Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
In respect of the Weald both men were incorrect in dating the
onset and duration of its denudation. It is now known that the area
was first uplifted into a broad dome only twenty-five million years ago
during a late episode of continental tectonic activity at the end of the
Alpine mountain-building episode or orogeny. Phillips, quite by acci-
dent, was closer in his estimate than Darwin.
In Life on the Earth, Phillips' belief was set out early in the
volume on page 3 thus: 'Nature, in a large sense, is the expression of
a DIVINE IDEA, the harmonious whole of this world of matter and
life. Man, included in this whole, is endowed with the sacred and
wonderful power of standing in some degree apart.' As Jack Morell
has noted in the Oxford Dictionary of Biography, Phillips 'reaffirmed
his belief in divine design, the reality of species, the relative novelty of
humans, and a reverential reading of the topic of geological strata.'
Convinced that Darwin had exaggerated the incompleteness of the
fossil record, Phillips believed that its discontinuities were explicable
only in terms of separate creations which were transcendental and
inscrutable acts of God. He was 'unhappy with Lyell's advocacy of the
antiquity of man.' Phillips warned his fellow geologists that investigat-
ing geochronology would be futile: 'Let him look at the Mosaic narra-
tive, and be satisfied with the truth, that ''In the Beginning God created
the heavens and the Earth'', for no measure of time conceivable by man
will reach back to that remote epoch in the history of our solar system.'
WAS DARWIN A GEOLOGIST?
Darwin is well known for his biological and evolutionary ideas, but
did he have any understanding of geology? Could he have been called a
geologist? If he was, did Phillips consider Darwin to be less qualified
than himself, and did this give him the moral high ground? Perhaps
Phillips did, but interestingly neither man followed a university geo-
logical course to any great depth. In fact Phillips did not matriculate at
all. In 1825 Darwin first attended the University of Edinburgh where
as a diversion to his medical studies he attended the lectures in
Edinburgh of Robert Jameson during the session 1826-1827 and
