At JUSt time t ing s in London, four  to take placeton. tton, of course, but good ne cleared to ree ton’s fear of embarrassment.

    ton s a man of t insig conversation, a delig rival o understanding terious slo sunately, it  doanyone could begin to understand.  audiblesig entirely innocent of rorical accompliss.” Nearly every line ation to slumber. errations , discussing . . . something:

    t is composed of terials, not of te predecessor of t, but of t,  land  beneaterof the ocean.

    Yet almost singlee brilliantly, ed transformed our understanding of tton o a prosperousScottis of material comfort t alloellectual betterment. udiedmedicine, but found it not to urned instead to farming, ate in Bers. Edinburgt time er of intellectual vigor, and ton luxuriated in its enricies.

    y called ter Club,  Joseping sparks asBenjamin Franklin and James att.

    In tradition of tton took an interest in nearly everytometaped experiments igated metoured salt mines, speculated on ty, collectedfossils, and propounded tion of air, and tion,among muc icular interest was geology.

    Among tions t attracted interest in t fanatically inquisitive age ime—namely, aintops.  t tion fell into tunists,  everytyplaces, could be explained by rising and falling sea levels. t mountains,ures self, and were cersloshem during periods of global flooding.

    Opposing tonists,  volcanoes and earts, continually c but clearly ooonists also raised aions about  in flood. If t at times to cover t during times of tranquility, suc t toprofound internal forces as here.

    It ers t ton ional insights.

    From looking at  soil ed by t particles of tinually ed elses naturalconclusion tually be e smoot everyional process, some form of rene, t created neo keep taintops,  been deposited during floods, but ains t it  created neinents and t up mountain c is not too muco say t geologists grasp tions of t for te tectonics. Above all, on’s ted  Earts of time, far more ts o transform utterly our understanding of th.

    In 1785, ton ivemeetings of ty of Edinburg attracted almost no notice at all. It’s not o see  to his audience:

    In ted; for, after tuated by , it is by tion of tter of t titutes trinsic in relation to t violent fracture and divulsion; but till to seek; andit appears not in t is not every fracture and dislocation of tances of mineral veins,are found.

    Needless to say, almost no one in test idea . Encouraged by o expand ouc someumble onto clarity in a more expansive format, ton spent t ten yearspreparing wo volumes in 1795.

    togeto nearly a t pessimistic friends  from anyted ed of quotations from Frencill in the original French.

    A ticing t it  publisil 1899, more turyafter ton’s deat all.

    ton’s trong candidate for t read important book in science(or at least  so many otestgeologist of tury and a man t.

    Luckily ton ics atty of Edinburg only e silken prose but—to many years at ton’s elboually understood on rying to say,most of time. In 1802, five years after ton’s deation of ttonian principles, entitled Illustrations of ttonian tefully received by took an active interest in geology,,  to change. And how.

    In ter of 1807, teen like-minded souls in London got toget tavern at Long Acre, in Covent Garden, to form a dining club to be called ty. to meet once a monto sions over a glass or t at a deliberately y fifteenso discourage tions  soon becameapparent,  titutional,  ers, lemen, of course—and tening to eclipse tific society in try.

    t til June,  off to spend t people erestin minerals, you understand, or even academics for t part, but simply gentlemen ime to indulge a  a more or less professional level. By 1830, the like again.

    It is o imagine no geology excited teentury—positively grippedit—in a  no science ever em, a plump and ponderous study of a type of rockcalled grey ant bestseller, racing tions, even t costeigrue tonian style, unreadable. (As even a Murcer conceded, it otal  of literary attractiveness.”) And o America to give a series of lectures in Boston, selloutaudiences of t a time packed into titute to ranquilizingdescriptions of marine zeolites and seismic perturbations in Campania.

    t t especially in Britain, men of learning venturedinto tryside to do a little “stone-breaking,” as t. It  takenseriously, and tended to dress e gravity, in top s and dark suits, exceptfor t it o do his fieldwork in anacademic gown.

    ttracted many extraordinary figures, not least tioned Murc t ty or so years of er foxes, converting aeronauticallyco puffs of drifting feat, and sal agility needed to read times or play a erest in rocks and became ounding sness a titan of geologicalthinking.

    t and autive pamps itles like “Revolution  Bloodsed in a faintly lunatic-sounding conspiracy called “t,” in o s King George III in t as  in  ter. Parkinson co Australia before t lydropped. Adopting a more conservative approaco life, erest in geologyand became one of ty and tant geological text, Organic Remains of a Former orld, oday, udy of tion t knoo fame. In 1785, ory to ural ory museum in a raffle. ter Square, on Lever, rained collecting of natural  til1805,  and tion  quite as remarkable in cer but more influential t ton died and only seventy miles atis of  Scots were feckless drunks.

    As tern eentury gentlemen scientists, Lyell came from abackground of comfortable ellectual vigor. inction of being a leading auty on t Dante and on mosses.

    (Ortricium lyelli, ors to tryside  some time on, is named for erest in natural ory, but it Oxford, ion to geology.

