Cover of Earth's Deep History
Earth's Deep History How It Was Discovered and Why It Matters
by Martin J. S. Rudwick
University of Chicago Press, 2014
Cloth: 978-0-226-20393-5 | Paper: 978-0-226-42197-1 | Electronic: 978-0-226-20409-3
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226204093.001.0001

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ABOUT THIS BOOKAUTHOR BIOGRAPHYREVIEWSTABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Earth has been witness to mammoths and dinosaurs, global ice ages, continents colliding or splitting apart, and comets and asteroids crashing catastrophically to the surface, as well as the birth of humans who are curious to understand it. But how was all this discovered? How was the evidence for it collected and interpreted? And what kinds of people have sought to reconstruct this past that no human witnessed or recorded? In this sweeping and accessible book, Martin J. S. Rudwick, the premier historian of the Earth sciences, tells the gripping human story of the gradual realization that the Earth’s history has not only been unimaginably long but also astonishingly eventful.

Rudwick begins in the seventeenth century with Archbishop James Ussher, who famously dated the creation of the cosmos to 4004 BC. His narrative later turns to the crucial period of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when inquisitive intellectuals, who came to call themselves “geologists,” began to interpret rocks and fossils, mountains and volcanoes, as natural archives of Earth’s history. He then shows how this geological evidence was used—and is still being used—to reconstruct a history of the Earth that is as varied and unpredictable as human history itself. Along the way, Rudwick rejects the popular view of this story as a conflict between science and religion and shows how the modern scientific account of the Earth’s deep history retains strong roots in Judaeo-Christian ideas. 

Extensively illustrated, Earth’s Deep History is an engaging and impressive capstone to Rudwick’s distinguished career.  Though the story of the Earth is inconceivable in length, Rudwick moves with grace from the earliest imaginings of our planet’s deep past to today’s scientific discoveries, proving that this is a tale at once timeless and timely.
 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Martin J. S. Rudwick is professor emeritus of history at the University of California, San Diego, and affiliated scholar in the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. His many other books include Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution and Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform, both also published by the University of Chicago Press.
 

REVIEWS

“With his talent for encapsulating pre-modern mindsets, Rudwick deftly explains how ideas of natural history were embedded in cultural history. . . . Reading Rudwick’s prose is a pleasure.”
— Nature

“An engaging read for nonscientists and specialists alike, this book pleasingly illustrates how we came to know more about our world and the many people who played a part in that.”
— Library Journal

“Rudwick’s book is authoritative and riveting, and its historical breadth is bound to make geology exciting for readers from both sciences and humanities.”
— New Scientist

Here, Rudwick tells the remarkable story of how the history of our planet evolved in the light of new ideas about humans’ connection to nature, advances in scientific methodology, and the changing influence of the Christian faith on man’s beliefs about Earth’s past. . . . He succeeds in weaving together a compelling account of how Earth’s timescale expanded to magnitudes far beyond those imagined by early scholars, and of the individuals responsible for advancing scientific thinking through their ideas and actions.”
— Times Higher Education

“Rudwick serves up . . . a wonderfully erudite and absorbing account of the spasmodic progress of chronological earth science.”
— Times Literary Supplement

“Earth’s Deep History tells the story, not of the earth itself – that can be found in modern textbooks – but rather, the story of how ‘natural philosophers’ developed the ideas of geology accepted today. . . . This book is exhaustive in its survey of past geological and paleontological scholarship, and very detailed, but eminently readable and engaging. . . . This is a fascinating story of the development of this exciting branch of science.”
— San Francisco Book Review

“Any book on the history of the earth sciences by Rudwick  is worth reading immediately, and this may be one of his best.  This volume is a detailed narrative of the construction of the historical framework of earth history.  It is not a standard recitation of authors, dates, and publications, but a conceptual journey starting in the 17th century.  The primary thesis is that the foundations of our modern chronology were built very early by thinkers not conventionally placed in our pantheon of heroic scientists (Archbishop James Ussher is a notable example).  These early works “pre-adapted” later generations to think in broad historical terms, eventually developing histories that long precede humanity. Indeed, the book of Genesis itself may have provided the first conceptual model for a natural history.  The popular ‘science versus religion’ theme in the origin of geology has been exaggerated for many reasons on both sides, the author states.  Rudwick’s descriptions of the personalities and ideas in the development of ‘deep history’ are fascinating, well written, and novel.  His effective dismissal of ‘young Earth creationism’ in the appendix is classic. Essential.”
— Choice

