Thomas Burnet's Battleground of Time - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 42

Burnet's Portrayal and Defense of Time's Arrow
A defense of narrative
Since the Sacred Theory is primarily a story, the concerns and metaphors of
time's arrow dominate the text. Burnet locates his rationale for writing in a
desire to establish the idea of directional history against the Aristotelian
notion of changeless or cycling eternity. Before launching into his narrative,
Burnet devotes a chapter to refuting the Aristotelian premise. He presents
some theoretical arguments for a beginning of earthly time, then pauses and
realizes that his coming narrative will serve as ample refutation of
nondirectional eternity: "We need add no more here in particular, against this
Aristotelian doctrine, that makes the present form of the earth to have been
from eternity, for the truth is, this whole book is one continued argument
against that opinion."
Again and again, Burnet justifies his attention to sequential narrative as an
approach to understanding the earth. It is, first of all, fun: "I had always,
methought, a particular curiosity to look back into the first sources and
original of things; and to view in my mind . . . the beginning and progress of
a rising world" (23). 'There is a particular pleasure to see things in their
origin, and by what degrees and successive changes they rise into that order
and state we see them in afterwards, when completed" (54).
We require narrative for several reasons, including the natural proclivities of
human curiosity: "Tis natural to the mind of man to consider that which is
compound, as having been once more simple" (43); the dictates of reason:
"There is no greater trial or instance of natural wisdom, than to find out the
channel, in which these great revolutions of nature, which we treat on, flow
and succeed one another" (66); the ways of divinity: "I am sure, if ever we
would view the paths of Divine Wisdom, in the works and in the conduct of
nature, we must not only consider how things are, but how they came to be
so" (54); and the sheer magnitude of history's impact: "I am apt to think that
some two planets, that are under the same state or period, do not so much
differ from one another,