the Earth is trying to cool down

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An example of anthropomorphism in public science discourse:

"It comes from plate tectonics. So, essentially the earth has one objective, it has had one objective for four and half billion years, and that's to cool down. We're a big lump of rock floating in space, and it's got all this primordial energy, so we are going right back here, there's all this primordial energy from the the material coming together, and it's trying to cool down."

Dr James Hammond

Dr James Hammond (Reader in Geophysics at Birkbeck, University of London) was speaking on an episode ('Seismology') of 'In Our Time'. (Read 'The earth's one long-term objective'.)

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[Please be aware that a word may have different nuances, or even a different meaning, according to context.]« Back to Index

Author: Keith

Former school and college science teacher, teacher educator, research supervisor, and research methods lecturer. Emeritus Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.