140 THE DISCOVERY OF TIME Philosophical ground had been cleared of absolute prejudices against the idea of development, and men were taking a meat and more empiric look at the History of Nature iteele Though questions about the one of the Earth could still run foul of the Old Testament narrative, © Biblical chronology was dying on its foee ‘The meee empirical discoveries history ae te fields of astronomy, physics, chemaatry and nad history, the more coherent and consistent a picture of the past they cou . n came at which this picture broke out of the six le of Eusebius and Julius Africanus. up; anda point: thousand-year ae FURTHER READING AND REFERENCES Admirable modem editions of Gp. y; ee i G. B. Vico's Autobiography and New Scien en ideale sande? PEIN and Fick; for cher gecetaphy and New Scete B. 7 il F ie The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico Foe. ay llingwood: The Hes of History in’ mae eA of Vics vet, el worth hunting out Isaiah Betti ara Teas in Eighteenth oe eal Ideas of Giambattista Vico’, in the cole ihe tttoHalona di Cutune COMM Hialy, published under the, auspices For Kant’s W. Hasan tical ides, see 7 The Earth Acquires 4 History hilosophical A th century; P! cance f of the eighteenth the static Renaissanc sig tegen ch Senet ate debate Pe ‘ hos by a dynamic, development a that, anal alone could noe dispatch the older time-s hed out from the evi oa e tive numerical chronology had to be withe natural scientists 0 Scientific observation. Now it was up t0 7 the natural worl crsibility into effect, and to demonstrate how * bya. ¢ of time. So, damental ‘ave acquired its present form through ee in a er sans, at arologiss and zoologists were once OB "and his ‘reach of nal Questions posed originally by aoa event, the first BOT cal battle Miletos some 2300 years before. In the ote geolosy; ons, and natural Science to become genuinely Pe don human ee" ught out over the ‘tween scriptural chronology. ra things’, a ye no Ton a ca ie BY based on ‘the yeas about the ee due above op an history of the fees of eal 28 Oo, beewe ota he rock Patience ney and original eed emescale, anchored . 1850, created a new and vastly ome «modern geologist wer “ad aes tee the ‘motives of ea aaa aa eae cehe Earth’ s a 3 ns 7 universally, ot even predominant ly, hist ent i der rest onsistent ©! .d only to study the Pr ether any ¢ of them were concerned only F ks, “Cust, classify the different toc Could be 4 in the strata a in such qrecience, knowledge hough the reasons for or Le largely a4 plier their ne a 5 ie geology has alway erica signey, ey scarcely Fe towne one only gradually Oy rt, 7 the Earth had a history at all: at ah} au ical ones ferent countris®, were practica’ ©: the Delage. But even and the 7 ined within the story of the Co ichy on nthe oh 1800, discoveries were accum™ : th il mati ; ‘omalies, Some of thes¢, A he classi Tocks, had been known since [0°144 THE DISCOVERY OF TIME creatures: at the time of his death, his published volumes had got as far as the birds, and he was in the middle of cataloguing the fishes. Described so baldly, his achievement may sound pedestrian, but in fact he saw this multitudinous mass of detail in relation to a wider—and an original— scheme of ideas. Furthermore, his books contain long and penetrating digressions about scientific theory and method, and so read at times like a scientific Tristram Shandy: any curious and intriguing fact of nature (say, the sterility of mules) is liable to be an occasion fora far-ranging theo- retical argument. Still, behind these apparent irrelevancies, there is an underlying system. His books cover some forty years of a busy carcer, and these theoretical asides show his point of view developing from decade to decade, in the light of new discoveries and controversies. Buffon’s conception of Histoire Naturelle embraced what we are here calling the history of Nature. His early hypothesis about the origin of the Solar System was intended to be the Opening instalment of a story which Would cover cosmological, geological and zoological development. These plans were, however, frustrated by the theologians of the Sorbonne, and he was compelled toissue a formal retraction. Fee the next twenty-five XGi8 Buffon kept his unorthodox speculations to himself, but by 1774 he felt sufficiently secure to return to the dangerous topics. In his Introduction to the History of Minerals, he described a comprehensive series of experi- ments on the rates at