicism) but he didn't believe in interpreting the Bible literally. He eventually gave up science, but not out of any conflict with his religious beliefs. He just believed it was more important to convert Protestants back to the "true faith." The author does a wonderful job of immersing the reader in the intellectual climate of 17th century Europe, so that we can understand the scientific and religious debates detailed in the book. Mr. Cutler also provides interesting and sometimes amusing biographical snapshots of some of the famous people of the time, such as Isaac Newton and the tremendously gifted philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz. (Regarding Leibniz, the author quotes the duchess of Orleans who, after meeting the great man, said "It is so rare for an intellectual to be smartly dressed, and not to smell, and to understand jokes.") If you are at all interested in the history of geology, Mr. Cutler's book is a marvelous addition to the non-technical literature available for the curious layperson.

Seashell on the Mountaintop intrigued me from page one. The work brings to life a fascinating time in the history of science that seems far different from our own. That rocks grow, or are in fact spontaneously generated seems absurd, ridiculous,.. but Cutlers's investigation into the life and times of Nicholas Steno seems to acurately portray a time and people who nearly held these ideas as inevitable. In Steno we find a man both spiritual and scientific whose independent, open minded, study and observations led to different conclusions. No revolutions, no public outcries, just a different set of conclusions from the same hard facts. The result, a new science of the past, present and future, called geology. That Steno, unlike other great scientists of the 17th century better known to us today, did not run a foul of the Catholic Church, and towards the winter of his life leaves science behind to become a priest, later saint, suggests that neither science nor religious belief hold firm precedence when interpreting the world. A view lacking today, and one impeding politics, society and civilization. Cutlers book is an excellent read, scholarly without heaviness and like Steno, intriguing with humble relevance.

I am a professor of geology who teaches History of Geology at a major US university. I used this book for the first time this year and it was very well received by the students. Cutler is an outstanding writer. He knows how to get the facts straight and at the same time tell an interesting story. I am a little perplexed at the claims made in another review of this book, namely that Seashell on the Mountaintop is "full of errors". Notably, the claimant doesn't list a single one of these supposed factual errors. I know a little bit about the History of Geology, and I have not yet found a single error in Cutler's manuscript. With regard to the reviewer's wish that Seashell on the Mountaintop "be burnt", I quote John Milton:

"Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."

Seashell on the Mountaintop is a very good book indeed.

Nicolaus Steno first entered my consciousness when I took G. Sc. 1 or 2 at Penn State during the 1977-1978 school year. He hadn't been beatified yet, but our professor pointed out that some folks wanted him to be declared a saint. This seemed at odds with his extreme importance to the science of geology, at least to my 18 year old brain. At 44, I understand that humans can be extremely complex creatures and welcome Alan Cutler's wonderful Steno biography The Seashell On The Mountaintop to the lay-literature concerning the science of geology.

Steno [aka Niels Steensens, Nicolai Stenonis] contributed [among other things] the principle of superposition to the science of geology, without which Earth history can not be done. After reading The Seashell On The Mountaintop, I better understand how the seemingly disparate elements of Steno's life flow one from the other. Cutler's prose style made Seashell an enjoyable read and I was particularly pleased that Seashell doesn't suffer from the hyperbole that scarred the otherwise fantastic The Map That Changed The World by Simon Winchester. I strongly recommend The Seashell On The Mountaintop to any reader interested in geology, history, biography, and the relationship between science and religion.

As a high school earth science teacher, I'm very sensitive about the hegemony of biology, chemistry, and physics over science education in the United States. Maybe the recent string of popular books on geology and the other earth sciences will help a little to restore the earth sciences to their proper place in American life.

I'm pretty sure Steno hasn't performed any miracles in my life, but he did inspire this little piece of grad school doggerel:

Saint Steno
Went to Reno
Looking for an angle.
He found some gold,
Some riches untold,
And he made the rocks untangle.

"The Seashell on the Mountaintop" is quite simply the best popular book on geology I've read since reading John McPhee's essay collections on North American geology and the late Stephen Jay Gould's magnificient tomes. Without question, it is a better written, far more engrossing, tale about the early history of geology than Simon Winchester's "The Map That Changed the World". Alan Cutler performs a valuable service resurrecting the reputation of Danish scientist Nicolaus Steno, whom Stephen Jay Gould - among others - regarded as the father of geology. Cutler notes correctly how Steno was the first modern scientist to recognize that the history of the earth could be read from its rocks, pointing out that individual rock layers pointed to prior submergence, followed by uplift, of the Tuscan countryside which Steno meticulously studied as a scientist of the Medici royal court in Florence, Italy. Yet Steno also recognized the importance of studying current physical processes such as the action of waves and currents, to account for the formation of the thick deposits of sedimentary rocks - indeed he was the first to understand that historical sciences like geology could be studied by observing natural events in the present; in short, an early precursor to Scottish geologist James Hutton's theory of uniformitarianism. Cutler also describes Steno's equally important discoveries of the pinal and saliva glands in an anatomical career that was as impressive as his relatively brief foray into geology. Cutler's crisp, animated - and at times lyrical - prose also paints a vivid picture of 17th Century science, and how Steno's fundamental contributions to geology influenced the science, having a lasting impact to this very day.