"Earth’s Deep History, a grand sweep from the 17th to the 21st century, is a thrilling story of discovery and debate, insight and interpretation.”
— London Review of Books

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226204093.003.0001
[Chronology, Genesis, Creation, Noah's Flood, eternalism, James Ussher, Athanasius Kircher]
The discovery of the Earth's deep history started with human history. In the 17th century, historians such as James Ussher used all available sources to compile an accurate chronology of world history. Their starting point was usually the creation stories in Genesis, but the bulk of their data came from secular sources. The timeline was divided into distinct periods by a sequence of major events. Among these, Noah's Flood was analysed closely by scholars such as Athanasius Kircher. This kind of world history was extremely short by modern scientific standards, yet very long in human terms. It was also finite. Above all, it seemed common sense to almost everyone, whether religious or not. The only alternative, which was usually rejected, was the idea of eternalism, in which the timeline was infinite, history had no beginning or end, and the world had no transcendent Creator. (pages 9 - 30)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226204093.003.0002
[Antiquities, fossils, Noah's Flood, Nicolas Steno, Robert Hooke, John Woodward, Johann Scheuchzer]
The science of chronology was complemented in the 17th century by the work of antiquaries, who studied material relics from human history such as inscriptions and coins. Naturalists such as Nicholas Steno and Robert Hooke extended this to natural antiquities such as fossils, once they had worked out how to distinguish fossils that were truly organic in origin from those that were not. They assumed that fossils dated from the obscure earliest periods of human history. Steno also worked out how to interpret the structure of rocks and strata in terms of their history. He and later naturalists such as John Woodward and Johann Scheuchzer attributed the younger strata, which contained fossils, to Noah's Flood: this seemed to be the only recorded historical event capable of having produced such widespread effects. At the start of the 18th century few naturalists saw any reason to think that the Earth's history extended much further back than human history. (pages 31 - 54)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226204093.003.0003
[theory of the Earth, Rene Descartes, Thomas Burnet, James Hutton, Jean-Andre Deluc]
In the later 17th century and throughout the 18th, natural philosophers produced a variety of ambitious 'theories of the Earth' that claimed to explain the planet's past, present and future. The model for this new scientific genre, inspired by Rene Descartes' cosmology, was Thomas Burnet's theory, which he called 'sacred' because his picture of a finite Earth combined natural and biblical ideas. Among many later theories, Georges Buffon's was based on the gradual cooling of an initially incandescent globe, taking it through a finite linear history that would end in a frozen planet. James Hutton's theory, in contrast, postulated a 'steady state' Earth capable of remaining humanly habitable from and to eternity. Jean-Andre Deluc focussed on dating the disruptive physical event that he identified as Noah's Flood, near the end of a far longer history, since which time the Earth had been shaped by observable 'actual causes'. But by the end of the 18th century 'theory of the Earth' was widely regarded as an outworn genre, although it offered suggestive models for later geologists. (pages 55 - 78)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226204093.003.0004
[Geognosy, volcanoes, Vesuvius, Auvergne, Herculaneum, Abraham Werner, William Hamilton, Nicolas Desmarest, Jean-Louis Giraud-Soulavie]
In the later 18th century, naturalists recognised diverse evidence that the Earth's history must be far lengthier than traditionally imagined. The science of geognosy, practised for example by Abraham Werner, described rocks and strata primarily in terms of their structure. But this was transformed by other naturalists into historical terms, for example when Jean-Louis Giraud-Soulavie described rocks in central France as nature's archives and monuments. Similarly, Nicolas Desmarest discovered extinct volcanoes in Auvergne, applying to the deep past what William Hamilton, an antiquary but also an expert on active volcanoes, had described in the case of Vesuvius and the buried Roman city of Herculaneum. By the end of the 18th century it had become commonplace to interpret rocks and fossils, mountains and volcanoes, in terms of the Earth's own history, but also to assume that this history extended far back before any human history, perhaps for a million years or more. (pages 79 - 102)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226204093.003.0005
[Extinction, actualism, erratic blocks, diluvial theory, Georges Cuvier, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, John Playfair, Leopold von Buch, James Hall, William Buckland]
