Scientia sacra

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientia_sacra 

 

In perennial philosophy, scientia sacra or sacred science is a form of spiritual knowledge that lies at the heart of both divine revelations and traditional sciences, embodying the very essence of every sacred tradition. It recognizes sources of knowledge beyond those accepted by modern epistemology, such as divine revelations and intellectual intuition. Intellectual intuition is believed to allow access to an innate knowledge of God, which is to be reawakened through the use of human intellect. The principles and doctrines of scientia sacra are derived from reason, revelation, and intellectual intuition, with the conviction that these sources of knowledge can be reconciled in a hierarchical order, and applied in the human quest to understand different orders of reality. Its objective is to show how the transmitted, intellectual, and physical sciences are related and unified within the framework of metaphysics, as traditionally defined.

According to this perspective, scientia sacra is synonymous with metaphysics, which is seen not as a branch of philosophy but rather what the Sufis call ma'rifa or gnostic knowledge—the ultimate goal of which is the knowledge of "the Real". It is based on a holistic and hierarchical view of reality that emphasizes the connections between the various levels and states of being. This viewpoint holds that God, the Principle or the One, is the Ultimate Reality—who is absolute, eternal, infinite, and necessary but whose knowledge lies beyond the reach of sense perception and reason. According to the doctrines of scientia sacra, the universe is not a separate reality, but rather only a "manifestation and theophany" of the "Divine Essence", which is essentially the source and center of all other realities.

The notion of scientia sacra may be traced back to Islamic intellectual tradition, particularly the ideas of Ibn Arabi and Suhrawardi. This was further explored in modern times by the French metaphysician René Guénon and others, including Frithjof Schuon and Titus Burckhardt. However, the concept was most notably conceptualized in contemporary language by the Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his 1981 Gifford Lectures, published in the same year as Knowledge and the Sacred. He elaborated further on the concept of sacred science in his 1993 book The Need for a Sacred Science.

Terminology

Scientia sacra is a Latin term that means "sacred science". Although Nasr employs the terms "scientia sacra", "sacred science" and "sacred knowledge" interchangeably, he prefers the term "scientia sacra" to others because he thinks the word "science" in modern English usage can be misleading. For Nasr, "scientia sacra" refers to the ultimate metaphysical science that encompasses the "principial knowledge of things", while "sacred science" pertains to the application of sacred knowledge to different dimensions of reality, both physical and spiritual. The terms "scientia sacra", "sacred knowledge", "philosophia perennis", "perennial philosophy", "sophia", "sophia perennis", "metaphysics", "esoteric knowledge", and "principial knowledge" are all consanguineous terms and relate to the "eternal Truth", which Nasr claims is at the heart of authentic religions and manifests itself in the form of "sacred traditions". For Nasr, this Truth is attainable by everyone through intellect.

Origins

Scientia sacra is not a new idea. It has its origins in the Islamic philosophical tradition, or, more broadly, in the traditional thought and culture. Asfa Widiyanto attributes the notion to Suhrawardi's theory of al-ilm al-huduri (knowledge by presence). Suhrawardi defined al-ilm al-huduri as knowledge that is self-evident, self-present, and self-objective – which indicates that consciousness and cognizable reality are one and the same. Such knowledge is acquired through intellection, which Suhrawardi defines as a sort of vision that allows humans to perceive archetypes in the imaginal realm (alam al-mithal, or mundus imaginalis in Henry Corbin's terminology). The notion of scientia sacra may also be traced back to Ibn Arabi's concept of "intuitive science", which he viewed as knowledge of the Truth, of the reality of all things. Ibn Arabi frequently refers to such knowledge as ma'rifa, which he connects with divine wisdom.

According to the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, Seyyed Hossein Nasr has championed the concept of "Sacred Science", which has its roots first and foremost in the thought of French metaphysicist René Guénon, and then in authors who followed in his footsteps, such as, Frithjof Schuon and Titus Burckhardt.

Guénon explained how modern Western civilization is an anomaly insofar as it is the only civilization in the world that developed without reference to transcendence. Guénon mentions the universal teaching of humanity's religions and traditions, all of which are nothing but adaptations of the original—essentially metaphysical—tradition. The destiny of human beings is the intellectual knowledge of eternal truths, not the exploration of the quantitative aspects of the cosmos. In this context, Nasr denounces....Western societies that are obsessed with developing a scientific knowledge anchored in a quantitative approach to reality and in the domination of nature, which results in its pure and simple destruction.

— Bruno Guiderdoni, Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, 2003

Soumaya Pernilla Ouis credits Nasr for introducing the concept of scientia sacra. According to Nidhal Guessoum, Seyyed Hossein Nasr "almost single-handedly" developed the concept of sacred science, which was afterwards embraced and upheld by a number of his followers.^{[note 1]} Nasr developed his notion of scientia sacra in his book Knowledge and the Sacred, originally published in 1981, which contained his Gifford lectures delivered in the same year. He expanded on his idea of sacred science in his 1993 book The Need for a Sacred Science.

Meaning

Scientia sacra has been described as "the heart of perennial philosophy", the ultimate purpose of which is the "discernment of the Real". According to Nasr, scientia sacra – or knowledge of Reality – is "at the heart of every revelation and is the center of that circle which encompasses and defines tradition." For him, this knowledge is identical with metaphysics as traditionally defined – that is, "as the ultimate science of the Real" – or marifa (Gnostic knowledge) in Sufi terminology, and not as a branch of philosophy as is understood in the contemporary world. Nasr describes metaphysics as the knowledge that allows man to "distinguish between the Real and the Illusory" and provides him with the ability "to know things in their essence or as they are", which is essentially the same as knowing them "in divinis".

The knowledge of the Principle which is at once the absolute and infinite Reality is the heart of metaphysics while the distinction between the levels of universal and cosmic existence, including both the macrocosm and the microcosm, are like its limbs. Metaphysics concerns not only the Principle in Itself and its manifestations but also the principles of the various sciences of a cosmological order.

