The Discovery of Deep Time - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 7

called "abduction." Prevailing culture is not always the enemy iden- tified by
whiggish history—in this case the theological restrictions on time that led
early geologists to miracle-mongering in the catastrophist mode. Culture can
potentiate as well as constrain-as in Darwin's translation of Adam Smith's
laissez-faire economic models into biology as the theory of natural selection
(Schweber, 1977). In any case, objective minds do not exist outside culture,
so we must make the best of our ineluctable embedding.
It is important that we, as working scientists, combat these myths of our
profession as something superior and apart. The myths may serve us well in
the short and narrow as rationale for a lobbying strategy—give us the funding
and leave us alone, for we know what we're doing and you don't understand
anyway. But science can only be harmed in the long run by its self-
proclaimed separation as a priesthood guarding a sacred rite called the
scientific method. Science is accessible to all thinking people because it
applies universal tools of intellect to its distinctive material. The
understanding of science—one need hardly repeat the litany-becomes ever
more crucial in a world of biotechnology, computers, and bombs.
I know no better way to illustrate this ecumenicism of creative thought than
the debunking (in a positive mode) of remaining cardboard myths about
science as pure observation and applied logic, divorced from realities of
human creativity and social context. The geological myth surrounding the
discovery of deep time may be the most persistent of remaining legends.
This topic respects the defined boundaries of the myth to disperse it from
within. I analyze in detail the major texts of three leading actors (one villain,
two heroes), trying to find a key that will unlock the essential visions of these
men—visions lost by a tradition that paints them as enemies or avatars of
progress in observation. I find this key in a dichotomy of metaphors that
express conflicting views about the nature of time. Burnet, Hutton, and Lyell
all struggled with these ancient metaphors, juggling and juxtaposing until
they reached distinctive views about the nature of time and change. These
visions fueled the discovery of deep time as surely as any