McPhee’s purpose in this book (and the others in his series on geology) is to show the human side of the science. That is, for McPhee, geologic facts cannot be separated from the scientists that discover them; that’s why he concentrates so much on David Love and his life growing up in the Rocky Mountains (which became the subject of his work as a geologist). A good example of how McPhee integrates the human with the scientific is when he describes driving with Love across Wyoming, stopping at places where the highway cuts through a hillside to examine rock layers. At such times, Love is able to identify different kinds of rocks, describe the forces that formed and shaped the rock layers, and piece together a kind of geological history of Wyoming. At such moments, not only does the reader get a good bit of scientific detail, but it also becomes clear how much of our understanding of geology—or any science, for that matter—is dependent on people like Love, whose great technical expertise is founded on a deep personal connection to his subject.
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