which spheres of different sizes and substances cooled ppendix he calculated the times needed for the never been condemned. His ‘purpose was cOn- cealed partly by the laboriousness of hie arithmetic, partly By a mollifying artie hypothétique). Reassured by the reception of this Introduction ee lowed x in 1778 with a fuller account of the successive Epochs o lature f ‘ough which the Earth had Presumably developed. Sauistmental probiem for the history of Netare kay never beet more clearly formulated than it was in he opening words: edhe it Gul history we consult warrants, study medalions, and ancient inscriptions, in ir of the human revolutions any order to determine the epochs i ; and fix the dates of moral events, so in natu Pitory one must dig through the archivesotn world, extract ancient a ds ee bowels of the earth, gather together their fragments, the phyeies] ei" ita single body of proofsell those indicse-ons © N : oer Furthermore, he patiently settled down to wor ‘cl theory of the Earth’s the actual petiods of time demanded by a physica ost co ing: development. To summarize his 1774 figures for that the 7 If jose, as all the phe tS ‘Was fee PH state of liquefaction caused by ee eins prove that, if the globe was entirely aoe aie 4,026 YES it would have solidified as far as the ef uivhour burning aftr cooled to a point at which it could be tou ed wt hovcen emper=- 46,991 eee that it would not: Lay ae sete beans we i re until aft 696 years. But sin 1S als which coo aaa aie fa oF fasible and calcareous mat in a shorter time than ferro close as possible to the a c b i ifferent the terres Speen ~ .« [So] one finds oe cooked tothe have solidified to the Cre in 2 eats approximately, i ich one could tn rs approximately. © ee cenperatare in 74,047 years 4PP! effects of the twallow for the efees of the This last figure he adjusted to 74,832 Years 1) orked out how ong al Sun's ts ee cimilar arguments, to reach babital he diffe planets and hei satelli have taken were @ temperatures (erable on PAB? TH), simplified but they Wet & The ions ma 5 ‘red. ginning Notte could not explain bed Biblical time-scale required after no crore than a few centuries 25 have done so, short of an. ar Buffon replied that it could not possibly awntion. No doubt his own Tory and unreasonable supematural interT ed to posses Bi figures were far greater than those ore of reason. Te ical 0 authority, but one must a yf Spaces nor di Ca ne it intimidated by the vast distan jsin money: why, immagine pone Tundred thousand Pom hundred thousand yas? fa fer a recoil from the ete the ‘absolute minimum requu , the figures Jhenomena seem to indicate,Beginning, end and duration of existence of living organisms in each planet [Buffon, 1774] IN.B.: Origin of the Blanes assumed to date | Beginning | pu io meeed jom formation Overall Years still a +e of planets) Duration to run satellite of Saturn. ‘MOON a 47,558 42,389 | [Extinct for 27,274] ears , 13683 T2St4 64,624 | [Extinct for 2,318] 4th satellite of Satu 38 60,326 $6,641 | [Extinct for 14,506] 4th satellite of Jupit 399 781525 58,126 MERCURY seal aa 98696 | 74,966 ayer PARTE 3 Son 187,765 | 361,712 112933 3rd satellite of Saturn 983 | 168123 | 132,140 291 and satellite of Satu | 3707 | 356,658 | 118,986 seas utatelite of Satum’ | £2373 | 167928 | 127655 93,096 ‘YENus nf 174,784 | 132,763 , _ 5 99,952 Secor s ring seers 228,540 | 184,473 153,708 ie satellite of Jupiter Soul Bie 121,172 102,736 TURN : gor | 187, : iantesimee | soe | Tae | See] oe of Jupiter 098 Jorma ? ime | sion ae7a0 bend f ; 483,121 | 367,498 | [not yet begun] ‘ormation of the Earth: remind ourselves that ” and, if they were hard to gtasp, we must simply there is no diff 5 revealed in scrips} i poTeY] between the truths that God bas cover by observation a re which He has permitted us to dis- Tn one r c ‘espect, Buffc : philosopher, For ali the mete YPical eighteenth-century natural it for granted thar ooo THity of his tone and his ts, he took calculate when each Pane can exist, does exis’ if was enough to temperature capable of su odies in the solar system would reach @ appeared. Like Fontenelle before ha ee teteupon life had presumably implying a plurality of inhabited wore od the Plurality of wou (i) Organized : whose heat is still asaeee We know it, is not yet bom on Jupitet will only be in 4o, today for one to touch its surface, and it 791 Years living creatures will be nap ®, 315:623~74,832: of. table above] that © to subsist