Transcript Geology, Fossils & Transmutation (1690s to 1790s)

Geology, Fossils & Transmutation (1690s to 1790s)
1) How old is the earth? How has it changed over time?
2) What are fossils?
3) Are species fixed or have they changed over time?
Where did Noah’s flood, the Deluge, fit in?
Most naturalists accept the flood as historical (before 1750)
Explain transport & deposition of fossils w/ Deluge
Debates over nature of the Deluge: miraculous vs. natural
event
In regard to the first aspect of the earth, Scripture and
Nature agree in this, that all things were covered with water
. . . Nature proves that the unevenness was great, while
Scripture makes mention of mountains at the time of the
flood. But when those mountains were formed, whether
they were identical with mountains of the present day . . .
neither Scripture nor Nature declares.
Nicolaus Steno (1669)
The question of the origin of fossils entails many large
problems . . . One cannot say that these forms, so often
found, are sports of nature, the similarities they usually
have to living shells being too notable and too regular . . .
The problem is to figure out what could have scattered
them in so many different places and so far from the sea.
Jean Astruc (1708)
John Woodward, An Essay toward a Natural History of the
Earth (1695)
1) fossil shells are organic in origin
2) the Deluge accounts for transport & deposition
William Whiston, New Theory of the Earth (1696)
1) earth created by a comet (natural event)
2) flood caused by another comet (natural event)
Comte de Buffon, The Epochs of Nature (1778)
1) six periods or ages in the history of the earth
2) the earth develops over time: molten state, crust
solidifies, water vapor condenses, ocean retreats
Theories of the Earth: Fire & Water
Vulcanism: James Hutton (1726-1797)
1) earthquakes gradually elevate mountains, central heat
hardens sediment
2) land masses slowly eroded by wind, rain, rivers
Neptunism: Abraham Werner (1749-1817)
1) earth’s original crust irregular & rigid
2) great ocean retreats, exposed rocks eroded by wind &
water
Primary Source
[Suppose] I had found a watch upon the ground, and it
should be enquired how the watch happened to be in
that place . . .
The inference, we think, is inevitable; that the watch
must have had a maker; that there must have existed,
at some time and in some place or other, an artificer or
artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it
actually to answer; who comprehended its construction,
and designed its use . . .
There cannot be design without a designer . . .
SOURCE: William Paley (1743-1805), Natural
Theology (1802)
Primary Source
Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs’d in Ocean’s pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing.
SOURCE: Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), The Temple
of Nature (1803)