The Bank of Time - Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences - page 15

well, therefore, to find that our demands are really unnecessary; that even the facts
of our own science do not require these exorbitant drafts upon the past” (189).
Little Short of a Swindle
Samuel Haughton (1821-1897), a professor of geology at Trinity College in Dub-
lin, disdained the “Geological Calculus” because he believed “that the time during
which organic life has existed on earth is practically infinite.” To prove his point,
he calculated when the temperature of the Arctic had been at 122°F, “at which de-
gree albumin [a form of protein found in egg white] coagulates.” Life could not
have existed at higher temperatures than that, Haughton wrote. Using the meas-
ured cooling rate of basalt and other data, he calculated that from the time the
oceans formed up to the beginning of the Tertiary period, 14 2,298,000,000 years
had elapsed, a number that he said is “practically infinite . . . so great as to be in-
conceivable by beings of our limited intelligence.” 15 To attempt to measure ab-
solute ages was fruitless, Haughton concluded: the “stony tables that contain the
history of the earth . . . can never give up to even our most diligent research all the
secrets they once contained.” 16
Twelveyearslaterinapaperin Nature ,Haughtonrevisited the“durationofgeo-
logical time.” 17 Whereas in his earlier paper he had concluded that even two bil-
lion years was too little, now he found that “on comparing the rates of cooling of
the earth with the maximum measured thicknesses of the several strata, we find
a remarkable proportion between them.” 18 In other words, his method now gave
the same result as Kelvin's. To reach that conclusion, however, Haughton had to
engage in some mathematical sleight of hand. After an assumption-rich analysis
of past climate, he came to his new calculation. The estimated rate of erosion for
large rivers ranged from one foot in 729 years to one foot in 6,846 years, which
Haughton averaged and rounded down to one foot in 3,000 years. He raised this
number to account for the greater area of the seafloor compared to the land sur-
face, coming up with one foot in 8,616 years, or a rate of 0.000116 feet per year.
Haughton estimated the total thickness of sedimentary strata up to the beginning of
the Tertiary to be 33.5 miles, a much larger figure than anyone else had assumed.
To follow his method to its logical conclusion, Haughton would now have divided
177,200 feet (about 33.5 miles) by 0.000116 feet per year to get 1.526 billion years
for pre-Tertiary time. But instead Haughton did this: “If we admit (which I am
by no means willing to do) that the manufacture of strata in geological times pro-
ceeded at ten times this rate, or at the rate of one foot for every 861.6 years, we