A Journey on the Path Less Traveled
The aim of the natural sciences is to discover the laws that rule the world (Büchel, 1992). The focus lies hereby on the natural and not on the social world, although the differentiation is not always simple. There are historically three core areas of the natural sciences: chemistry, biology and physics. Nevertheless this is not a final list of research areas, since many other disciplines were later born out of these. As more knowledge is created, more specific questions arise. This leads to the fact that early natural scientists were generalists from today’s perspective, and later specialized in newly emerging disciplines such as astronomy in the beginning, different engineering disciplines later, and rather recently (i.e. in the last century) created fields such as robotics or bionics.
2.9A Terranes (NOT terrain): What is the Difference? Mountain Building Plate Tectonics Mountain belts can develop as a result of the collision and merger of an island arc, or some other small crustal fragment, to a continental block. The process …
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2.8 The Appalachian Mountains: Continents Collide: Plate Tectonics The Appalachian Mountains provide great scenic beauty near the eastern margin of North America from Alabama to Newfoundland. In addition, mountains that formed contemporaneously with the Appalachians are found in the British …
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2.7 Continental Collisions: Building the Himalayas, the Indian plate meets the Eurasian plate When a slab of oceanic lithosphere subducts beneath a continental margin, an Andean type mountain belt develops. If the subducting plate also contains a continent, continued subduction …
2.6 Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges, What is a Batholith? During the Jurassic, when the North Atlantic began to open, a subduction zone formed along the western margin of the North American Plate. Evidence for this episode of subduction is …
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2.5 Mountain Building Along Andean-type Margins: Converging Plate Tectonics The first stage in the development of an Andean type mountain belt occurs prior to the formation of the subduction zone. At this time, the continental margin is a passive margin. …
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