Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
3
Models of Aristotelian infinity
and sacred theories of the Earth
Scientific thinking during the seventeenth century was very much
influenced by religious belief, dogma and the Scriptures. A number of
persons, including some of the cloth, who were for the large part
highly educated, began to think about the history of the Earth. But
however broad-minded they were, their thinking was constrained by
their religious beliefs. Some men, even some Jesuits, were prepared to
take some risks with their ideas that could have been interpreted as
being counter-religious: it was not long since such men would have
been burnt at the stake for heresy.
In Europe in the middle of the seventeenth century, ideas on
the nature and history of the Earth began to divide and soon two
strands developed. One strand originated with the famous French
philosopher Ren
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Descartes (1596-1650) and included the German
Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680). They circulated ideas
that emphasised the mechanical and chemical processes that they
thought explained the features seen on the surface of the Earth, and
in some cases they speculated on the nature of its internal workings.
To Descartes it was contained in a cycle of Aristotelian infinity in
which these dynamic mechanical processes were actually more
important than the timescale in which they operated. These thinkers
did not really attempt to determine the duration of earthly time, but
left this question in a state of openness that reflected the ideas of
Aristotle many centuries earlier.
The second strand emerged when, in contrast, many learned and
religious men who were familiar with the landscape around them
began to explain it and the Earth in the light of the dynamic and
often catastrophic events described in the Scriptures. They accepted
