Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-t5pn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T23:46:51.063Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Calibration, Coherence, and Consilience in Radiometric Measures of Geologic Time

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Alisa Bokulich
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 2012, the Geological Time Scale, which sets the temporal framework for studying the timing and tempo of all major geological, biological, and climatic events in Earth’s history, had one-quarter of its boundaries moved in a widespread revision of radiometric dates. The philosophy of metrology helps us understand this episode, and it, in turn, elucidates the notions of calibration, coherence, and consilience. I argue that coherence testing is a distinct activity preceding calibration and consilience, and I highlight the value of discordant evidence and trade-offs scientists face in calibration. The iterative nature of calibration, moreover, raises the problem of legacy data.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 87 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 425 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

This article was written while I was a visiting researcher in the Earth and Ocean Sciences Division at Duke University. I would like to express my deep gratitude to Brad Murray and the other researchers there for providing such a stimulating and welcoming environment in which to explore these questions. I am also grateful to Blair Schoene for reading over the penultimate version of the article and to the anonymous referees, whose probing questions led to a much improved article.

References

Basso, A. 2017. “The Appeal to Robustness in Measurement Practice.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 65–66:57–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benton, M. 2003. When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Bokulich, A. 2018. “Using Models to Correct Data: Paleodiversity and the Fossil Record.” Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1820-x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, N. 2018a. “Evidence Enriched.” Philosophy of Science 85:403–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, N. 2018b. “Zombie Data from Babylon.” Talk presented at the Philosophy of Science Association biennial meeting, November 1, Seattle. https://psa2018.philsci.org/en/74-program/program-schedule/program/110/methodologies-of-integration.Google Scholar
Bronk Ramsey, C., et al. 2012. “A Complete Terrestrial Radiocarbon Record for 11.2 to 52.8 kyr B.P.” Science 338 (6105): 370–74..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chang, H. 2004. Inventing Temperature: Measurement and Scientific Progress. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapman, R., and Wylie, A. 2016. Evidential Reasoning in Archaeology. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Currie, A. 2018. Rock, Bone, and Ruin: An Optimist’s Guide to the Historical Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Courtenay, N., and Grégis, F. 2017. “The Evaluation of Measurement Uncertainties and Its Epistemological Ramifications.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 65–66:21–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forber, P., and Griffith, E. 2011. “Historical Reconstruction: Gaining Epistemic Access to the Deep Past.” Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 3 (3): e203.Google Scholar
Fowler, D. 2017. “Revised Geochronology, Correlation, and Dinosaur Stratigraphic Ranges of the Santonian-Maastrichtian (Late Cretaceous) Formations of the Western Interior of North America.” PLoS ONE 12 (11): e0188426.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gradstein, F., Ogg, J., and Hilgen, F. 2012. “On the Geological Time Scale.” Newsletters on Stratigraphy 45 (2): 171–88..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grégis, F. 2019. “Accessing Accuracy in Measurement: The Dilemma of Safety versus Precision in the Adjustment of Fundamental Constants.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 74:42–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hua, Q. 2009. “Radiocarbon: A Chronological Tool for the Recent Past.” Quaternary Geochronology 4:378–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
JCGM (Joint Committee for Guides in Metrology). 2012. International Vocabulary of Metrology: Basic and General Concepts and Associated Terms (VIM). 3rd ed. https://www.bipm.org/utils/common/documents/jcgm/JCGM_200_2012.pdf.Google Scholar
Keller, C. B., Schoene, B., and Samperton, K. M. 2018. “A Stochastic Sampling Approach to Zircon Eruption Age.” Geochemical Perspectives Letters 8:31–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuiper, K., Deino, A., Hilgen, F., Krijgsman, W., Renne, P., and Wijbrans, J. 2008. “Synchronizing Rock Clocks of Earth History.” Science 320 (5875): 500–504..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leonelli, S. 2016. Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Case Study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leonelli, S. 2018. “The Time of Data: Timescales of Data Use in the Life Sciences.” Philosophy of Science 85 (Proceedings): 741–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manning, S. 2015. “Radiocarbon Dating and Archaeology: History, Progress, and Present Status.” In Material Evidence: Learning from Archaeological Practice, ed. Chapman, R. and Wylie, A., 128–58. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
