Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
Borges's Dilemma and Hutton's Motto
I designated as Borges's dilemma the incomprehensibility that true eternity
imposes upon our understanding (see page 48). Hutton had to resolve this
logical conundrum, since he believed so strongly that Newtonian science
required a pure vision of time's cycle for the mechanics of earthly processes,
and that no event could therefore gain distinction in history. Hutton avoided
Borges's dilemma with a brilliant argument that doubled as incisive
methodology about what science can and cannot do. He held that time's cycle
governs the earth only while it operates under the regime of natural laws now
in force. These laws prescribe the cycle of the world machine and therefore
provide no insight about beginnings and ends. Logic demands both
beginnings and ends, but ultimate origins lie outside the realm of science.
Some higher power established the current regime of natural laws at an
unknowable time in the distant past, and will terminate this reign at an
undetermined moment in the future—but science cannot deal with such
ultimates.
Thus, Hutton chose his most famous words with consummate care, though
posterity has often misread him as an exponent of infinite time. We see "no
vestige
of a beginning"—but the earth had an inception now erased from
geological evidence by the cycling of its products through so many
subsequent worlds. We discern "no
prospect
of an end" because the current
regime of natural law cannot undo our planet—but the earth will terminate,
or change to a different status, when higher powers choose to abolish the
current regime. With one stroke, Hutton both gained the benefit and avoided
the dilemma of time's cycle in its pure form. He acquired the virtue (as he
saw it) of a perfect, repeating system with no peculiarities of history to
threaten the hegemony of a timeless set of causes; and he resolved Borges's
dilemma by relegating beginnings and ends, the anchors that comprehension
requires, to a realm outside science. As Playfair wrote in summary: "Thus he
arrived at the new and sublime conclusion, which represents nature as having
provided for a constant succession of land at the surface of the
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