— Seyyed Hossein Nasr quoted in Adnan Aslan, Religious Pluralism in Christian and Islamic Philosophy: The Thought of John Hick and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, 2004

According to The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Nasr's ultimate aim is "to revive scientia sacra (sacred science) by showing the underlying unity and interrelatedness of the transmitted, intellectual, and physical sciences under the umbrella of metaphysics". This metaphysics "is centered around a holistic and hierarchic view of reality" that shows the "interrelatedness of the various levels and states of being", with the idea of the great chain of being serving as its "conceptual spine". It is heavily influenced by traditional theocentrism that regards God or the One as the origin, center, and culmination of everything that exists. Although this principle is expressed in a wide variety of ways throughout various traditions, it always retains its basic meaning. In line with premodern philosophy, it upholds that "the spiritual has a higher ontological status over the material because the former is taken to reveal the divine and the latter to conceal it". For Nasr, "every level of reality has its own meaning and place in the total economy of divine creation". They cannot, therefore, be reduced to a single plane. According to Nasr, the premodern sciences of nature were able to avoid becoming reductionist and materialistic because of their teleological and hierarchical perspective of the universe.

In Nasr's view, scientia sacra perceives the cosmos not as a separate reality, but rather as a "manifestation and theophany" of the "Divine Essence". It is comparable to Plato's idea that the "immaterial realm" is "concrete reality". From a metaphysical perspective, God is seen as concrete Reality, whereas other realities are regarded as abstractions of God. Nasr believes that scientia sacra is more than just a theoretical conception of Reality. It has a practical aspect in that it aids man in his quest of the sacred. As a result, its explanations can serve as a catalyst for exposing the human mind to the higher order of reality. According to Nasr, "scientia sacra contains both the seed and the fruit of the knowledge tree." He describes its seed as theoretical knowledge and its fruit as realized gnosis. From an axiological point of view, scientia sacra has a transformative function, that is, it transforms the human person in order for them to attain the sacred.

.....although knowledge of the universe can be attained through those sciences which are based on sense perception and reason, knowledge of the ultimate reality or God can be achieved only through what is known as sacred knowledge (scientia sacra). The reason for this is that the universe constitutes a veil which hides and conceals the Ultimate Reality of which it is a manifestation. None of the sciences based on sense perception and reason can pierce this veil, and it is thus only by means of sacred knowledge that the Ultimate Reality can be apprehended.

— Nicholas Heer, Review of Knowledge and the Sacred, 1993

In Nasr's view, knowledge of the Ultimate Reality is only possible if one actively participates "in one's inmost being, in that supraindividual reality". For him, "Self Knowledge" is the ultimate or most interior form of knowledge, and that one can attain it "through the sun of the Divine Self residing at the center of the human soul."

Epistemological perspectives

Scientia sacra varies from discursive knowledge in that it recognizes sources of knowledge other than those recognized by contemporary epistemology. According to Nasr, the sources of "ordinary knowledge", as defined by modern epistemology, are sense perception and inductive reasoning, but the sources of sacred knowledge are revelation and intellectual intuition, together with reason and sense perception. Nasr contends that unlike other forms of knowledge, which are based on speculation or reasoning about the subject matter, sacred knowledge is centered on intuition. He believes that reasoning originates in the mind, while intellection emerges from the heart, which enlightens the mind of the individual in question. According to Nasr, this does not imply that it is unintelligible. For him, knowledge acquired through intellectual intuition is intelligible in and of itself. The human intelligence that receives this knowledge "does not impose upon it the intellectual nature or content of a spiritual experience of a sapiential character". Human intelligence does not serve as a source, but rather as a participant in the formation of such knowledge, since, in Nasr's view, "consciousness is reality and knowledge is being".

Intellect, for Nasr, is the very substance that lies within man's being and is concerned with unveiling archetypal realities. It is what the Sufis refer to as the "eye of the heart" (ayn al-qalb), which is "the microcosmic projection of the Divine Intellect". In light of this, it can by definition serve as a "source of inner illumination or inner revelation". Reason, on the other hand, is a manifestation of the intellect. In Nasr's view, intellection is the process through which our individual consciousness participates in Divine Consciousness. This method transcends logic and grasps reality without disturbing its harmony. It arrives at the truth by an a priori intuitive perception of it. This demonstrates Nasr's Platonic resemblance in that it preserves the notion of primordial knowledge and truth contained within man's being. However, humanity has "become removed from that primordial state" or fitra, in which human intellect had direct access to knowledge of the sacred. They now require revelation for utilizing their divine gifts. The act of intellection thus refers to the process of invoking and activating of this fundamental knowledge that is at the heart of man's intellect, which is essentially a reflection of the Divine Intellect. For Nasr, Divine Intellect is the source of all knowledge and being, and revelation that comes from it is the divine aid for the human intellect. According to William Chittick, "intellect is nothing but the soul that has come to know and realize its full potential". This potential is often referred to as fitra or innate disposition in the Islamic tradition. The fitra is the original self of Adam, who God "taught all the names" to (2:31) in the Quran. Every human being has this primordial Adam within them. The fitra is naturally inclined towards tawhid, which is the foundation for acquiring true knowledge of God, the universe, and oneself. Essentially, the fitra is good and wise, as it leads one towards tawhid and the pursuit of true knowledge.

Traditional sciences and scientia sacra

Nasr's construction of traditional science may be seen through its ontological, epistemological, and axiological foundations. Unlike modern science, traditional science recognizes the direct connection between "hierarchical degrees of being" and "hierarchical degrees of knowing" at the ontological level. It is never divorced from its metaphysical foundations, and is epistemologically based on the "dialectics of revelation, intellect, and reason". Nasr considers scientia sacra, which deals with the Real, as the supreme form of knowledge that lies at the heart of traditional sciences. Insofar as they apply the immutable metaphysical principles to the world of temporality and change, natural, mathematical, or intellectual sciences that place the sacred at the center of their structure are regarded as sacred. All sacred sciences can be classified as traditional sciences since they apply the traditional metaphysical principles to the scientific study of nature, and therefore can be characterized as different forms of applied metaphysics.