there, but thereafter Once established they would | ast eel Years on that large planet; THE EARTH ACQUIRES A HISTORY 149 (i) living nature, as we know it, has been extinct on the fifth satellite of Saturn for the last 27,274 years; on Mars, for the last 14,506 years, and on the Moon for the last 2,318 years: fete. etc... [Hence my belief in] the real existence of organized and sensible beings on all the bodies of the solar system, and the more-than-likely existence of the same beings on all the other bodies m up the systems of other suns, so augmenting and multiplying almost Ke ity the extent of living Nature, and at the same time raising the of the Creator. greatest of all monuments to the glory ., ‘i 7 Earth By our standards, of course, Buffon's calculations had given the , » Bu See bys ? Rot too long, but far too short a life. ‘Where did his py 60 acknowledged that the erature of any p dg at the present temp: 7 " onitfrom ¢ determined by two separate faerors—the adi T enclten state— Sun, and the residual heat remaininy rigin and he did his bese to estimate the relative contributions Gite tors. In the 1770s the laws of ‘normal cooling re decided that ia Tadiant heat was little understood: Buffon mistake vs a pared with ffects of solar radiation were of secondary importance MS COTE cuicig the Earth's residual heat. He would have reached mor Cor ad assumed the exact reverse. The present tempera coming 5 Satellite depends almost entirely of the arrect the hheat coming from adiation: to a first approximation, one can neglect © dent soon after 1800, interior of the planet itself. This fact becamae ory ‘and within forty en physicists began to study radiant heat = rons were completely Years of their original publication Buffon's calculation Undercut by the new ones of Fourier. estimate the age of the RE Scientifically, then, Buffon’s pioneer fae ‘hilure. His religiou arth by appeal to physical principles St re pasties affected. So, in Compromise, equally, had satisfied ificent ruin. Yet, re » equally, vn at best a magnificent 20% ‘ttospect, the Epochs of Nature may gues were ong tt ee ‘i Ss verdict be unjust. Buffon's 8g vel Voice of the face and above all ee po t: that the time- yun Ae, loreover, his calculations had proved the ef fia Peoverning familie ing barrier could be breached. By invoking Fi roe ep former state of sical processes, such 38 cooling, one mig ermine the dates of physical ings from the present face of Nature, and i. If Buffon had lived to see ments far earlier than the first human "74. been w: € next fifty years of geology; 2° ti ‘was in full retreat, an 18205 Iiteral-minded fundamentalls™ 7 ofuge in his own interpre defenders of orthodoxy were t Ga this gument could go over- ition of the Days of Creation. The derals art ard: he had made the points that 1aThe Fact of Geological Change As things tumed out, Buffon’s own theories about the age of the Earth made little immediate contribution to geology proper, and the cosmo- logical approach to the subject soon went out of fashion. For his was 2 speculative and roundabout way of arguing, in which the history of the Earth was deduced indirectly from a general theory of the planetary system, rather than being pieced together directly from the actual evidence of geological exploration. The results might carry a certain abstract con- Viction to Newtonian natural philosophers, but they had no great rele~ vance to the experience of practical men, and they were not easily recon- ciled with the ideas such men inherited from their predecessors. Indeed, as we shall see later, until we 5s s r ell into the twentieth century certain glaring discrepancies remained between physical cosmology on the one hand, and zoology and geology on the other. e Meanwhile, however, other men were scrutinizing the Earth’s surface directly, and beginning to enquire about the agencies that had shape Hants its Present form. At first—as we said—they were not moved by : toric Curiosity: they were concerned merely to map the rock-strata found in the Earth's crust at different places, and to discover whether there ‘Was any common sequence in the formations overlaying one another in. ey Countries and regions, It was some time before the discovery © sade read geographical order in the nature of the crust came tO as evidence of a temporal order in the processes by which the ae had come into existence—instead of being pared unquestioning! cent Por imposed at the original Creation. And