Probably you have never heard of Niels Stensen, or Nicolaus Stenonius as his name was Latinized, or Steno for short. He has a right to the title of "Father of Geology," though, and it was through his efforts that we started scientifically assessing the age of the Earth, rather than relying on interpreting the Bible as a geological text. But he was no religious iconoclast; in fact, he was even made a saint. In _The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood, and the Humble Genius Who Discovered a New History of the Earth_ (Dutton), Alan Cutler has not exactly brought Steno back to life; there is too little documentation of his life to do that well. But he has given basics of the life, and more importantly has examined the originality of Steno's thinking and put it in the context of his times.

Steno, born in 1638, was raised in Denmark as a Lutheran. He became a famous anatomist, but in his travels, he took particular interest in the land he traveled through. The great puzzle of the time was how could seashells be found, far from the sea, embedded in rock, and at the tops of the mountains? The prevalent explanation was that shells actually grew inside the Earth; they were not seashells, but the product of some mystical force, the same sort of thing that produced the manifestations of magnetism or made flowers grow. Steno produced clever and well reasoned arguments against shells growing inside rocks, and he laid out principles of geography which have stood the test of time. Steno well knew the persecution of Galileo by the church, and he worried that his ideas would receive the same condemnation. For instance, merely supposing that rock layers were formed gradually from sediment might be heretical to those who insisted that God had made the Earth all at once. Cutler shows that Steno paid attention to the evidence he could see on his travels, at the same time paying close attention to the scriptures.

Steno was a pious man who after much thought gave up Lutheranism to become a Catholic; he also largely gave up his scientific endeavors to do so. He became a priest, took up a vow of poverty, and stuck to it, destroying his health and bringing about an early death. He had risen to Bishop within the church hierarchy. Pope John Paul II praised both Steno's faith and his scientific work when he beatified Steno in 1988, although the scientific work was really all that had made him famous. The Catholic Church had long since stopped insisting that seven days of creation were of twenty-four hours each, and geologists were using Steno's principles every day. Cutler, himself a geologist, has written a useful book to bring a forgotten thinker to our attention, as well as documenting the beginning of scientific rather than religious explanations for the forces that formed our planet.

I read mostly non-fiction science related works, and this by far is the best I have read. It is a nice blend of personal story of Stenno, how it relates to scientists and science of the time, and the historical and religious context. It brings in Stenno's discovery in relation to how present day geology as well as anatomy! I think it would be a great book to use in an integrative science/humanities/social studies course.

Readable and accessible biography of 17th century scientist who turns out to be a pivotal observer of things geologic and spiritual. The vivid descriptions of Steeno's life and his place in a milieu of other fascinating "scientists" (like the man who tried to generate life from dead flesh or the diver into volcanoes) intertwine engaging personal vignettes with very understandable science. From dissecting great white sharks Steeno ventures into how seashells ended up on mountaintops. He figured out that fossils were alive once and that they became rock in rock through a sedimentation process.Many at the time thought the shell shapes were just a visual coincidence. Steeno's journey from Danish Lutheran to Roman Catholic saint is compelling. The book is well written. It is for a wide audience and clearly is not just for history of science fans.

Every semester for the past 20 years I have presented Steno's "laws" to my geology classes. These "laws" are fundamental concepts in the science of geology. Even so, I knew very little about Steno or how he came to formulate those ideas. Cutler's book has helped fill a large gap in my understanding of the history of geology and in a larger sense, the history of scientific thought. That the history of the earth is revealed in its strata seems an almost intuitive idea now. In Steno's time such an idea was barely conceivable, much less accepted. Yet the idea has prevailed. In addition to telling Steno's story, Cutler's book tells us the history of Steno's revolutionary idea and how it persisted long after his death.

The book is easy to read yet contains an extraordinary amount of information. At times I found myself looking back at a paragraph I had just read and marveling at how simply Cutler was able to present some very important details and ideas. Such is the mark of a gifted writer. Cutler has neither misinterpreted nor distorted the facts. I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in geology or the history of science. It would be particularly appropriate in an integrative or interdisciplinary course that examines the inter-relations of philosophy and science or the dynamics between religion and science. Many of the conflicts between scientific thought and religious thought that existed in Steno's time are still being argued today. (See an earlier review on this website.) Let me revise my earlier recommendation. I recommend this book to everyone.

I find it amazing that Amazon.com would give the spotlighted review position to a crackpot creationist who fails to substantiate his criticisms of this book. This is quite unfair to the author of this book.