Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
imposed by geology upon human importance-the discovery of "deep
time" (in John McPhee's beautifully apt phrase). What could be more
comforting, what more convenient for human domination, than the traditional
concept of a young earth, ruled by human will within days of its origin. How
threatening, by contrast, the notion of an almost incomprehensible
immensity, with human habitation restricted to a millimicrosecond at the very
end! Mark Twain captured the difficulty of finding solace in such fractional
existence:
Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to
prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose
it is, I dunno. If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the world's age, the
skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man's share
of that age; and anybody would perceive that that skin was what the tower
was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.
Charles Lyell expressed the same theme in more somber tones in describing
James Mutton's world without vestige of a beginning or prospect of an end.
This statement thus links the two traditional heroes of deep time in geology-
and also expresses the metaphorical tie of time's new depth to the breadth of
space in Newton's cosmos:
Such views of the immensity of past time, like those unfolded by the
Newtonian philosophy in regard to space, were too vast to awaken ideas of
sublimity unmixed with a painful sense of our incapacity to conceive a plan
of such infinite extent. Worlds are seen beyond worlds immeasurably distant
from each other, and beyond them all innumerable other systems are faintly
traced on the confines of the visible universe. (Lyell, 1830, 63) l
Deep time is so difficult to comprehend, so outside our ordinary experience,
that it remains a major stumbling block to our understanding. Theories are
still deemed innovative if they simply replace a false extrapolation with a
proper translation of ordinary events into time's vastness. The theory of
punctuated equilibrium, pro-
1. In all quotations I have followed modern American conventions of spelling and
punctuation.
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