it took most of re process HSS 10 establish what agencies had been involved it ver ight compare ages of strata geographically distant from one another, and to build Ea form and fossil content, trust from the evidence of its preseM! To ean with, there were one in Germany, the other in F; craftsmen had been building two chief centres of geological research, Tance. Ever since mediaeval sims Sam d up a tradition of mi and mining, and this practical aspect marl ed the first Cen OY to thenew seicnct, Amyone with Grst-hand experience of mining technique kne™ jomething about the stratification o} tock-layers, and much was done f° y ahe foundations for geology by simply describing and naming ‘Be diferent types of rock and tole re chief leader in this work wa i axon geologist, A. G. Werner. Like Boerhaave, Werner was one 0 ing the mae ientifc teachers, who made his mark primarily by stimulat- ing the interest of his students; and as with cher sehr great teacher Iso THE BARTH ACQUIRES A HISTORY Ist Linnaeus, the men who learned from him were won over by his Cae and detailed mastery over his subject-matter, rather than because of theoretical penetration. In geology as much as in zoology oa botany, what the eighteenth century demanded was a comprehensive an ly ificati i i enclature. These Werner classification, together with a precise nomenclat : poe provided: he classified the superimposed rock-strata into ok = a = types, and several dozen subdivisions—ranging from granite and sci , in which fossils were never found, up through the eae i ag strata to the sands, clays and volcanic lava ofthe surface layersond fe saw that the superposition of layers must have a rae 8 See also, the fossil-bearing rocks being younger than the granite, superficial rocks being the most recent of at. . a Pin France, meanvehile, other historical clues were coming gt ight In 1751, J. E. Guettard stopped at Montelimar on his way t ee journey throughout southern Italy. His attention ae aug 2 festa that the paving of the streets was of a type of ae ra ag apa strikingly like some which he had seen in the vo ea zi “sid + alaines Vesuvius, and that the milestones and even some 0! SS rae were also made of volcanic-looking stone. He enquired bere ee RhOne. ad come from, and was directed into the mountains cS nels of Here he found a region of steep river valleys, eae Sec eiibea basalt “organ-pipes. ‘and leading to a central Pia “ae Puy de Dome, the range of conical peaks. One of these mountains w: 5 ae seighbouring ste of Pascal's experiments on atmospheric pressure, 1a NUE. nee Village of Volvic, men had best Pipe athedsal at Clermont Ferrand, centuries. It had been. used to build the Cr ‘his day. Unel Guettard and is still used for milestones on French roa ua ti suring peaks had arrived, however, the quarries of Volvic oat i a pee d only by men ept their most important secret, which could De COSMAS uttard im- who looked at them with the right question’ TY" the cones of mediately realized, the surrounding mountain Pra as could be extinct volcanoes, and the paths of M7 “Cn had only to stip of the clearly seen in the surrounding countrys sn ea the whole region was surface disguise of top-soil and yee are on. . recognizable as a vast area shaped DY we icani¢ teligible script, Guettard’s Like the first deciphering of @ o-unint first step was taken, discovery precipitated a chain of others. Once Cie St hat followed, ‘ i . During the deca We of everythin, fell neatly into place. din a dozen par similar ing. lee of pane volcanoes were recogsgonal basalt character the world: many of them associated with the ee if the time-span of istic of Giants’ Causeways. Yet the puzzle remain ne volcanic the world was really less than 6000 years, how cove SC at) these action have gone fag unrecorded? It seemed imp:152 THE DISCOVERY OF TIME formi : formniable eruptions could have taken place during the short span of time before the exes human records Faced with evidence such BS chis men were gradually dive towards the conclusion which they had $0 long recent ina eties of prolonged epovte, alte ge an labs ad changed radically from age to Be , and that the face of the globe had The Agents of | Geological Change Though as lat sally conceded, thee ee fact of geological change was still not univer- the evidence, Bae hence many geologists who recognized the force of agencies responsble ay see Were themselves divided about the een known that both heat ‘© main schools began to