Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
court of educated scientific opinion will ever be satisfied by pleadings conducted
on such precedents.”
15
Huxley's address was the last time for several decades that any scientist would
challenge Kelvin. He had shifted the ground of debate about the Earth. No longer
could Lyell's limitless time be countenanced, nor his unchanging Earth, nor reas-
oning by “mother-wit and commonsense.” Whatever the fate of Kelvin's argument
about the age of the Earth, geologists heard his message that their science could
not remain descriptive while all other sciences became increasingly quantitative.
Kelvin pushed geology toward the twentieth century, though once it got there, it
would reject his assumptions and his results.