The ‘Sacred Science’ approach of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Frithjof Schuon and others thus takes an exception to the advancements in modern science and considers it as anomalous and responsible both for disconnecting man from God and for major environmental and social ills, fragmentation and disorder. According to this view, whereas modern science pursues objectives such as accuracy and confirmation by repeatability, scientific thinking in Islamic civilisation considered nature as sacred and consequently gave priority to values such as purpose, meaning and beauty.

— Hasan, U.; Osama, A., Muslim Responses to Science's Big Questions: Report of the Ihsanoglu Task Force on Islam & Science, 2016

However, Nasr does not dismiss modern science, which he believes "is legitimate if kept within the boundaries defined by the limitations of its own philosophical premises concerning the nature of physical reality as well as its epistemologies and methodologies." In this perspective, the sacred sciences, from cosmology to medicine, share a set of cardinal principles. The sacred sciences view the universe through the viewpoint of a hierarchy of existence and knowledge. The physical universe is not dismissed as an illusion, maya, or a shadow to be reduced in the presence of the Absolute. It is also not seen an ultimate reality by itself.

Were a true metaphysics, a scientia sacra, to become once again a living reality in the West, knowledge gained of man [and nature] through scientific research could be integrated into a pattern which would also embrace other forms of knowledge ranging from the purely metaphysical to those derived from traditional schools of psychology and cosmology. But in the field of the sciences of man, as in that of the sciences of nature, the great impediment is precisely the monolithic and monopolistic character which modern Western science has displayed since the seventeenth century.

— Seyyed Hossein Nasr quoted in Ali Zaidi, Muslim Reconstructions of Knowledge: The Cases of Nasr and al-Faruqi, 2011

Traditional civilizations that nurtured sacred sciences emphasized on the divine origin of the cosmos and maintained a hierarchy between the absolute and the relative, the eternal and the temporal, the necessary and the contingent. For Nasr, traditional sciences are inherently anti-reductionist since hierarchy entails a multilayered structure. This largely explains the continuity of the concept of the "great chain of being" throughout traditional civilizations that does not allow reality to be reduced to a "pure idea" or "pure matter". The sacred sciences study each domain of reality on its own level, instead of reducing reality to a material existence, relying on a metaphysical framework that allows the One and the Many to coexist without contradiction.

According to this perspective, nature is viewed as a sacred entity, as vestigia Dei or as ayat Allah (signs of God). Traditional sciences see nature as the abode of both change and permanence, in opposition to modern science, which reduces the order of nature to perpetual change and impermanence. Although nature is commonly seen as a "perennially changing structure", the "world of nature" also exhibits extraordinary continuity, persistence, and harmony, as evidenced by the preservation of species and the longevity of natural forms. This dual aspects of nature, according to Nasr, proves beyond doubt the Divine character in nature: the world of nature has not been consigned to the unending sequence of random and senseless changes that allow no telos in the universe. Nature, on the other hand, incorporates both the principles of change and permanence and alludes to a "big picture" in which all of its components are viewed as constituting a meaningful unity and harmony.

Other developments

The Hungarian philosopher Béla Hamvas, who was influenced by René Guénon and his traditionalist school, undertook a study of various religious and spiritual traditions from around the world, which he compiled under the title Scientia Sacra. His three volume works, the first two of which were composed in the years 1943 and 1944 and the third, incomplete, in the early 1960s, were published posthumously in 1988. According to The Handbook of Contemporary European Social Theory, Hamvas's Scientia Sacra contains "an overview of the wisdom contained in the sacred tradition of mankind". In this work, Hamvas made an effort to demonstrate the connections between metaphysics, anthropology, and culture.

Ross Ice Shelf

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ice_Shelf 

 

Ross Ice Shelf
Crevasse, Ross Ice Shelf in 2001
Coordinates: 81°30′S 175°00′W
Location	Antarctica
Offshore water bodies	Ross Sea
Etymology	Sir James Clark Ross, who discovered it on 28 January 1841
Area
• Total	500,809 square kilometres (193,363 sq mi)
Dimensions
• Width	800 kilometres (500 mi)
Elevation	15 and 50 metres (50 and 160 ft)

The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica (as of 2013, an area of roughly 500,809 square kilometres (193,363 sq mi) and about 800 kilometres (500 mi) across: about the size of France). It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than 600 kilometres (370 mi) long, and between 15 and 50 metres (50 and 160 ft) high above the water surface. Ninety percent of the floating ice, however, is below the water surface.

Most of Ross Ice Shelf is in the Ross Dependency claimed by New Zealand. It floats in, and covers, a large southern portion of the Ross Sea and the entire Roosevelt Island located in the east of the Ross Sea.

The ice shelf is named after Sir James Clark Ross, who discovered it on 28 January 1841. It was originally called "The Barrier", with various adjectives including "Great Ice Barrier", as it prevented sailing further south. Ross mapped the ice front eastward to 160° W. In 1947, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names applied the name "Ross Shelf Ice" to this feature and published it in the original U.S. Antarctic Gazetteer. In January 1953, the name was changed to "Ross Ice Shelf"; that name was published in 1956.

Exploration

Ross Ice Shelf situated between Marie Byrd Land and Victoria Land

"The mystic Barrier" at Bay of Whales, near where Amundsen first encountered it.
Note humans for size comparison (dark spots next to the large chunk of sea ice at left image border). RV Nathaniel B. Palmer is in the distance.

On 5 January 1841, the British Admiralty's Ross expedition in the Erebus and the Terror, three-masted ships with specially strengthened wooden hulls, was going through the pack ice of the Pacific near Antarctica in an attempt to determine the position of the South Magnetic Pole. Four days later, they found their way into open water and were hoping that they would have a clear passage to their destination. But on 11 January, the men were faced with an enormous mass of ice.

