Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
where he demonstrated great mathematical ability and was elected a
Fellow in 1693. Later he was given the living of Lowestoft in 1698, a
position he combined with being chaplain to the Bishop of Norwich.
He resigned shortly afterwards and returned to Cambridge where he
succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.
Unfortunately for him he published a work on the foundations of the
church and his unorthodox views led to his being stripped of his
professorship and expelled from the university. At a church service
in 1747 he stood up, walked out and severed his links with the Church
of England, and then allied himself to the Baptists. He remained a
confrontational figure for the remainder of his life, which ended at
his son-in-law's house in London on 22 August 1752.
Whiston's main criticism of Woodward's ideas lay in Whiston's
refutation of the notion of miracles. But Whiston added more, and
claimed a natural cause for the Flood: this he said had been caused
when a comet passed close to the Earth and condensation of the
vapours in its tail had been sufficient to cover the Earth with water.
He also noted that the sediments that were supposed to have been
precipitated out of the floodwaters were not always laid down in the
order of decreasing density. Whiston's book was described in 1911 as
being 'destitute of sound scientific knowledge' but it at least brought
'some new things to our thoughts'.
For many, such as the English letter writer John Locke, the biblical
chronologies were just too short, and the shoe-horning of sacred the-
ories of the Earth into this limited span of time, coupled with the use
of physical parameters determined by the biblical story, was simply
not credible. These sacred theories represent an excursion into a cul-
de-sac of geological fantasy, sprinkled with crumbs of geological
observation, which today do not stand up to serious scientific scru-
tiny. However, they were important as they were early attempts to
explain the complex geological and evolving nature of the Earth, a
dynamic system which was, these early authors believed, constrained
by a short timeframe.
