Alain Corbin is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne.

• Acknowledgements A comprehensive history implies the study of ignorance Part I : Gaps In Enlightenment Knowledge Of The Earth 1. The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 17552. The Age of the Earth?3. Imagining the Earth’s Internal Structure4. The Mystery of the Poles5. The Unfathomable Mysteries of the Deep Sea6. Discovering Mountains7. Mysterious Glaciers8. A Fascination for Volcanos9. The Birth of Meteorology10. Conquering the Skies11. The State of Scientific Ignorance at the End of the Age of Enlightenment Part II : A Gradual Decline in Ignorance (1800-1850)12. Understanding Glaciers13. The Birth of Geology14. Volcanoes and the Mystery of ‘Dry Fogs’15.The Ocean Depths and the Fear of the Unknown 16. Reading Clouds and the Beaufort Scale17.The Poles Remain a Mystery18.  The State of Scientific Ignorance in the Early 1860s Part III : Shrinking the Boundaries of Ignorance (1860-1900)19. Exploring the Ocean Depths20.  The Development of Dynamic Meteorology21.  Manned Flight and the Discovery of the Troposphere and Stratosphere22. Scientific Volcanology and the Birth of Seismology23.  Measuring the Grip of Ice24.  Solving the Mysteries of Rivers : Fluvialism, Hydrology and Speleology25.  A New Approach to Reading the Globe26.  Was There Open Sea at the Poles?27. The Earth Sciences Slowly Filter into General Knowledge28. Measuring Ignorance at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century NotesIndex

‘Alain Corbin is one of the most remarkable historians writing about anything anywhere. A master of innovation in his choice of subjects and approaches to history, Corbin here brilliantly tackles “ignorance” in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, what earlier generations did not know. This is a fascinating book, nicely translated.’John Merriman, Yale University‘Original as always in his approach to history, Alain Corbin tells the story of the discovery of the earth from 1750 to 1900 by emphasizing earlier ignorance of lands, seas and space. Written in the author’s usual lucid and accessible style, the book will appeal to general readers as well as scholars and students of history.’Peter Burke, University of Cambridge‘Fascinating’Shepherd Express