Thomas Burnet's Battleground of Time - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 30

this be looked upon as a piece of greater art, than if the workman came at that
time prefixed, and with a great hammer beat it into pieces? (89)
Only late in the topic, when he must specify the earth's future following the
conflagration, does Burnet admit that reason must fail—for how can one
reconstruct the details of an unobservable future? Yet he abandons reason
with much tenderness and evident regret:
Farewell then, dear friend, I must take another guide: and leave you here, as
Moses upon Mount Pisgah, only to look into that land, which you cannot
enter. I acknowledge the good service you have done, and what a faithful
companion you have been, in a long journey: from the beginning of the world
to this hour . . . We have travelled together through the dark regions of a first
and second chaos: seen the world twice shipwrecked. Neither water nor fire
could separate us. But now you must give place to other guides. Welcome,
holy scriptures, the oracles of God, a light shining in darkness. (327)
The Physics of History
I have already presented the content of Burner's scenario in outline by
discussing his frontispiece; but what physics did he invoke to produce such
an astonishing sequence of events?
Burnet viewed the flood as central to his methodological program. The
Sacred Theory, therefore, does not proceed chronologically, but moves from
deluge to preceding paradise, for Burnet held that if he could find a rational
explanation for this most cataclysmic and difficult event, his method would
surely encompass all history. He tried to calculate the amount of oceanic
water (Figure 2.2), grossly underestimating both the average depth (100
fathoms) and