Geology Reference
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World in Ruins
L ONG BEFORE GEOLOGY DEVELOPED into a distinct discipline in the nineteenth century, novel
theories abounded about how Noah's Flood shaped the world. In Galileo's day, three camps
defined seventeenth-century views of topography. First, those who did not think too deeply
about such things generally believed landscapes were just two days younger than Earth it-
self, sculpted by the hand of God on the third day of creation. Then, there was the more
scholarly view that valleys and mountains were carved by the Flood. Finally, some natural
philosophers allowed the earthquakes known to have happened occasionally through history
a minor role in shaping the land. Conventional wisdom still held that the world had been
gradually wearing down through its short history. The future promised further decay as to-
pography eroded and soils lost fertility.
The view of the world as a wrecked and ruined place began to change in 1644 when
renowned philosopher René Descartes set forth how Noah's Flood followed his principles
of nature—the laws of physics as he laid them out in his Principia Philosophiae . One of
his theories concerned Earth's origin and evolution. Mindful of Galileo's treatment by the
church, and well aware that his ideas did not accord with sanctioned interpretations, Des-
cartes explicitly stated that his own theory was wrong. Cleverly inoculated from official cen-
sure, he claimed to offer a hypothesis useful for better contemplating nature.
Descartes painted a picture of an Earth that began as a failed star trapped in the vortex of a
neighboring star. The primitive Earth then cooled and segregated into a planet with distinct
layers, leaving a still fiery core surrounded by a metal-rich inner crust. Above this lay an
ocean, trapped below an outer crust made of stones, sand, and clay. Over time the heat of
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