Sir James Clark Ross, the expedition's commander, remarked: "It was an obstruction of such character as to leave no doubt upon my mind as to our future proceedings, for we might with equal chance of success try to sail through the cliffs of Dover". Ross, who in 1831 had located the North Magnetic Pole, spent the next two years vainly searching for a sea passage to the South Pole; later, his name was given to the ice shelf and the sea surrounding it. Two volcanoes in the region were named by Ross for his vessels.

For later Antarctic explorers seeking to reach the South Pole, the Ross Ice Shelf became a starting area. In a first exploration of the area by the Discovery Expedition in 1901–1904, Robert Falcon Scott made a significant study of the shelf and its surroundings from his expedition's base on Ross Island. By measurement of calved ice bergs and their buoyancy, he estimated the ice sheet to be on average 274 meters thick; the undisturbed morphology of the ice sheet and its inverted temperature profile led him to conclude it was floating on water; and measurements in 1902–1903 showed it had advanced 555 meters northwards in 13.5 months. The findings were presented at a lecture entitled "Universitas Antarctica!" given 7 June 1911 and were published in the account of Scott's second expedition (the Terra Nova Expedition of 1910–1913).

Ernest Shackleton's southern party (Shackleton, Adams, Marshal, Wild) of the 1908 Nimrod expedition were the first humans to cross the Ice Shelf during its failed attempt to reach the South Pole. Both Roald Amundsen and Scott crossed the shelf to reach the Pole in 1911. Amundsen wrote: "Along its outer edge the Barrier shows an even, flat surface; but here, inside the bay, the conditions were entirely different. Even from the deck of the Fram we were able to observe great disturbances of the surface in every direction; huge ridges with hollows between them extended on all sides. The greatest elevation lay to the south in the form of a lofty, arched ridge, which we took to be about 500 feet [150 m] high on the horizon. But it might be assumed that this ridge continued to rise beyond the range of vision".

The next day, the party made its first steps on the Barrier. "After half an hour's march we were already at the first important point—the connection between the sea-ice and the Barrier. This connection had always haunted our brains. What would it be like? A high, perpendicular face of ice, up which we should have to haul our things laboriously with the help of tackles? Or a great and dangerous fissure, which we should not be able to cross without going a long way round? We naturally expected something of the sort. This mighty and terrible monster would, of course, offer resistance in some form or other," he wrote.

"The mystic Barrier! All accounts without exception, from the days of Ross to the present time, had spoken of this remarkable natural formation with apprehensive awe. It was as though one could always read between the lines the same sentence: 'Hush, be quiet! the mystic Barrier!'

"One, two, three, and a little jump, and the Barrier was surmounted!"

Composition and movement

Glacier-ice shelf interactions

Ice shelves are thick plates of ice, formed continuously by glaciers, that float atop an ocean. The shelves act as "brakes" for the glaciers. These shelves serve another important purpose—"they moderate the amount of melting that occurs on the glaciers' surfaces. Once their ice shelves are removed, the glaciers increase in speed due to meltwater percolation and/or a reduction of braking forces, and they may begin to dump more ice into the ocean than they gather as snow in their catchments. Glacier ice speed increases are already observed in Peninsula areas where ice shelves disintegrated in prior years."

Ross Ice Shelf edge in 1997

  Ross ice shelf in red, other ice shelves in different colors (Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in blue for example)

Main drill site for the New Zealand 2017 hot water drill camp on the Ross Ice Shelf

The Ross Ice Shelf is one of many such shelves. It reaches into Antarctica from the north, and covers an area of about 520,000 km² (200,000 sq mi), nearly the size of France. The ice mass is about 800 km (500 mi) wide and 970 km (600 mi) long. In some places, namely its southern areas, the ice shelf can be almost 750 m (2,450 ft) thick. The Ross Ice Shelf pushes out into the sea at between 1.5 and 3 m (5 and 10 ft) a day. Other glaciers gradually add bulk to it. At the same time, the freezing of seawater below the ice mass increases the thickness of the ice from 40 to 50 cm (16 to 20 in). Sometimes, fissures and cracks may cause part of the shelf to break off; the largest known is about 31,000 km² (12,000 sq mi), that is, slightly larger than Belgium. Iceberg B-15, the world's largest recorded iceberg, was calved from the Ross Ice Shelf during March 2000.

Scientists have long been intrigued by the shelf and its composition. Many scientific teams researching the Antarctic have made camps on or adjacent to the Ross Ice Shelf. This includes McMurdo Station. One major effort was a series of studies conducted in 1957 and 1958, which were continued during the 1960–61 season. The efforts involved an international team of scientists. Some parties explored the glaciers and others the valleys on the ice shelf.

From 1967 to 1972 the Scott Polar Research Institute reported extensive observations using radio echo sounding. The technique allowed measurements to be taken from the air; allowing a criss cross track of 35,000 km to be covered; compared with a 3,000 km track from previous seismic sounding on the ground. More detailed surveys were executed between 1973 and 1978.

A significant scientific endeavor called the Ross Ice Shelf Project was launched with a plan of drilling into the shelf to sample the biomass in the area and make other determinations about the shelf and its relationship to the sea floor. This is believed to be the first oceanographic ice shelf borehole. The project included surface glaciological observations as well as drilling, and the glaciological portion started during the planning phase of the drilling. The drilling portion of the project was to have begun during 1974, but the actual drilling was delayed until 1976. Finally, in 1977, the scientists were able to drill successfully through the ice, making a hole that could be sampled every few days for three weeks. The team was able to map the sea floor, study the tides, and assess the fish and various other forms of life in the waters. The team also examined the oceanographic and geological conditions as well as the temperature of the ice. They estimated that the base of the shelf was −2.16 °C (27.3 °F). They also made other calculations about the fluctuations of the temperatures.

The results of these various projects were published in a series of reports in the 2 February 1979 issue of Science.

During the 1980s, a network of weather stations was installed to record temperatures on the shelf and throughout the more remote parts of the continent.

