Every science has its technical vocabulary, consisting in part of terms coined for explicit purposes and in part of words borrowed from ordinary discourse and used with greater or lesser degrees of precision. Words of the latter sort pose curious problems, some of them familiar to those historians of science concerned with, for example, what Galileo meant by forza and Newton by attraction. Indeed, analogous problems face any historian seeking to understand the older meanings of terms still in use today.

SummaryThis article surveys recent scholarship on the early history of British geology. It finds that many of the developments called for a decade ago by Dr Eyles and Dr Rappaport have not yet been realized. However, there has been progress in the broader understanding of geological ideas in their historical context, and a start has been made on the social history of the science. Some suggestions are offered as to a field of problems for the future, and a selective bibliography (...) of secondary materials, thematically arranged, is appended. (shrink)