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

by Alan Cutler (Author) "The shark was gigantic, but the fishermen managed to haul it ashore..." (more)
Key Phrases: fossil seashells, tongue stones, geological papers, Royal Society, Isaac Newton, John Ray (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Science writer Cutler (a contributing editor to The Forces of Change: A New View of Nature) re-creates a fascinating 17th-century world of political and religious upheaval and the progress achieved by curious scientists like the Danish anatomist and (according to Cutler) founder of geology, Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686). A one-time medical student renowned for "his preternatural skill with a scalpel," Steno discovered the parotid gland, which produces saliva, and tear glands. Steno's genius for anatomy provided him the tools to work on the mystery of fossils and the question of how seashells could be found in the rocks of mountains far from the sea. He hypothesized that layers upon layers of earth formed sediments in a sequence, recording a series of events and telling a story about the age of the earth. According to Steno, the stratum at the bottom is the oldest and that at the top is the youngest. Seashells, he said, found their way to mountaintops not by the great biblical flood, as many of his contemporaries believed, but by constant erosion and the sedimentation of soil. Steno published his discoveries in De Solido, after which he abandoned science, converted to Catholicism and spent the last 20 years of his life as an ascetic priest and eventually a bishop. In 1988, he was beatified. Cutler's animated and energetic prose provides a page-turning thriller of scientific discovery, and this splendid biography captures in intimate detail not only its subject but also the tenor of Steno's times.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In piquant contrast to the oft-told tale of Galileo, the acclaimed martyr of astronomy, Cutler recounts the little-known story of Nicolaus Steno, the neglected saint of geology. Living scant years after Galileo, Steno devoutly embraced the church even as he advanced a revolutionary science that tested orthodoxy at least as much as Copernicanism. Despite his conversion to Roman Catholicism, Steno was undeterred from his scientific quest to understand why petrified sharks' teeth--and other remains of sea creatures--frequently appeared in rocks high in the Tuscan mountains. With his publication of the principle of superposition, Steno gave scientists a key to reading the history of the planet in its rock layers, a premise still central to modern geology. His theory discredited many traditional readings of Genesis, but Cutler finds no evidence that church censors disapproved of Steno's work or that Steno himself ever regarded his theory as a threat to his faith. Indeed, Steno concluded his life in holy orders and ultimately qualified for posthumous beatification. A sophisticated portrait of a forgotten pioneer. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult (April 28, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525947086
• ISBN-13: 978-0525947080
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #672,741 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a class act, November 15, 2003

By	Sara Sisco (Bethesda, MD United States) - See all my reviews

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.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Saint Steno, May 10, 2003

By	Bruce Crocker "agnostictrickster" (Whittier, California United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Contribution, November 21, 2003

By	David Deming (Norman, OK United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.