Thomas Burnet's Battleground of Time - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 41

"And why might not birds and fishes endure one long night as well as those
and other animals endure many in Greenland" (334).
Burnet therefore emerges from this correspondence with the greatest of all
scientific heroes as more committed to the reign of natural law, and more
willing to embrace historical explanations. He ends his letter to Newton by
describing a singular event of time's arrow, the great comet of 1680 then
hanging over the skies of London. "Sir we are all so busy in gazing upon the
comet, and what do you say at Cambridge can be the cause of such a
prodigious coma as it had" (327). Mr. Halley, mutual friend of Newton and
Burnet, also gazed in awe at this comet. Two years later, still inspired by this
spectacular sight, he observed a smaller comet, and eventually predicted its
return on a seventy-six-year cycle. This smaller object, Halley's Comet, now
resides in my sky as I write this chapter-a primary signal of time's cycle.
Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle:
Conflict and Resolution
In focusing upon Burnet's rationalist methodology, revisionists who wish to
identify something of value in his work have missed an important opportunity
—in part, because they rely exclusively upon text and ignore pictures. I view
Burnet's frontispiece as the finest expression ever published of the tension
between two complementary views of time—the ancient contrast of time's
arrow and time's cycle. I studied Burnet's text again, with this perspective
drawn from his frontispiece, and understood it in a new light (after half a
dozen previous readings). I saw the Sacred Theory as a playground for
Burnet's struggle to combine the metaphors into a unified view of history that
would capture the salient features of each-the narrative power of the arrow,
and the immanent regularity of the cycle. I think that Burnet's struggle was
quite conscious; his frontispiece is constructed with consummate care.