— Francois Jacob, The Logic of Life (1973). Petrus Macinnius
To explain the
observed phenomena, we may dispense with sudden, violent and general
catastrophes, and regard the ancient and present fluctuations … as belonging to
one continuous and uniform series of events.
— Sir Charles Lyell (1797 – 1875), Principles
of Geology.
Why! You can
almost read the history of the geological world from yesterday — this morning
as it were — beginning with the super-surface on top and going right down
through the different layers and stratas — through the vanished ages — right
down and back to the pre-historical — to the very primeval or fundamental
geological formations.
— Henry Lawson, ‘The Geological Spieler’, in While the Billy Boils, second series, pages 149-150 in the
collected short stories.
… some drill and
bore
The solid earth, and from the strata there
Extract a register, by which we learn
That he who made it, and reveal’d its date
To Moses, was mistaken in its age.
— William Cowper (1731 – 1800), Task.
Sir Robert Ball
places the day when the world will come to an end, as we know it, about four or
five million years distant. The heat which he estimates that the sun originally
contained would supply its radiation for about 18,000,000 years at the present
rate. It is believed that the sun has already dissipated four-fifths of the
energy with which it may originally have been endowed, and this brings us to
the conclusion that it will last 5,000,000 years longer.
— Scientific American, May 1892,
quoted in Scientific American, May
1992, 6.
CECIL GRAHAM: Oh!
Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made
tedious by morality.
— Oscar Fingall O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854 – 1900), Lady Windermere’s Fan.
In inland
districts, on mountain peaks and in places farthest from the sea, shells,
skeletons of sea-fish and marine plants are found, which are just the same as
the shells, fish and plants now living in the sea, which are, indeed, exactly
the same.
— Georges Buffon (1707 – 1788), Théorie
de la Terre.
The ‘crust’ of
the earth is a cool, relatively rigid shell which is probably not much more
than 30 miles [50 kilometres] deep, i.e., less than eight thousandths of the
distance from the surface to the earth’s centre. Beneath this shell, heat and
pressure rise to such levels that all rock materials are thought to be plastic.
— Walter H. Bucher, ‘The Crust of the Earth’, Scientific American Reader (1953), 55.
To explain the
observed phenomena, we may dispense with sudden, violent and general
catastrophes, and regard the ancient and present fluctuations … as belonging to
one continuous and uniform series of events.
— Sir Charles Lyell (1797 – 1875), Principles
of Geology.
But, however
attractive the theory of continental drift may appear, it would be idle to
pretend that it can be regarded, for the present, as anything more than a
theory. At almost every stage there are difficulties of detail. That perhaps is
only to be expected. After all, it is a very long time since the splitting of
the primaeval continent, and it is inevitable that many of the clues should
have got lost or become obscured. There is, moreover, the difficulty of finding
any big enough force to make the continents move.
— A. W. Haslett, Unsolved Problems of
Science, London 1937.
In short,
everything that is now known concerning the configuration of the floors of the
oceans proves conclusively that Wegener’s hypothesis of continental drift is
wholly untenable.
— Walter H. Bucher, ‘The Crust of the Earth’, Scientific American Reader (1953), 67.
DUCHESS OF
BERWICK: … dear Agatha and I are so much interested in Australia. It must be so
pretty with all the dear little kangaroos flying about. Agatha has found it on
the map. What a curious shape it is! Just like a large packing case. However,
it is a very young country, isn’t it?
HOPPER: Wasn’t it
made at the same time as the others, Duchess?
— Oscar Fingall O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854 – 1900), Lady Windermere’s Fan.
The poor world is
almost six thousand years old …
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), As You
Like It, IV, i, 95
The result,
therefore, of this physical inquiry is, that we find no vestige of beginning, —
no prospect of an end.
— James Hutton (1726 – 1797), Theory of
the Earth, Vol 1, 200.
One generation
passeth away and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever.
— Holy Bible, Ecclesiastes, 1:4
Compared with
what we think of as long periods in our everyday calculations, there must have
been enormous time and considerable variations in circumstances for nature to
lead the organisation of animals to the degree of complexity and development
that we see today.
— Chevalier de Lamarck (1744 – 1829), Philosophie
Zoologique.
I came into the
room which was half dark, and presently spotted Lord Kelvin in the audience and
realized that I was in for trouble at the last part of the speech dealing with
the age of the earth. To my relief, Kelvin fell fast asleep, but as I came to the
important point, I saw the old bird sit up, open an eye and cock a baleful
glance at me! Then a sudden inspiration came, and I said Lord Kelvin had
limited the age of the earth, provided no
new source of heat was discovered. That prophetic utterance refers to what
we are now considering tonight, radium! Behold! the old boy beamed upon me.
— Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, on the puzzle of the
Earth’s age.
More recently,
advances in physics have given us methods to put absolute dates, in millions of
years, on rocks and the fossils that they contain. These methods depend on the
fact that particular radioactive elements decay at precisely known rates. It is
as though precision-made miniature stopwatches had been conveniently buried in
the rocks. Each stopwatch was started at the moment that it was laid down. All
that the palaeontologist has to do is dig it up and read off the time on the
dial.
— Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker,
Penguin, 1986.
But the rivers in
their long passage over the earth do imbibe some of the saline particles
thereof, though in so small a quantity as not to be perceived, unless in these
their depositories [lakes and rivers] over a long tract of time … Now if this
be the true reason for the saltness of these lakes, ‘tis not improbable but
that the ocean itself is become salt from the same cause, and we are thereby
furnished with an argument for estimating the duration of all things, from an
observation of the increment of saltness in their waters.
— Edmond Halley (1656 – 1742), quoted by Stephen Jay Gould (1941 – 2002), Eight Little Piggies, 170-1.
Holland, that
scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the off-scouring of British sand,
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots when they heaved the lead,
Or what by the ocean’s slow alluvion fell,
Of ship-wrecked cockle and the mussel-shell;
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.
— Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), The
Character of Holland.
I’m a-going to
stay
Where you sleep all day
Where they boiled in oil
The inventor of toil
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
— Traditional American hobo song
A Maori
fisherman, the legends say,
Dredged up New Zealand in a single day.
I’ve seen the catch, and here’s my parting crack —
It’s undersized; for God’s sake throw it back!
— Wynford Vaughan-Thomas (1908 – 1987), quoted in the New Oxford Book of Light Verse.
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