Quest for the True Figure of the Earth
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1820s Events
A01=Michael Rand Hoare
Academie Royale Des Sciences
Author_Michael Rand Hoare
Category=N
Category=NH
Category=NHB
Category=NHD
Category=PDX
Charles Marie De La Condamine
Consejo De Indias
Discours De La Methode
Dortous De Mairan
Earth's Quadrant
Earth’s Quadrant
East Indies
Eau De Vie
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eq_history
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
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Gemma Frisius
Grandjean De Fouchy
Gravity Anomalies
Joseph De Jussieu
La Caille
La Condamine
Lapland Expedition
Meridian Survey
Paris Meridian
Peru Expedition
Petit Goave
Pole Star
Reference Ellipsoid
Royale Des Sciences
Ye Earth
Young Man
Product details
- ISBN 9781138277700
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 29 Jan 2024
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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In the 1730s two expeditions set out from Paris on extraordinary journeys; the first was destined for the equatorial region of Peru, the second headed north towards the Arctic Circle. Although the eighteenth century witnessed numerous such adventures, these expeditions were different. Rather than seeking new lands to conquer or mineral wealth to exploit, their primary objectives were scientific: to determine the Earth's precise shape by measuring the variation of a degree of latitude at points separated as nearly as possible by a whole quadrant of the globe between Equator and North Pole. Although such information had consequences for navigation and cartography, the motivation was not simply utilitarian. Rather it was one theme among many in an intellectual revolution in which advances in mathematics paralleled philosophical strife, and reputations of the living and the dead stood to be elevated or destroyed. In particular the two expeditions hoped to prove the correctness of Isaac Newton's prediction that the Earth is not a perfect sphere, but flattened at the poles. In this study, the 'Figure of the Earth' controversy is for the first time comprehensively explored in all its several dimensions. It shows how a largely neglected episode of European science, that produced no spectacular process or artefact - beyond a relatively minor improvement in maps - nevertheless represents an almost unique combination of theoretical prediction and empirical method. It also details the suffering of the two teams of scientists in very different extremes of climate, whose sacrifices for the sake of knowledge rather than colonial gain, caught the imagination of the literary world of the time.
Dr Michael Rand Hoare is Emeritus Reader at the University of London, UK.