form. It had long. the Earth during the pre t and water were actively changing the face of ages aso. Opingen sree ant ots and presumably had done so in former = two agents had played the ply divided over the question which of Ss minant is ii — Though he ee parted from te oom ear peieipls. strongly influenced by che Fat geo Bical observer, his ideas had een ened Ba ene bY the Biblical tradition of the Flood, and this fact Univerilly formed by ero of Beological facts, Rockestrata had been on the bed of the ovean in sm st2? minute particles being deposited of the waters, and finally we successive layers, exposed by the recession and rivers. Werner convvaced | ee and dissected by the action of rain comparatively recent phen imself that, historically, volcanoes were 4 ould be no more then sureeheoy 20, thats Beolo; ically, volcanic roc ence of basalt in voleanie eo features. Des ee th. eq occur indication of its origin: fa Seo Be felt bound co deny that this was 2 Earth, and an gneous ong ese cop ime of volcanic action stretched bacye basalt would imply that the period whole surface of the ack to an epoch when (es-he believed) the shes With the diperion of Wenn ees below a universal ocean, eoretical views acquired femer’s students throughout E his apparently explain the .2 Certain orthodoxy: the "Nope surope could intellectual expedients for disp of most rock- shaking the optimistic faith, © tof sixteenth ent completely as the Reformation had shaken : tury Catholics and the Russian Revolution was © history, ly competent chemist, d to defend Biblical Mo rel ape Se a ne eh The new bitterness is clear fron aisne, pitted eae we rds: Recent ‘i philosophical Tnowlga® shown that the obscurity in which the hitherto been involved nee lee® oiginal] state Tof the Earth] hes various systems of safes Proved too favourable to the structuré © turn to turbulence and immoral" as these have been in thet Hutton’s a had attacked he eg and moderation themselves caused offence: If he lamentalst view directly or, ike Buffon, had forcblY THB EARTH ACQUIRES A HISTORY 155 adapted it to suit the geological evidence, there would at any rate have been something for the orthodox to criticize. His actual procedure struck mas even more insulting: he simply ignored the sacred tradition, and his silence about Moses and the Flood, though originating in modesty, was interpreted as scorn. The Perspective of Indefinite Time Te was all very unjust. James Hutton’s handling of the geological evidence might seem revolutionary, but his fundamental aims were conservative and devout. Philosophically, he was as close in spirit to Isaac Newton a century earlier as he was to his successor of forty years Beene ss Lyell. Certainly, Hutton refused to shut his eyes to the historical Thm to tions of the new geology, and sheer intellectual honesty comp’ eae declare that it revealed no trace of the world’s original Creation; yt, 4 6 led rather to most other respects, his theoretical system tendet ee as the orderly complete the orthodox Protestant concep ‘ wvidenti: Pree a yl here Newton had explained the providentil stability of the solar system as a balance between gravitatiol and ont a et tendencies, Hutton now saw the Earth’s structure as maint a rabitable state throughout indefinite time by a similar providentil lance of geological agencies. z 5 i Hutton took cleareyed view of the evidence which genio ie brought to light, Man was evidently a somewhat recent RDO 2 TE aap globe, and al the evidence suggested that the Earth eae onks exter antiquity, having passed through a sequence of IEginY PO racy than our own, Absut its state during these earlier epo . chat, from geo- only limited conclusions: there was no reas0B £0 SUPPENS TA i ore logical features visible today, we could reason ba eid one draw a shatp than part-way cowards the Earth’s origin, Nor cote Om oe recent, ine (os beck Butfon and Werner had done) dividing © Trey a been Volcanic epoch from an earlier, aqueous one, daring ia that all the geo- lominant agent. On the contrary, the evidence Mevious epoch also. logical forces axive today had been active in every PICT TY could ‘urthermore, all these forces acted very slow oe “were only a minute actually observe for himself within his own SETA" about—given Sample of those which the same agencies MEM oy Foon the whole indefinite time: he saw, 28 ee ont ven time, one could per- Oving pi ical oo i oJ Hey ets peas a ie eave With which we are familiar:156 THE DISCOVERY