Thomas Burnet's Battleground of Time - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 56

producing a jumbled and irregular surface from an original smoothness.
Steno's text makes this interpretation of his picture even more clear. His
narrative may treat the six tableaux sequentially, but note his careful
repetition of words for corresponding stages of the two cycles. For the second
deposition of strata (shown in figure 22): "At the time when the plane BAG
was being formed, and other planes under it, the entire plane BAG was
covered with water; or what is the same thing, the sea was at one time raised
above sand hills, however high" (262-263). And for the first deposition of
strata, figure 25 (Steno recounts his narrative from youngest to oldest, in
reverse order from current convention): "When the plane FG was being
formed, a watery fluid lay upon it; or, what is the same thing, the plane
summits of the highest mountains were at one time covered with water" (263).
In his summary statement, Steno writes primarily of repetition, not sequence:
"Six distinct aspects of Tuscany we therefore recognize, two when it was
fluid, two when level and dry, two when it was broken" (263).
Moreover, Steno does not restrict his defense of cyclic history to the data of
Tuscany. He also presents a general argument for cyclic repetition as an
inherent property of time and natural processes: "It cannot be denied that as
all the solids of the earth were once, in the beginning of things, covered by a
watery fluid, so they could have been covered by a watery fluid a second
time, since the changing of things of nature is indeed constant, but in nature
there is no reduction of anything to nothing" (265).
But the similarities with Burnet go further. Burnet also presented a powerful
argument for the proper integration of his two metaphors, based on what I
have called Borges's dilemma of infinity. Steno resolves the potential tension
in the same manner—by arguing for repetition with a difference . He also uses
the same two criteria for assessing these differences: narrative and vector.
Steno even follows Burnet in insisting that differences between cycles must
exist in order to make time intelligible—for otherwise, each new cycle
repeats the last sequence precisely, and we can never know where we stand
in the march of history. Thus, Steno (who