University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center has been studying ice shelves and, in 2002, announced that, based on several breakups of ice shelves, including Larsen B, has begun to reassess their stability. Their scientists stated that the temperature of the warmest portion of the shelf is "only a few degrees too cool in summer presently to undergo the same kind of retreat process. The Ross Ice Shelf is the main outlet for several major glaciers draining the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which contains the equivalent of 5 m of sea level rise in its above-sea-level ice." The report added that observations of "iceberg calving" on the Ross Ice Shelf are, in their opinion, unrelated to its stability.

Scientific exploration continues to uncover interesting information and the analyses have resulted in some interesting theories being posited and publicized. One such opinion, given in 2006 based on a geological survey, suggested that the ice shelf had collapsed previously, perhaps suddenly, which could well happen again.

A science team from New Zealand installed a camp in the centre of the shelf in late 2017. The expedition was led by glaciologist Christina Hulbe and brought together oceanographers, glaciologists, biologists and sedimentologists to examine the ice, ocean and sediment in the central shelf region. One of the key findings was that the ice in the region was re-freezing. This re-freezing and growth of an ice shelf is not uncommon but the Ross Ice Shelf situation appeared to be very variable as there was no evidence of long-term freezing. A recent study attribute this variability in-part to tidal mixing.

A second New Zealand expedition in 2019 traveled to the grounding line region of the Kamb Ice Stream. The hot water drill borehole at this site penetrated through over 500 m of snow and ice to an ocean cavity only 30 m deep at this location. As well as sampling the ocean and sediment, it was the first deployment beneath the Ross Ice Shelf of the Remotely operated underwater vehicle Icefin developed at Georgia Tech, a vehicle designed around parameters suitable for exploration of the liquid cavities of places like Europa. The same New Zealand team returned to another site along the Kamb coast in December 2021, this time drilling through an under-ice river that proved to be essentially oceanic. The team were able to melt through the ice to discover the 250 m deep river had formed a relatively narrow channel beneath the ice. They also recorded evidence of the tsunami generated by the 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha'apai eruption and tsunami.

Major explorations after the Age of Discovery

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_explorations_after_the_Age_of_Discovery

Major explorations of Earth continued after the Age of Discovery. By the early seventeenth century, vessels were sufficiently well built and their navigators competent enough to travel to virtually anywhere on the planet by sea. In the 17th century, Dutch explorers such as Willem Jansz and Abel Tasman explored the coasts of Australia. Spanish expeditions from Peru explored the South Pacific and discovered archipelagos such as Vanuatu and the Pitcairn Islands. Luis Vaez de Torres chartered the coasts of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and discovered the strait that bears his name. European naval exploration mapped the western and northern coasts of Australia, but the east coast had to wait for over a century. Eighteenth-century British explorer James Cook mapped much of Polynesia and traveled as far north as Alaska and as far south as the Antarctic Circle. In the later 18th century, the Pacific became a focus of renewed interest, with Spanish expeditions, followed by Northern European ones, reaching the coasts of northern British Columbia and Alaska.

Voyages into the continents took longer. The centers of the Americas had been reached by the mid-16th century, although there were unexplored areas until the 18th and 19th centuries. Australia's and Africa's deep interiors were not explored by Europeans until the mid- to late 19th and early 20th centuries, due to a lack of trade potential, and to serious problems with contagious tropical diseases in sub-Saharan Africa's case. Finally, Antarctica's interior was explored, with the North and South Poles reached in the 20th century.

History

James Cook's Pacific Ocean exploration (1768–1779)

The routes of Captain James Cook's voyages. The first voyage is shown in red, second voyage in green, and third voyage in blue. The route of Cook's crew following his death is shown as a dashed blue line.

British explorer James Cook, who had been the first to map the North Atlantic island of Newfoundland, spent a dozen years in the Pacific Ocean. He made great contributions to European knowledge of the area, and his more accurate navigational charting of large areas of the ocean was a major achievement.

Cook made three voyages to the Pacific, including the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands (although oral tradition seems to point towards a far earlier Spanish expedition having achieved the latter), as well as the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.

Cook was the first European to have extensive contact with various people of the Pacific. He correctly concluded there was a relationship among all the people in the Pacific, despite their being separated by thousands of miles of ocean (see Malayo-Polynesian languages). In New Zealand the coming of Cook is often used to signify the onset of colonization. He also theorised that Polynesians originated from Asia, which was later proved to be correct by scientist Bryan Sykes.

Cook was accompanied by many scientists, whose observations and discoveries added to the importance of the voyages. Two botanists went on the first voyage, Englishman Joseph Banks and Swedish Daniel Solander, between them collecting over 3,000 plant species. Banks became one of the strongest promoters of the settlement of Australia by the British, based on his own personal observations. Cook was also accompanied by artists. Sydney Parkinson completed 264 drawings before his death near the end of the first voyage; these were of immense scientific value to British botanists. Cook's second expedition included the artist William Hodges, who produced notable landscape paintings of Tahiti, Easter Island, and other locations.

Mapping and measuring

To create accurate maps, latitude and longitude need to be known. Navigators had been able to work out latitude accurately for centuries by measuring the angle of the Sun or a star above the horizon with an instrument such as a backstaff or quadrant. Longitude was more difficult to measure accurately because it requires precise knowledge of the time difference between points on the surface of the Earth. Earth turns a full 360 degrees relative to the sun each day. Thus longitude corresponds to time: 15 degrees every hour, or 1 degree every 4 minutes.

Cook gathered accurate longitude measurements during his first voyage with the help of astronomer Charles Green and by using the newly published Nautical Almanac tables, via the lunar distance method — measuring the angular distance from the Moon to either the Sun during daytime or one of eight bright stars during night-time to determine the time at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and comparing that to his local time determined via the altitude of the Sun, Moon, or stars. On his second voyage Cook used the K1 chronometer made by Larcum Kendall. It was a copy of the H4 clock made by John Harrison, which proved to be the first to keep accurate time at sea when used on the ship Deptford's journey to Jamaica, 1761–1762.