At the start of the 19th century, the zoologist Georges Cuvier transformed naturalists' picture of the deep past by showing that the large fossil mammals (such as the mammoth) were all distinct from living species and were almost certainly extinct: so life on the Earth had a true history. In place of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's view that the change was due to the slow transmutation (evolution) of species, Cuvier adopted Deluc's idea of a worldwide natural catastrophe, which he equated with Noah's Flood and other ancient traditions. This was criticised by Hutton's follower John Playfair, who invoked the principle of actualism, but in fact all these naturalists assumed that Deluc's observable 'actual causes' were the best guide to the deep past. Leopold von Buch and James Hall were among those who plotted the distribution of huge erratic blocks found far from their source areas, and other distinctive features, as more evidence for a mega-tsunami or 'geological Deluge'. And this diluvial theory was further developed by William Buckland, who reconstructed the life of the immediately antediluvial world. (pages 103 - 128)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226204093.003.0006
[Stratigraphy, characteristic fossils, fossil record, Giovanni-Battista Brocchi, Alexandre Brongniart, Adolphe Brongniart, Mary Anning, William Conybeare, William Smith, Leonce Elie de Beaumont]
Early in the 19th century Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart interpreted the pile of Tertiary formations around Paris in terms of the Earth's recent history. Giovanni-Battista Brocchi described Tertiary fossil shells and argued that species had become extinct in a piecmeal fashion, not in sudden catastrophes. Strange fossil reptiles, found by Mary Anning and others, heightened the otherness of earlier periods and helped confirm that the history of life had been directional and 'progressive'. The 'stratigraphy' of William Smith and William Conybeare, based on 'characteristic fossils', could be turned into further evidence for the Earth's history. Adolphe Brongniart argued that the fossil record implied a gradual cooling, while Leonce Elie de Beaumont suggested that, as the Earth shrank, mountain ranges were formed by the sudden buckling of the crust. By about 1830 most geologists had reached a consensus about the Earth's history as extremely lengthy, highly eventful, directional in character, and almost entirely prehuman. (pages 129 - 154)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226204093.003.0007
['scriptural geology', uniformitarianism, Ice Age, glacial theory, William Buckland, Gideon Mantell, Charles Lyell, Jean de Charpentier, Louis Agassiz]
In the middle part of the 19th century, the geologists' consensus on the Earth's deep history was opposed (though almost exclusively in Britain) by 'scriptural' writers who insisted on a literal interpretation of Genesis; but this was not simply a conflict with religion because many of the leading geologists were themselves religious. Buckland emphasised the evidence for divine designfulness throughout the Earth's history, and Gideon Mantell the romantic wonder of the deep past. In contrast, Charles Lyell, adopting a rigorous version of actualism, expounded a radically different 'uniformitarian' view of a cyclic or steady-state Earth with no directional or progressive change. But for all geologists the diluvial features of the recent past remained the most puzzling. Lyell inferred a recent Pleistocene period of colder climate during which drifting icebergs had dropped the erratic blocks as they melted. Jean de Charpentier reconstructed a vanished mega-glacier in the Alps, which Louis Agassiz expanded into an almost global Ice Age. Eventually a moderate version of this glacial theory emerged, but it was still an utterly unexpected feature of the Earth's recent history. (pages 155 - 180)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226204093.003.0008
[Pleistocene, prehistory, human evolution, Palaeolithic, Brixham Cave, Philippe-Charles Schmerling, Jacques Boucher de Perthes, Charles Darwin]
In the middle of the 19th century, the discovery of the huge existing ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica became the key to reconstructing similar conditions in Europe and North America during the Ice Age. In the Pleistocene sequence of glacial and interglacial periods, the coexistence of early humans and extinct mammals was highly controversial. Human fossils found by Philippe-Charles Schmerling and others were widely dismissed by leading geologists, until stone tools were found in Pleistocene deposits, in Brixham Cave in England and, by Jacques Boucher de Perthes, in river gravels in Normandy. This extended the sequence of Iron, Bronze and Stone Ages still further back in time into an Old Stone Age or Palaeolithic, and showed that a lengthy human 'prehistory' could be reconstructed. It also heightened the debates about evolution in general and human evolution in particular. Charles Darwin's theory dealt primarily with the formation of new species, but palaeontologists used fossil evidence to reconstruct evolutionary history on a larger scale. And the discovery of fossils of near-human beings, and those of other primates, made an evolutionary origin of humans as likely as that of any other organism. (pages 181 - 206)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226204093.003.0009
[Genesis, orogeny, Gondwanaland, Precambrian, land-bridges, geochronology, Edouard Suess, John Phillips, Lord Kelvin]