OF TIME Great things are not understood without the analysing of many Operations, and the combination of time with many events happening in succession, Here was the germ of Lyell’s ‘uniformitarian’ method. If time alone were all the concession the evidence demanded, surely we had no adequate Teasons for refusing this, or for limiting the number of years over which Nature was supposed to have acted. The geographical effects of geological change might be too slow to detect. Even by comparing our own know- ledge of the Earth with that of ancient authors, we could not estimate the age of the continents — It is in vain to attempt to measure a quantity which escapes all notice, and which history cannot ascertain; and we might just as w attempt to measure the distance of the stars without a parallax, as to calculate the destruction of the solid land without a measure corres- ponding to the whole, Yet, however slow it might be, the fact of geological change was un- deniable. Once we allowed them sufficient tite, Ere, heat, weeather and ‘water could between them bring into bei logical or geographical feature we chose to consider, "8 MY Beologicsl ore __ The spectacle of mechanical “indefinite successions of ages’ Own Person it was associated sophy, His contemporaries Scotland the wanton Fren, agencies operating uniformly throughout was a forward-looking one, yet in Hutton’s with a thoroughly devout general philo- mistakenly accused him of importing into ch atheism of Baron d’Holbach’s System of Nature. Yet there Was, in fact, nothing in Hutton’s system—apart from the unbounded chronology—that could legitimately give offence. In his own Ges, he shared John Ray’s conviction ther the owe ot the wort displayed the wisdom of its Author All geological changes which ha gone to form the present continents had served to create a habitation fit Babin cog Beat lapse of time involved should not deceive us int thinking of Nature’ S Operations as random and aimless: Though, in generalizing the operations of nature, we have arrived at those great events, which, at first sight may fill the mind wit! wonder and with doubt, we are not to sup ose, that there is any pees an i Power, such as is required in order to produce # eat event in little time: j, i in respet time, nor any limitation’ rid eo ene ‘Sor cme ib ot iS pues al ee) there ever appear the exertion superfluous fect some general end, 1 THE BARTH ACQUIRES A HISTORY $7 The Earth was some more than a chance oleae ce ten objects acted on by physical forces It was demonsuly 2 ystem one as intricate, well balanced and self-adjusting as the planetary ‘es to In order to understand the system of the ar ‘he distinguished connect together periods of measured time, oe ay be observed, oF places of revolving bodies, It is thus chat system may be observed, or Wisdom, in the proper adapting of powers fo a a seeing manner, we cannot understand Sie nas measuring f things which is brouga 7 Encorpearing eh os cies i re continually The counter-balancing actions of heat and vrater, which we econinually building up and breaking down different Barts of th art vided away i A maintain it in a form fit for ai and agcalogs were fresh evidence of the Creator's foresight an‘ sign. EO Tt in no position to reconstruct the wl ole back-history 7 Te was enough to this (Futon concluded) did not seriously matter. geological processes ic interaction © demonstrate how the systematic interaclol © played its proper part in the providential schem: ing; we have no data t to the end of our reasoning; tually is: But fi she F have ney °F renedively from eed warn that in nature ne aeyg ot enough; we have the Cl having, in the natural there Pa wsdom system, and consistency rrlds, we may from this history of this earth, seen a succession Tike manner as, from. ais conclude that there isa system nat ed, that there isa aysem by i , it is cor ns, But if ch which ey of te Pied to continue ce me at it is in vain succession of worlds is established in the sys of the earth. The result, to Took for any thing higher in the ore we find no vestige of @ therefore, of eae “present Pe cad ae beginning,—no prospect of an end seas, Buffon and Hutton ba d Starting fr ite different assumptions, existed very much longer Bed he ction: that the Earth had existed ver) te hea the scomarily been supposed: For Buf ch, Hutton s2t wide all custom: sain of the : faataoaa am amen so ed we me on See epee, Me Cr mole en od ae ce aN 0 ih 5 Fespect