Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
Despite the popularity of Ussher's chronology, dozens of biblical analysts offered com-
peting claims. Their disagreements illustrate the inherent difficulty in pinning down the
meaning of even literal interpretations of the Bible. Depending on the reader and what else
he or she brings to the table, two people may arrive at different meanings. After Steno, nat-
ural philosophers began to pursue increasingly independent approaches, piecing together
earth history directly from reading the rocks.
The influential Baron Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon and director of the botan-
ical gardens in Paris, argued that the world was at least ten times older. Born into a family
of wealthy French aristocrats, Buffon inherited the family fortune at a young age, giving
him the freedom to study law before he turned to mathematics and natural history. When he
became keeper of the king's garden in Paris in 1739, he converted it into a center to pursue
his research interests.
In 1749, after a decade of study, Buffon proposed that Earth was created when a comet
smashed into the Sun and knocked loose a molten fireball. The cooling of this piece of
the Sun to form our world was described in the first installment of his massive thirty-four-
volume
Histoire Naturelle
. After the flaming blob cooled into a rocky satellite, a universal
ocean receded to expose the continents. Buffon denied that Noah's Flood ever occurred and
suggested that animals evolved based on otherwise enigmatic vestigial organs that served
no apparent purpose, like the sightless eyes of a mole and the wings of flightless birds.
Two years later, in January 1751, the theological faculty of the Sorbonne sent Buffon a
letter calling him out for more than a dozen reprehensible ideas. Among Buffon's heretic-
al notions were that currents scouring the bed of the primeval ocean shaped mountains
and valleys, that topography was made by erosion rather than by God, and that eventually
erosion would grind mountains down to sea level. Faced with the same choice that con-
fronted Galileo, Buffon chose to recant and keep his prestigious position. He renounced
everything in his topic “respecting the formation of the earth, and in general all which may
be contrary to the narrative of Moses.”
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Shaken but undeterred, Buffon experimented with how long it took to cool spheres of
molten metal. He determined that the first day of Creation had to have lasted more than
twenty-five thousand years for the planet to cool to the point where water could settle on
