Thomas Burnet's Battleground of Time - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 58

as maximally different but as almost ethically opposed as the very best and
worst of their times:
1. Both use conjoined evidence of nature and scripture to narrate the earth's
history. Steno's words on this dual methodology differ little from Burnet's,
previously cited: "In regard to the first aspect of the earth, scripture and
nature agree in this, that all things were covered by water; how and when this
aspect began, and how long it lasted, nature says not, scripture
relates" (Steno, 263).
2. The geological systems of both men invoke the same basic mechanics—a
theory of crustal collapse (probably developed from Descartes). Both view
the earth as originally smooth and concentric. Both interpret the flood as a
union of waters rising from a concentric layer beneath the crust with a
prolonged scriptural rain from above. Both argue that the flood shaped
current topography by causing the collapse of an originally smooth crust into
spaces left by rising waters. Both lack a concept of repair and tell the earth's
history as a departure from original smoothness to greater irregularity.
3. Most important, Burnet and Steno read the earth's history as a fascinating
mixture of time's arrow and time's cycle. Both present pictorial epitomes that
forge these apparently conflicting metaphors to an interesting union. Burnet
shows a circle of earths, rather than a line. Steno draws two parallel rows,
rather than a single sequence (though later historians reordered his figure and
blotted out this basic feature). For both, history turns as a set of cycles (time's
cycle), but each repetition must be different (time's arrow), in order to make
time intelligible by imparting a direction to history.
As a final comment, stated with almost cryptic brevity here since I shall
return at length in the last chapter, each of time's metaphors embodies a great
intellectual insight. Time's cycle seeks immanence, a set of principles so
general that they exist outside time and record a universal character, a
common bond, among all of nature's rich particulars. Time's arrow is the
great principle of history, the statement that time moves inexorably forward,
and that one truly cannot