Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform
Martin J. S. Rudwick
Abstract
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, scientists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth—and the relatively recent arrival of human life. The geologists of the period, many of whom were devout believers, agreed about this vast timescale. But despite this apparent harmony between geology and Genesis, these scientists still debated a great many questions: Had the earth cooled from its origin as a fiery ball in space, or had it always been the same kind of place as it is now? Was prehuman life marked by mass extinctions, or had fauna and flora changed slowly over ti ... More
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, scientists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth—and the relatively recent arrival of human life. The geologists of the period, many of whom were devout believers, agreed about this vast timescale. But despite this apparent harmony between geology and Genesis, these scientists still debated a great many questions: Had the earth cooled from its origin as a fiery ball in space, or had it always been the same kind of place as it is now? Was prehuman life marked by mass extinctions, or had fauna and flora changed slowly over time? A detailed account of the reconstruction of prehuman geohistory, this book takes readers from the post-Napoleonic Restoration in Europe to the early years of Britain's Victorian age, chronicling the staggering discoveries geologists made during the period: the unearthing of the first dinosaur fossils, the glacial theory of the last ice age, and the meaning of igneous rocks, among others. Ultimately, the author reveals geology to be the first of the sciences to investigate the historical dimension of nature, a model that Charles Darwin used in developing his evolutionary theory.
Keywords:
Genesis,
prehuman life,
mass extinctions,
fauna and flora,
prehuman geohistory,
post-Napoleonic Restoration,
Victorian age,
geologists,
first dinosaur fossils,
glacial theory
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2008 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226731285 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: March 2013 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226731308.001.0001 |