See also: Category:Spanish explorers of the Pacific

Scientific Surveys in Central America and the Pacific

Alexander von Humboldt (1799–1804)

Alexander von Humboldt's Latin American expedition

Between 1799 and 1804, Baron Alexander von Humboldt a German naturalist and explorer, traveled extensively in Spanish America, under the protection of king Charles IV of Spain. Humboldt intended to investigate how the forces of nature interact with one another and find out about the unity of nature. His expedition may be regarded as having laid the foundation of the sciences of physical geography and meteorology, exploring and describing for the first time in a manner generally considered to be a modern scientific point of view.

As a consequence of his explorations, von Humboldt described many geographical features and species of life that were hitherto unknown to Europeans and his quantitative work on botanical geography was foundational to the field of biogeography. By his delineation of "isothermal lines", in 1817 he devised the means of comparing the climatic conditions of various countries, and to the detection of the more complicated law governing atmospheric disturbances in higher latitudes; he discovered the decrease in intensity of Earth's magnetic field from the poles to the equator. His attentive study of the volcanoes of the New World, showed that they fell naturally into linear groups, presumably corresponding with vast subterranean fissures, and he demonstrated the igneous origin of rocks. He was one of the first to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). The details and findings of Humboldt's journey were published in a set of 30 volumes over 21 years, his Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equatorial Regions of the New Continent. Later, his five-volume work, Cosmos: A Sketch for a Physical Description of the Universe (1845), attempted to unify the various branches of scientific knowledge.

Darwin and the second voyage of HMS Beagle (1831–1836)

The voyage of the Beagle.

In December 1831 a British expedition departed under captain Robert FitzRoy, on board HMS Beagle, with the main purpose of making a hydrographic survey of the coasts of South America using calibrated chronometers and astronomical observations, producing charts for naval war or commerce. The longitude of Rio de Janeiro was to be found and also a geological survey made of a circular coral atoll in the Pacific ocean.

FitzRoy thought of the advantages of having an expert in geology on board, and sought a gentleman naturalist who could be his companion. The young graduate, Charles Darwin, had hoped to see the tropics before becoming a parson, and took this opportunity. The Beagle sailed across the Atlantic Ocean then carried out detailed hydrographic surveys, returning via Tahiti and Australia, having circumnavigated the Earth. Originally planned to last two years, the expedition lasted almost five. Darwin spent most of this time exploring on land. Early in the voyage he decided that he could write a book about geology, and he showed a gift for theorising. By the end of the expedition he had already made his name as a geologist and fossil collector, and the publication of his journal, known as The Voyage of the Beagle, gave him wide renown as a writer. At Punta Alta he made a major find of gigantic fossils of extinct mammals, then known from only a very few specimens. He ably collected and made detailed observations of plants and animals, with results that shook his belief that species were fixed, and provided the basis for ideas which came to him when back in England, leading to his theory of evolution by natural selection.

Racquet-tailed kingfisher as illustrated in The Malay Archipelago. Wallace collected more than 125,000 specimens, a thousand new species to science.

Alfred Russel Wallace Amazon and Malay explorations (1848–1862)

In 1848, inspired by the chronicles of earlier traveling naturalists British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Bates left for Brazil with the intention of collecting insects and other animal specimens in the Amazon rainforest. Wallace charted the Rio Negro for four years, collecting specimens and making notes on peoples, geography, flora, and fauna. In July 1852, while returning to the UK, the ship's cargo caught fire and all the specimens he had collected were lost.

From 1854 to 1862, Wallace traveled again through Maritime Southeast Asia to collect specimens for sale and study nature. He collected more than 125,000 specimens, more than a thousand of them representing species new to science. His observations of the marked differences across a narrow strait in the archipelago led to his proposing the zoogeographical boundary now known as the Wallace line, that divides Indonesia into two distinct parts: one with animals closely related to those of Australia, and one in which the species are largely of Asian origin. He became an expert on biogeography, creating the basis for the zoogeographic regions still in use today. While he was exploring the archipelago, he refined his thoughts about evolution and had his famous insight on natural selection.

His interest resulted in his being one of the first prominent scientists to raise concerns over the environmental impact of human activity, like deforestation and invasive species. In 1878, he warned about the dangers of deforestation and soil erosion in tropical climates, like the extensive clearing of rainforest for coffee cultivation in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India. Accounts of his travels were published in The Malay Archipelago in 1869, one of the most popular and influential journals of scientific exploration published during the 19th century.

Interior Africa exploration

Africa's deep interiors were not explored by Europeans until the mid to late 19th and early 20th centuries; this being due to a lack of trade potential in this region, and to serious problems with contagious tropical diseases in sub-Saharan Africa's case.

David Livingstone (1849–1855)

In the mid-19th century, Protestant missions were carrying on active missionary work on the Guinea coast, in South Africa and in Zanzibar. Missionaries in many instances became explorers and pioneers. David Livingstone, a Scottish missionary, had been engaged since 1840 in work north of the Orange River. In 1849, Livingstone crossed the Kalahari Desert from south to north and reached Lake Ngami. Between 1851 and 1856, he traversed the continent from west to east, discovering the great waterways of the upper Zambezi River. In November 1855, Livingstone became the first European to see the famous Victoria Falls, named after the Queen of the United Kingdom. From 1858 to 1864, the lower Zambezi, the Shire River and Lake Nyasa were explored by Livingstone. Nyasa had been first reached by the confidential slave of António da Silva Porto, a Portuguese trader established at Bié in Angola, who crossed Africa during 1853–1856 from Benguella to the mouth of the Rovuma. A prime goal for explorers was to locate the source of the River Nile. Expeditions by Burton and Speke (1857–1858) and Speke and Grant (1863) located Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria. It was eventually proved to be the latter from which the Nile flowed.

