World in Ruins - The Rocks Don't Lie - page 59

Critics quickly pointed out how the heaviest fossils were often found on the surface
rather than deep underground. Some objected to Woodward's idea of a turbulent globe-dis-
solving flood when the sedimentary strata it supposedly deposited showed signs of having
settled down through tranquil water.
Woodward was considered brilliant by some, but his arrogance and habit of making en-
emies contributed to his undoing. In 1697, London physician John Arbuthnot gleefully
skewered him in An Examination of Dr. Woodward's Account of the Deluge . It not only
laid out problems with Woodward's theory but showed that the great blowhard had pla-
giarized Steno. Arbuthnot paired sections of Steno's obscure topic with virtually identical
sections from Woodward's popular essay. In passage after passage, Woodward had cribbed
Steno without acknowledging his source. As it turned out, exposure of this act of intellec-
tual theft helped promote Steno's ideas.
Arbuthnot's devastating critique stamped Woodward's account of the biblical flood as
contrary to the laws of nature . How could the Flood have been violent enough to churn up
and dissolve the entire surface of the world, and yet preserve both marine life and delicate
plant fossils? Besides, Woodward's assertion that rocks and fossils were arranged on the
basis of specific gravity was wrong. Arbuthnot himself had descended into a two-hundred-
foot-deep pit in Amsterdam and found the density of the layers to be variable and not
ordered by depth. Contrary to Woodward's theory, heavy layers lay on top of lighter ones.
Fellows of the Royal Society of London corroborated Arbuthnot's findings, reporting that
it was common to find denser strata overlying lower-density rocks.
Arbuthnot even conducted laboratory tests to disprove Woodward's basic contention,
finding that when an oyster shell and an equal weight of metal powder were dropped into
a tank of water, the oyster shell sank to the bottom first. His simple experiment showed
that size and shape influenced how fast things settled. Arbuthnot calculated that Woodward
needed a flood 450 miles deep to turn the world into a slurry of half earth and half water,
a scenario he ridiculed with dry wit: “The Doctor should have calculated the Proportions
of his Drugs before he mix'd them.” 10 Just as with Burnet, Woodward's critics eventually
took his theory down. That the rocks did not back up his story earned Woodward the dis-
tinction of having proposed one of the first grand geological theories to be formally refuted.