Sado prejudices in narra he insisted only feat the Be iginal Lene of his eta be ho wetige of a beginning’, Pro158 THE DISCOVERY OF TIME of ‘a time indefinite in length’. (Here, too, Hutton was only completing the picture of Nature begun by Isaac Newton. In the Newtonian account of the planetary system, the stable orbits of the planets were established by divine intervention, and their present forms proved nothing about the process of Creation itself, Likewise, for Hutton, the present geological order proved nothing about the origin of the Earch, _ If Hutton had had less of a taste for Protestant natural theology, he might have carried his argument one stage further. As things were, he ended, like Newton, in the philosophical position of Plato’s Timaeus—the existence of a stable and rational order in Nature being explained as the Consequence of a hypothetical Creation, at some indefinite moment of the Thnoee, Past. Yet this was not the only possible interpretation of his theories. He might with equal consistency have extrapolated his argument, dispensed with the hypothetical Creation entirely, and used his dis- saretiss to argue that past time was not merely indefinite but infinite. ‘was the position taken up in antiquity by Aristotle in order to avoid embarrassments arising out of Plato’s theory. Throughout the Middle istoteli: i een heresy for ave sand Hutton, too, now held back from called Ges 2st step. That was left to a minor admirer of his, a physician dain ee Hoggart Toulmin, in a series of treatises on the antiquity, eternity of the 5 a ty fore Hutton’s fundamental ease eusted from 1780 on—immediately about the rar oombad found in geology only an absence of evidence Positively, tead the logical evde and eventful end: Toulmin, more fact t Nature was in eee for the Earth's stability as proof oteeneh not taken something similar to what is continually $e e place; nature having, through an ¢ petiod of duration, acted by laws fixed and imesurable ia the exten= re, in vain do we seek for the ee me Lely Fecourse to calculation on the subject of oe stars and rhe § lirst existence! The stretch of human concep- cannot na aly have nt Multiplied series of numbers, of which we 1 ssibly have any adequate idea, unavoidably stop short am ‘ave the matter removed at an unlimited distance, A great many facts indicated the antiaw a ie humans md soci i guy and Hg ea find no reason to tric stot Dp v able for her action. If he the power of Nature by limiting the time avail- to conclude laws of nature were fixed, it was only reasonable sive circle of existence, therefor of things. How fruitless ea THE BARTH ACQUIRES A HISTORY 159 ic the planets, and the h cies, the world, the suns, the planets, atime intelligent beings and objects of the tniverse, havin never had any beginning, have existed with their various modifica uncaused through all eternity. This Aristotelian view was, indeed, the logical ae ae ae orthodox cighteenth-century ideas about the Order of Na ee ae rel evidence available in the x790 could hs be wed fo justify either Hutton’s version of the ‘Big Bang’ a ee (tecould, alternatively Toulmin’s revival of the Aristotelian eae Cue for that matter, have been used also to support the upper hand by Theory of the Earth—one in which fire and water cok te Pee eeident, turns, in an endless sequence of geologic phases.) Tes ave by iselé For, as Hutton rightly conceded, the geological ¢ thin a period of time only 2 rested view of the past—bounded within & PEACE Sy throughout which, for all chat one could tell, the foteal cie-barrier of n 3 erating in the same, constant wey. ne foe a geological time- earlier ‘centuries. was merely being Ben od before that, geology barrier farther back into the past. As to the pesiog OOo id Coty the left one as much in the dark as ever. The new a a Beatures or tock- agencies responsible for shaping particuar eee "whole had or had not formations: the question, whether the Eart fame ‘was beyond its scope. been created at some still earlier moment of tim ee ee tion could For lack of further solid evidence and BO i is level Newton answered only in terms of a priori speculations; nor Toulmin on and Hutton could make no real advance feral its veneer of arith- Aristotle. Even Buffon's account of the ae theorizing 35 2 serious metical detail, was as much a piece of neo-lor mm an initial Moment 0} essay in physical science. The choice between 2 0 ining One- Creation, Sareea Order, a Cyclical ee not