... are not empirically ascertained but are proposed and accepted (or rejected) by the relevant scientific community as a matter of free choice. The use of igneous rocks as exemplars in the education of novice geology students is discussed. It is claimed that the CIPW classification could not have been produced...

... in microscopic petrography, the theory of magmatic differentiation, and knowledge of the chemical composition of igneous rocks, the ‘CIPW’ classification marked a radical break with all previous igneous rock classification schemes such as those of Rosenbusch and Zirkel. The present paper is the first in a series...

... article entitled ‘A quantitative chemico–mineralogical classification and nomenclature of igneous rocks’ was preceded in earlier issues of the same journal by a two-part series authored by Cross on the historical development of systematic petrography. In early 1903, both of Cross’s papers and the CIPW...

... . It is not our wish to have too many ‘divided’ papers in Earth Sciences History , and it is hoped that the edict about the length of papers introduced last year will discourage them. But we can look forward to Part 3 of Davis Young’s epic study of the origin of the CIPW classification in the next issue...

... classification at the two most recent meetings of the International Geological Congress (St Petersburg 1897 and Paris 1900), three members of the original CIPW team, Joseph P. Iddings (1857–1920), C. Whitman Cross (1854–1949), and Louis V. Pirsson (1860–1919), together with a successor to the late George H...

...P. A. Balykin; T. E. Petrova We used the geochemical classification of associations of igneous rocks to establish petro-logical types of komatiite-basalt, picrite-basalt, and picrite-dolerite complexes of different ages. To estimate the compositions of mantle substrata of these complexes...

... classification and terminology, based on the results of chemical analyses. It was devised after a huge effort by four American petrologists (Cross, Iddings, Pirsson, and Washington: hence the sobriquet, the ‘CIPW’ system). In the end, their system didn’t catch on. The system was desperately complicated and had...