The Scientist Saint Who Discovered Deep Time
Dr. Joshua M. Moritz
Dr. Joshua M. Moritz
Quote:Once upon a time, scientists believed that the planet Earth was eternal. This was quite an ancient view, descending from an honorable philosophical pedigree passed down through the intellectual line of Aristotle. Aristotelian uniformitarians held that the processes of Earth were eternal and cyclical with, as James Hutton declared, “no vestige of a beginning, and no prospect of an end.”1
Apart from a leap of faith, no one could conceive of a time before there were seasons, or mountains and rivers or before humans existed. Skeptics of such faith assumed the uncreated eternity of the cosmos and the Earth, along with the eternal perpetuity of human beings.2
Nicholas Steno, a founder of the geosciences, was the first to use science to challenge this Aristotelian view of the Earth and its inhabitants. As one of the most dexterous dissectors and adept anatomists of his age, Steno was also an expert excavator who connected his knowledge of biology with key insights into how fossils relate to different layers of sedimentary rock. Discovering “that the crust of the earth contained an archive of its most ancient history,” Steno inaugurated “an intellectual revolution that was as profound as that of Galileo and Copernicus.”3
And he sparked this revolution through the inspiration of his faith...
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
- Bertrand Russell
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