Doctoral Dissertation
“Gehe nur an ihm zu Grunde — ich weiss keinen besseren Lebenszweck als am Grossen und Unmöglichen, animae magnae prodigus, zu Grunde zu gehen.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche (1874), Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil
der Historie für das Leben.
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Squeezing Blood from a Stone:
Inferences into the Life and Depositional Environments
of the Early Archaean
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Philosophical Introduction
1: Epistemic Challenges to Early Archaean Geobiology
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Geobiological Introduction
2A: Metabolism & Biogeochemical Cycling
2B: Banded-Iron Formation: A Continuing Enigma
2C: Early Archaean Geology & The Pilgangoora Belt
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Modelling
3: Mimicking Biological Carbon Isotope Signatures
in Fe-C-O-H Systems
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Depositional Environments
4: A Metasedimentary Succession From the Isua Supracrustal Belt
5: An Early Archaean Deep-Marine Micritic Banded-Iron Formation
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Life
6: Sedimentary Carbon Isotopes From the 3.52 Ga Coonterunah Subgroup (principal author: Roger Buick)
7: Early Archaean Oncoidal Trace Fossils
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Conclusion
humble friend: what qualifies a “good thesis”?
the masses are waiting anxiously for chapter 1! i had to fight through the queue this morning…
Jelt, hi, I read your first chapter and I like it a lot. I’ll send you the doc with my comments. XXX, J
Yo Jelt – I enjoyed reading the preface & first chapter, gives me some more context for the discussions we had in the Emerald City back in July. I wonder, though, about the statement on Line 118 (“Faced with a scarcity of data, the human mind reaches all too eagerly for secularism.”) – why the choice of the word ‘secularism’?
I’m looking forward to reading Chapter 10!
You are quite right in pointing out that ‘secularism’ is an awkward turn of phrase. I was attempting to be too playful – the sense of ‘secular’ in the chapter, and that used in Precambrian Geology, is that of: “Of or belonging to an age or long period” – but that does not go for ‘secularism’, which specifically refers to a doctrine. I’ve changed it.
Dear Jelte- I read most all of the thesis, as soon as you left my room in Johnson Hall. The 8th chapter is NOT on line, although listed, so I do not have your conclusions as yet! Can you place them on line them for us???
Your friend, CharlotPS the written words ring true- good go!!!!!