an empirical con- Way Process remained what it had always or observation, but rather clusion which could be tested against the ery interpretatioD of those facts. prior philosophical decision governing on? jer is Broken The Historical Time-Barvier #5 Brol . the 1790s had subsided, geologists ee ty TS, sus reel ioe era goin Scope of their speculations, and con: a thy reaction. There are cal foundations of their science. This was at ‘hilos ophical debate has times in the development of any science when P After the theological thunder of160 THE DISCOVERY OF TIME dong al itean to clarify the fundamental questions, and a full generation’s work must in ervene before anyone can hope to give adequately-founded donned prensa the Position in geology when Werner first con- eau eos aru theorizing, and called on his pupils to go out—with srady boots and cathy hands—and make a detailed, first-hand study of hoo: for dhe ohate cane ee crust. It was still the position in Vulcanists, had gone off at talf-cock. fee and wer, Nepnisn and Yet the fun a A bate aves dangimentalists were right to smell danger, for the crucial aa was about to be joined. In Book VIII of Milton’ about neat ca Et hangel Raphael had turned aside "Adam’s vestions pepe cone Ke Wvising him not to pry too closely into what a God's Comper comm nt yaad II of his poem The Task (1785), William the origin of the, woth me asperity on the renewed curiosity about Some write a narrative of Of: brad little known; Te a gs pe tory: +++ Some drill and bore ee carth, and from the strata there a ae register, by which we learn aa who made it, and reveal'd its date ee was mistaken in its age. are more acute, and more industrious still, aa af creation; travel nature up , ra ai harp peak of her sublimest height, re Han ce the stars; why some are fix’d Rowe a some; what gave them first ae ‘om what fountain flow’d their light. Tat contest follows, and much leamed dust Aad co a Sapam each claiming truth Tosi wick of oor ao ee) iH plying tricks wit ha © distant worlds, and trifing’in dois cm There was no necessi enti akedd ae for scientific understanding to undermine a sense of ‘were wantonly Precipitating a conten (Cowper ai — een science and religion— God cet neve meant that man should scale the heavn’s ey of human wisdom. In his works wondrous, he commands us in his word Te was time for a truce to the theoretical d Society of London was established in 1807, policy to take no sides in I accept meritorious contributions from geologists suasion or none. The bitter disputations of. way along which geology would advance: ‘Werner, first-hand field study and accurate classification, Hutton tarian’ method of argument. For scientists Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory) could inte! logical change satisfactorily only by comparing them wil Phenomena which they could observe at James Hall. Hutton himself feared that the p Place since Guettard’s time. a a aon ‘cams of | loes lava Jet , over Sy ee hexagonal form; so Hatton's theory that bast THE EARTH ACQUIRES A HISTORY 161 To seek him rather, where his mercy shines . . . But never yet did philosophic tube, That brings the planets home into the eye Of observation, and discovers, else Not visible, his family of worlds, Discover him that rules them; such a veil Hangs over mortal eyes, blind from the birth, ‘And dark in things divine. Full often, too, Our wayward intellect, the more we learn Of nature, overlooks her author more; From instrumental causes proud to draw Conclusions retrograde, and mad mistake. bate, When the Geological it resolved as ee bout the Theory of the Earth, and to om geal of any theoretical per- ‘Sebnburgh were abandoned in vour of more pedestrian—but more productive—lines of enquiry. All theories apart, Hutton and Werner had each bi od by his ‘uniformi- (as Playfair declared, in his | pret the processes of geo- ith other natural the present time: have no If iti tiled, that a theory of the earth ought fo ( oh once seuled, that & te that regulate the changes oF 8 anes or in the interior of the globe, a ; i te sper thro a kre am od mend forces, shall ultimately prove unequal to this investigation. i by the work of Sir md a pe ible for the i i in the laboratory. formation of strata might be too violent to seproduce oa ie a ae ‘These maxims of method were Hall i d, in doing 50, Hae our fc gol se eden coon i jcanoes ot is ever seen to erupt fi to cool on the Barth’s surface (Giants’ Causeways) and active oF