McDougall, I., and Harrison, T. M. 1999. Geochronology and Thermochronology by the 40Ar/39Ar Method. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Min, K., Mundil, R., Renne, P., and Ludwig, K. 2000. “A Test for Systematic Errors in 40Ar/39Ar Geochronology through Comparison with U/Pb Analysis of a 1.1-Ga Rhyolite.” Geochimica Acta 64 (1): 73–98..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, L., and Cosca, M. 2017. “Sanidine from the Fish Canyon Tuff and its Use as a 40Ar/39Ar Geochronology Standard.” Earthtime Blog, June 23. http://www.earthtimetestsite.com/blog/.Google Scholar
Parker, W. 2017. “Computer Simulation, Measurement, and Data Assimilation.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68:273–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reimer, P., et al. 2013a. “INTCAL13 and MARINE13 Radiocarbon Age Calibration Curves 0–50,000 Years Cal BP.” Radiocarbon 55 (4): 1869–87..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reimer, P. 2013b. “Selection and Treatment of Data for Radiocarbon Calibration: An Update to the International Calibration (INTCAL) Criteria.” Radiocarbon 55 (4): 1923–45..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renne, P., Karner, D., and Ludwig, K. 1998. “Absolute Ages Aren’t Exactly.” Science 282 (5395): 1840–41..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renne, P., Mundil, R., Balco, G., Min, K., and Ludwig, K. 2010. “Joint Determination of 40K Decay Constants and 40Ar*/40K for the Fish Canyon Sanidine Standard, and Improved Accuracy for 40Ar/40K Geochronology.” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 74:5349–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmitz, M., and Kuiper, K. 2013. “High-Precision Geochronology.” Elements 9:25–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schoene, B. 2014. “U-Th-Pb Geochronology.” In Treatise on Geochemistry, 2nd ed., ed. Davis, A., vol. 1: Meteorites and Cosmochemical Processes, 341–78. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Schoene, B., Condon, D., Morgan, L., and McLean, N. 2013. “Precision and Accuracy in Geochronology.” Elements 9:19–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schoene, B., Crowley, J., Condon, D., Schmitz, M., and Bowring, S. 2006. “Reassessing the Uranium Decay Constants for Geochronology Using ID-TIMS U-Pb Data.” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 70:426–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, J., Renne, P., and Mundil, R. 2008. “Implications of Pre-eruptive Magmatic Histories of Zircons for U-Pb Geochronology of Silicic Extrusions.” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 266:182–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, G. 2014. “Closing the Loop: Testing Newtonian Gravity, Then and Now.” In Newton and Empiricism, ed. Biener, Z. and Schliesser, E., 262–351. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staff, R., Ramsey, C. B., Nakagawa, T., and Suigetsu 2006 Project Members. 2010. “A Re-analysis of the Lake Suigetsu Terrestrial Radiocarbon Calibration Dataset.” Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 268:960–65.Google Scholar
Steiger, R., and Jäger, E. 1977. “Subcommission on Geochronology: Convention on the Use of Decay Constants in Geo and Cosmochronology.” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 36 (6): 359–62..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tal, E. 2011. “How Accurate Is the Standard Second?” Philosophy of Science 78:1082–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tal, E. 2016. “Making Time: A Study in the Epistemology of Measurement.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67:297–335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tal, E. 2017a. “Calibration: Modeling the Measurement Process.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 65–66:33–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tal, E. 2017b. “A Model-Based Epistemology of Measurement.” In Reasoning in Measurement, ed. Mößner, N. and Nordmann, A., 233–53. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tipper, J. 2015. “The Importance of Doing Nothing: Stasis in Sedimentation Systems and Its Stratigraphic Effects.” In Strata and Time: Probing the Gaps in our Understanding, ed. Smith, D. et al., 105–22. Geological Society Special Publication 404. London: Geological Society.Google Scholar
Vézer, M. 2015. “Aggregating Evidence in Climate Science: Consilience, Robustness and the Wisdom of Multiple Models.” Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository, no. 2837. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2837.Google Scholar
Whewell, W. 1840. The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded upon Their History. vol. 1. London: Parker.Google Scholar
Wohlfarth, B., and Possnert, G. 2000. “AMS Radiocarbon Measurements from the Swedish Varve Clays.” Radiocarbon 42 (3): 323–33..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wylie, A. 2011. “Critical Distance: Stabilising Evidential Claims in Archaeology.” In Evidence, Inference, and Enquiry, ed. Dawid, P., Twinning, W., and Vasilaki, M., 371–94. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wylie, A. 2017. “How Archaeological Evidence Bites Back: Strategies for Putting Old Data to Work in New Ways.” Science, Technology, and Human Values 42 (2): 213–25..CrossRefGoogle Scholar