In the later 19th century, issues of 'geology and Genesis' were marginalised by amicable dissociation. In Edouard Suess's global synthesis of the Earth's vast history, the Flood story was interpreted as an ancient event in Mesopotamia. The globalisation of geology accentuated puzzles about mountain-building orogenies that extended across the Atlantic; also about the distribution of organisms, unless the southern continents and India were formerly connected by land-bridges or united in the super-continent Gondwanaland. The record of the history of life was summarised in John Phillips' three great eras; but the origin of life, before the complex and varied Cambrian fossils at the start of the Palaeozoic era, remained obscure, since Precambrian rocks yielded no clear fossil record at all. Geologists such as Phillips and physicists such as Lord Kelvin initially agreed on the Earth's likely total timescale, but Kelvin later reduced his estimates to levels that geologists found highly implausible. As the 19th century ended, the Earth's deep history was full of major puzzles unresolved. (pages 207 - 234)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226204093.003.0010
[radiometric dating, geochronology, varves, continental drift, mobilism, palaeo-magnetism, plate tectonics, Arthur Holmes, Alfred Wegener, Alex du Toit]
At the start of the 20th century, the discovery of radioactivity knocked the bottom out of Kelvin's calculations; the total age of the Earth was expanded into several billion years; and Arthur Holmes and others developed reliable radiometric dating for events within this vast span of the Earth's history. Other independent methods, notably varves and ice cores, confirmed that this geochronology was of the right order of magnitude. Geophysical methods highlighted the contrast between oceans and continents and undermined the possibility of transient land-bridges between continents. Alfred Wegener developed a theory of continental displacement (often misleadingly called 'drift'), which was supported by Alex du Toit and other geologists working on the Gondwanaland continents. Holmes suggested a possible causal mechanism for displacement; but mobilism was rejected, most strenuously by American scientists, until it was supported by new evidence from palaeo-magnetism and oceanographic exploration. It was then developed into the theory of plate tectonics. By the late 20th century it was possible to reconstruct reliably the changing configurations of continents and oceans through much of the Earth's immensely long history. (pages 235 - 262)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226204093.003.0011
[mass extinction, catastrophism, Phanerozoic, Burgess Shale, Ediacara, Cambrian explosion, Snowball Earth, Gunflint chert, Barringer crater, Gene Shoemaker]
During the 20th century worldwide geological research clarified every part of the history of the Earth and its life, from the relatively recent origin of the human species back into the far deeper past. In a revival of catastrophism, several episodes of mass extinction were identified, notably at the K/T boundary. The good fossil record of the Phanerozoic periods turned out to be dwarfed by the preceding Precambrian history. The diverse Burgess Shale and Ediacara fossils suggested that there had been a 'Cambrian explosion' of life, possibly triggered by 'Snowball Earth' episodes of worldwide glaciation. This had been preceded only by microscopic forms of life such as those in the Gunflint chert. The cyanobacteria that formed stromatolites then extended the fossil record far back into the Archaean; and it might have been this early life that first added oxygen to the atmosphere. Gene Shoemaker's claim that craters such as the Barringer in Arizona were impact structures was supported when the US space program showed that lunar craters were likewise the product of asteroid impacts. Missions to other planets then turned the history of the Earth into one highly unusual example of varied planetary histories. (pages 263 - 292)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226204093.003.0012
[Man's place in nature, geology and Genesis, hexameral]
Looking back from the early 21st century, the main outlines of the Earth's deep history have been reconstructed, and dated, with increasing consistency and reliability. The distinction between establishing the reality of past events and finding their causes has been crucial throughout. There has been genuine progress in the reliability of what has been claimed about the the Earth's deep history; even the most polarised controversies have been resolved in constructive syntheses. Far from there having been a perennial conflict between scientific and religious approaches, between 'geology and Genesis', the history of the discovery of the Earth's own deep history shows that the traditional hexameral ('six-day') interpretation provided an invaluable template for the transfer of historical ways of thinking from culture into nature, from human history into the Earth's history. 'Man's place in nature' has been transformed in the dimension of time, paralleling its earlier transformation in the dimension of space, yet the perennial existential issues surrounding human living are hardly affected. But those with power in the modern world have largely failed to grasp the practical implications, for the future of the planet, of the discovery of the Earth's deep history. (pages 293 - 308)

Appendix

Glossary

Further Reading

Bibliography

Sources of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Index

Book published by University of Chicago Press, 2014. Page maintained by BiblioVault.