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1 - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2009

Michael Denis Higgins
Affiliation:
Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Québec
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Summary

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Sir Isaac Newton

Newton's ‘Ocean of Truth’ seems to me more like a landscape: the plains are densely populated with information and most researchers work there. It is not easy to get a perspective on such a mass of information without climbing the surrounding hills. Valleys in the mountains may be difficult to find, and sparsely populated, but some lead to new basins of information ready to be explored. Other valleys may be so deep that we can glimpse what they contain, but cannot explore them closely, or even at all. This book is a guide to a country set in that landscape. Like real countries, its name varies according to who you ask, and the borders do not always follow geographic features. And like most travel writers, my description of the landscape is coloured by where I come from and what I have done.

Petrological methods

In petrology we generally examine the results of natural experiments and have to tackle the inverse problem of what happened to what starting material to produce the rock that we observe.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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  • Introduction
  • Michael Denis Higgins, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Québec
  • Book: Quantitative Textural Measurements in Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology
  • Online publication: 08 August 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511535574.001
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  • Introduction
  • Michael Denis Higgins, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Québec
  • Book: Quantitative Textural Measurements in Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology
  • Online publication: 08 August 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511535574.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Michael Denis Higgins, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Québec
  • Book: Quantitative Textural Measurements in Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology
  • Online publication: 08 August 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511535574.001
Available formats
×