Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
1
Getting Started
The role of the historian is to explain how did our familiar world develop
from one very unfamiliar.
—GORDON WOOD,
The Purpose of the Past:
Refl ections on the Uses of History
, 2008
The Earth is the result of 15 billion years of physical evolution,
from the Big Bang through the modern-day Holocene, or Recent,
epoch. James Hutton (1726-97), often regarded as the founder
of modern geology, belonged to the deist, or eternal, school of
philosophy—“everything has existed forever.” He is most widely
remembered for his famous quote, “We fi nd no vestige of a begin-
ning, no prospect of an end.” Hutton's world is currently under
the stewardship of a population estimated at 6.5 billion people,
with over 1 billion living in the New World. South America has
370 million people, North America (north of Mexico) 335 million,
Mexico 107 million, Central America 37 million, and the Antilles
