Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
particularly in its evidence for organic progress from fish to reptile, to
mammal, to man.
The argument needs, and shall receive, more elaboration (see pages 137-
142). For now, and to allay the discomfort of unresolved puzzles, I simply
point out that future ichthyosaurs represent but one of Lyell's speculative
forays for saving the steady state of life's complexity from a fossil record that
spoke for progress. We may see, Lyell argues, an advance in design from fish
to ichthyosaur to whale, but we view only the rising arc of a great circle that
will come round again, not a linear path to progress. We are now, Lyell wrote
just before his reveries on ichthyosaurs, in the winter of the "great year," or
geological cycle of climates. Tougher environments demand hardier, warm-
blooded creatures. But the summer of time's cycle will come round again,
and "then might those genera of animals return . . ."
Charles Lyell, Self-Made in Cardboard
Lyell's Rhetoric
As De la Beche had noted in caricature, Charles Lyell was a lawyer by
profession—a barrister no less, skilled in the finest points of verbal
persuasion. Thus, although early sections in previous chapters on Burnet and
Hutton treat cardboard histories as preached by textbooks, the Lyellian myth
is a double whammy. The legends of Burnet and Hutton are later
constructions, but Lyell built his own edifice with the most brilliant brief ever
written by a scientist. This brief, moreover, established forever the cardboard
history that fueled the emerging legends of Burnet and Hutton as well. Lyell
constructed the self-serving history that has encumbered the study of earthly
time ever since.
The first volume of Lyell's Principles of Geology (published in three volumes
between 1830 and 1833) begins with five chapters on the history of geology
and its lessons for establishing a proper approach to a modern study of the
earth. Lyell's great treatise is not, as so
Search WWH ::




Custom Search