Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
watchful creator with signposts of his harmonious mind—but not on an
ancient planet coursing for billions of years upon contingent pathways of
"just history." The laws of plate tectonics may be simple and timeless, but
they yield a complex uniqueness of results when we trace the actual
configurations of continents through time.
Time's arrow of "just history" marks each moment of time with a distinctive
brand. But we cannot, in our quest to understand history, be satisfied only
with a mark to recognize each moment and a guide to order events in
temporal sequence. Uniqueness is the essence of history, but we also crave
some underlying generality, some principles of order transcending the
distinction of moments— lest we be driven mad by Borges's vision of a new
picture every two thousand pages in a book without end. We also need, in
short, the immanence of time's cycle.
The metaphor of time's cycle captures those aspects of nature that are either
stable or else cycle in simple repeating (or oscillating) series because they are
direct products of nature's timeless laws, not the contingent moments of
complex historical pathways. The geometry of space regulates how spheres
of different sizes may fill a volume in arrangements of regular repetition—
and the taxonomy of molecular order in minerals represents a compendium of
these possibilities. In Linnaeus's time, many scientists hoped for a unified
taxonomy of all natural objects, and named mineral "species" by the rules of
binomial nomenclature developed for organisms. This effort has been
abandoned as misguided by false perceptions of unity. Organisms follow
time's arrow of contingent history; minerals, time's cycle of immanent
geometrical logic. The dichotomous branching system of organic
nomenclature captures the reality of historical diversification and
genealogical connection; the order of minerals is differently established, and
not well expressed by a system designed to classify items on a topology of
continuous branching without subsequent coalescence.
But the order of minerals will bear meaningful comparison with other
systems that reflect the same geometric laws, however disparate their objects.
Several years ago, an international convention
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