Explorers were also active in other parts of the continent. Southern Morocco, the Sahara and the Sudan were traversed in many directions between 1860 and 1875 by Georg Schweinfurth and Gustav Nachtigal. These travellers not only added considerably to geographical knowledge, but obtained invaluable information concerning the people, languages and natural history of the countries in which they sojourned. Among the discoveries of Schweinfurth was one that confirmed Greek legends of the existence beyond Egypt of a "pygmy race". But the first western discoverer of the pygmies of Central Africa was Paul Du Chaillu, who found them in the Ogowe district of the west coast in 1865, five years before Schweinfurth's first meeting with them. Du Chaillu had previously, through journeys in the Gabon region between 1855 and 1859, made popular in Europe the knowledge of the existence of the gorilla, whose existence was thought to be legendary.

Henry Morton Stanley, who had in 1871 succeeded in finding and rescuing Livingstone (originating the famous line "Dr. Livingstone, I presume"), started again for Zanzibar in 1874. In one of the most memorable of all exploring expeditions in Africa, Stanley circumnavigated Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika. Striking farther inland to the Lualaba, he followed that river down to the Atlantic Ocean—which he reached in August 1877—and proved it to be the Congo.

Serpa Pinto, Capelo, and Ivens (1877–1886)

Portuguese Serpa Pinto was the fourth explorer to cross Africa from west to east and the first to lay down a reasonably accurate route between Bié (in present-day Angola) and Lealui. In 1877, Serpa Pinto and Portuguese naval captains Capelo and Ivens explored the southern African interior starting from Benguela. Capello and Ivens turning northward whilst Serpa Pinto continued eastward. He crossed the Cuando (Kwando) river in June 1878 and in August reached Lealui, the Barotse capital on the Zambezi.

From 1884 to 1886, Hermenegildo Capelo and Roberto Ivens crossed Southern Africa between Angola and Mozambique to map the unknown territory of the Portuguese colonies. The choice of two marine officials for this achievement certainly appealed to the principles of maritime navigation. Between 1884 and 1885, Capelo and Ivens explored Africa interior, first between the coastline and Huila plain and later through the interior of Quelimane in Mozambique, continuing their hydrographic studies, updating registers, but also taking notes on the ethnographic and the linguistic characters they encountered. They established thus the so desired land route between the coasts of Angola and Mozambique, exploring vast regions of the interior located between these two territories. Their achievements were recorded in a two volume book titled: De Angola à Contra-Costa (From Angola to the Other Coast).

Exploring the Arctic and Antarctic

Arctic and Antarctic seas were not explored until the 19th century. Once the North Pole had been reached in 1909, several expeditions attempted to reach the South Pole. Many resulted in injury and death. The Norwegian Roald Amundsen finally reached the Pole in December 1911, following a dramatic race with the Englishman Robert Falcon Scott.

The Northwest Passage

Main article: Northwest Passage

Northwest Passage routes

The Northwest Passage is a sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Arctic Ocean. Interest kindled in 1564 after Jacques Cartier's discovery of the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River, Martin Frobisher had formed a resolution to undertake the challenge of forging a trade route from England westward to India. In 1576 - 1578, he took three trips to what is now the Canadian Arctic in order to find the passage. Frobisher Bay, which he discovered, is named after him. On August 8, 1585, under the employ of Elizabeth I the English explorer John Davis entered Cumberland Sound, Baffin Island. Davis rounded Greenland before dividing his four ships into separate expeditions to search for a passage westward. Though he was unable to pass through the icy Arctic waters, he reported to his sponsors that the passage they sought is "a matter nothing doubtfull [sic]," and secured support for two additional expeditions, reaching as far as Hudson Bay. Though England's efforts were interrupted in 1587 because of Anglo-Spanish War, Davis's favorable reports on the region and its people would inspire explorers in the coming century.

In the first half of the 19th century, parts of the Northwest Passage were explored separately by a number of different expeditions, including those by John Ross, William Edward Parry, James Clark Ross; and overland expeditions led by John Franklin, George Back, Peter Warren Dease, Thomas Simpson, and John Rae. Sir Robert McClure was credited with the discovery of the Northwest Passage by sea in 1851 when he looked across McClure Strait from Banks Island and viewed Melville Island. However, the strait was blocked by young ice at this point in the season, and not navigable to ships. The only usable route, linking the entrances of Lancaster Sound and Dolphin and Union Strait was first used by John Rae in 1851. Rae used a pragmatic approach of traveling by land on foot and dogsled, and typically employed less than ten people in his exploration parties.

The Northwest Passage was not completely conquered by sea until 1906, when the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who had sailed just in time to escape creditors seeking to stop the expedition, completed a three-year voyage in the converted 47-ton herring boat Gjøa. At the end of this trip, he walked into the city of Eagle, Alaska, and sent a telegram announcing his success. His route was not commercially practical; in addition to the time taken, some of the waterways were extremely shallow.

The North Pole (1909–1952)

Robert Peary and sledge party with flags at North Pole. Peary has been claimed to be the first person to reach the north pole.

While the South Pole lies on a continental land mass, the North Pole is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean amidst waters that are almost permanently covered with constantly shifting sea ice.

A number of expeditions set out with the intention of reaching the North Pole but did not succeed; that of British naval officer William Edward Parry, in 1827, the American Polaris expedition in 1871, and Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen in 1895. American Frederick Albert Cook claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1908, but this has not been widely accepted.

The conquest of the North Pole was for many years credited to American Navy engineer Robert Peary, who claimed to have reached the Pole on April 6, 1909, accompanied by American Matthew Henson and four Inuit men named Ootah, Seeglo, Egingwah, and Ooqueah. However, Peary's claim remains controversial. The party that accompanied Peary on the final stage of the journey included no one who was trained in navigation and could independently confirm his own navigational work, which some claim to have been particularly sloppy as he approached the Pole. He traveled with the aid of dogsleds and three separate support crews who turned back at successive intervals before reaching the Pole. Many modern explorers, contend that Peary could not have reached the pole on foot in the time he claimed.

The first undisputed sighting of the Pole was on May 12, 1926 by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his American sponsor Lincoln Ellsworth from the airship Norge. Norge, though Norwegian owned, was designed and piloted by the Italian Umberto Nobile. The flight started from Svalbard and crossed the icecap to Alaska. Nobile, along with several scientists and crew from the Norge, overflew the Pole a second time on May 24, 1928 in the airship Italia. The Italia crashed on its return from the Pole, with the loss of half the crew.

U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher and Lieutenant William P. Benedict finally landed a plane at the Pole on May 3, 1952, accompanied by the scientist Albert P. Crary.

Antarctica exploration

Main articles: Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration and Farthest South

Expeditions in Antarctica before the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, 1897

Early Western theories believed that in the far south of the globe existed a vast continent, known as Terra Australis. The rounding of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn in the 15th and 16th centuries proved that Terra Australis Incognita ("Unknown Southern Land"), if it existed, was a continent in its own right. The basic geography of the Antarctic coastline was not understood until the mid-to-late 19th century.

It may safely be said that all the navigators who fell in with the southern ice up to 1750 did so by being driven off their course and not of set purpose. An exception may perhaps be made in favor of Edmond Halley's voyage in HMS Paramour for magnetic investigations in the South Atlantic when he met the ice in 52° S in January 1700, but that latitude was his farthest south. A determined effort on the part of the French naval officer Pierre Bouvet to discover the South Land described by a half legendary sieur de Gonneville resulted only in the discovery of Bouvet Island in 54°10′ S, and in the navigation of 48° of longitude of ice-cumbered sea nearly in 55° S in 1739. In 1771, Yves Joseph Kerguelen sailed from France with instructions to proceed south from Mauritius in search of "a very large continent". He lighted upon a land in 50° S which he called South France, and believed to be the central mass of the southern continent. He was sent out again to complete the exploration of the new land, and found it to be only an inhospitable island which he renamed in disgust the Isle of Desolation, but in which posterity has recognized his courageous efforts by naming it Kerguelen Land.

The obsession of the undiscovered continent culminated in the brain of Alexander Dalrymple, a hydrographer who was nominated by the Royal Society to command the Transit of Venus expedition to Tahiti in 1769. The command of the expedition was given by the admiralty to Captain James Cook. Sailing in 1772 with the Resolution and the Adventure under Captain Tobias Furneaux, Cook first searched in vain for Bouvet Island, then sailed for 20 degrees of longitude to the westward in latitude 58° S, and then 30° eastward for the most part south of 60° S, a higher southern latitude than had ever been voluntarily entered before by any vessel. On 17 January 1773 the Antarctic Circle was crossed for the first time in history and the two ships reached 67°15′S 39°35′E, where their course was stopped by ice.

The first land south of the parallel 60° south latitude was discovered by the Englishman William Smith, who sighted Livingston Island on 19 February 1819.

In 1820, several expeditions claimed to have been the first to have sighted Antarctica. The first confirmed sighting of mainland Antarctica cannot be accurately attributed to one single person. It can, however, be narrowed down to three individuals. According to various sources, three men all sighted Antarctica within days or months of each other: Fabian von Bellingshausen, a captain in the Russian Imperial Navy; Edward Bransfield, a captain in the British navy; and Nathaniel Palmer, an American sealer out of Stonington, Connecticut. It is certain that on 28 January 1820 (New Style), the expedition led by Fabian von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev on two ships reached a point within 20 miles (40 km) of the Antarctic mainland and saw ice-fields there. On 30 January 1820, Bransfield sighted Trinity Peninsula, the northernmost point of the Antarctic mainland, while Palmer sighted the mainland in the area south of Trinity Peninsula in November 1820. Bellingshausen's expedition also discovered Peter I Island and Alexander I Island, the first islands to be discovered south of the circle.

Only slightly more than a year later, the first landing on the Antarctic mainland was arguably by the American Captain John Davis, a sealer, who claimed to have set foot there on 7 February 1821, though this is not accepted by all historians.

The South Pole (1911)

Amundsen's party at the South Pole, December 1911. From left to right: Amundsen, Hanssen, Hassel and Wisting (photo by fifth member Bjaaland)

After the North Magnetic Pole was located in 1831, explorers and scientists began looking for the South Magnetic Pole. James Clark Ross, a British naval officer, identified its approximate location, but was unable to reach it on his trip in 1841. Commanding the British ships Erebus and Terror, he braved the pack ice and approached what is now known as the Ross Ice Shelf, a massive floating ice shelf over 100 feet (30 m) high. His expedition sailed eastward along the southern Antarctic coast discovering mountains which were since named after his ships: Mount Erebus, the most active volcano on Antarctica, and Mount Terror.

Once the North Pole had been reached in 1909, several expeditions attempted to reach the South Pole. Many resulted in injury and death. The Norwegian Roald Amundsen reached the Pole in December 1911, following a race with the Englishman Robert Falcon Scott.

The first attempt to find a route to the South Pole was made by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott on the Discovery Expedition of 1901–04. Scott, accompanied by Ernest Shackleton and Edward Wilson, set out with the aim of traveling as far south as possible, and on 31 December 1902, reached 82°16′ S. Shackleton later returned to Antarctica as leader of the Nimrod Expedition in a bid to reach the Pole. On 9 January 1909, with three companions, he reached 88°23′ S – 112 statute miles from the Pole – before being forced to turn back.

The first humans to reach the South Pole were Norwegian Roald Amundsen and his party on December 14, 1911. Amundsen named his camp Polheim and the entire plateau surrounding the Pole King Haakon VII Vidde in honour of King Haakon VII of Norway. Robert Falcon Scott had also returned to Antarctica with his second expedition, the Terra Nova Expedition, in a race against Amundsen to the Pole. Scott and four other men reached the South Pole on January 17, 1912, thirty-four days after Amundsen. On the return trip, Scott and his four companions all died of starvation and extreme cold.

In 1914 Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition set out with the goal of crossing Antarctica via the South Pole, but his ship, the Endurance, was frozen in pack-ice and sank 11 months later. The overland journey was never made.