    Buckland  of a cy. s, but  least as mucricities. icularly noted for a menagerieof  o roam to eat ion. Depending ons to Buckland’s  be served baked guinea pig, mice inbatter, roasted  Asian sea slug. Buckland o find meritin t ting. Almostinevitably, y on coprolites—fossilized feces—and ablemade entirely out of ion of specimens.

    Even wing serious science his manner was generally singular. Once Mrs.

    Buckland found , ement: “My dear, I believe t Csteps are undoubtedly testudinal.”

    togeto tcclote,oise.

    Plunking it onto te, t foro t t itsfootprints did indeed matcudying. C Buckland a buffoon—t  Lyell appeared to find o go touring land in 1824. It er trip t Lyell decided to abandon a career in lae o geology full-time.

    Lyell remely ssig t of ,ually  altogetpeculiarity , ed by t, of taking up improbable positions onfurniture—lying across ting  of a canding up” (to quote en   tocks  touc King’s College in London from 1831 to 1833. It imet ed upon ts first voiced byton a generation earlier. (Altton in tudent of Playfair’s reon’s day and Lyell’s troversy, en confused unian–Plutonian dispute. ttlebecame an argument betastroparianism—unattractive terms for animportant and very long-running dispute. Catastrops, as you mig from t t cataclysmic events—floods principally, ropunism are often ogetastropicularly comforting to clerics like Buckland because it alloo incorporate to serious scientific discussions. Uniformitarians by contrast believedt c nearly all Eartime. ton  it  people read, and so  people’s minds, t.

    Lyell believed t ts eady—t everyt  could be explained by events still going on today. Lyell and s didn’t just disdain catastropested it. Catastrops believed textinctions  of a series in  and replaceds—a belief t turalist t. o “a succession ofrubbers of  t table and called for a neoo convenient a o explain tedto foster indolence, and to blunt ty,” sniffed Lyell.

    Lyell’s  oversig  inconsiderable. o explain convincingly ain ranges  of coaccept Louis Agassiz’s idea of ice ages—“tion of termed it—and  t mammals “ fossiliferousbeds.” ed tion t animals and plants suffered sudden anniions, andbelieved t all tiles, fised since time. On all of timately be proved wrong.

    Yet it o overstate Lyell’s influence. t tions in Lyell’s lifetime and contained notions t so tietury. Darook a first edition e after “t merit of t it altered tone of one’s mind, and t,  partially t,  ion. It is a testament to trengt in tso abandon just a part of it to accommodate t tinctions, it nearlykilled t t is anoter.

    Meaning out to do, and not all of it  smoothly.

    From tset geologists tried to categorize rocks by t ten bitter disagreements about  te t became kno Devonian Controversy.

    t Roderick Murcly to te raged for years and greremely ed. “De la Becy dog,” Murce to a friend in a typical outburst.

    Some sense of trengter titlesof Martin J. S. Rud and somber account of t DevonianControversy. tlemanlyDebate” and “Unraveling t to “ttacked,” “Reproofs and Recriminations,” “ts ting a Provincial in t t tledin 1879  of coming up o beinserted betwo.

    Because tis active in tisin ty of Devon. Cambriancomes from t els ing elseo tains on tzerland.Permian recalls tains. ForCretaceous (from tin for “ced to a Belgian geologisthe perky name of J. J. d’Omalius d’halloy.

    Originally, geological ory o four spans of time: primary, secondary,tertiary, and quaternary. tem oo neat to last, and soon geologists ributing additional divisions  ofuse altogeternary  kept by otoday onlytertiary remains as a common designation everys athing.

    Lyell, in roduced additional units knoocene (“most recent”), Pliocene(“more recent”), Miocene (“moderately recent”), and t a little recent”). Lyell originally intended to employ “-syncions as Meiosyncial man, objected on etymological grounds andsuggested instead an “-eous” pattern, producing Meioneous, Pleioneous, and so on. terminations hing of a compromise.

    Noime is divided first into four greatc life”). to anyy subgroups, usually called periods timesknoems. Most of taceous, Jurassic,triassic, Silurian, and so on.

    1tocene, Miocene, and so on— recent (but paleontologically busy) sixty-five million years, and finally  of ter places: Illinoian, Desmoinesian, Croixian, Kimmeridgian, and so on in likevein. Altogeto Joens of dozens.”

    Fortunately, unless you take up geology as a career, you are unlikely ever to hemagain.

    Furtter is t tages or ages in Nortnames from tages in Europe and often only rougersect in time. tian stage mostly corresponds age in Europe, plus atiny bit of tly earlier Caradocian stage.

    Also, all textbook to textbook and from person to person, so t someauties describe seven recent epocent oo, you ertiary and quaternary taken out and replaced by periods of differentlengto t Arc Proterozoic. Sometimes too you ermPo describe the Cenozoic, Mesozoic, and Paleozoiceras.

    Moreover, all to units of time . Rocks are divided into quite separate unitsknoems, series, and stages. A distinction is also made bete and early(referring to time) and upper and loo layers of rock). It can all get terriblyconfusing to nonspecialists, but to a geologist tters of passion. “I  apory,”

    tisologist Ricey ten o a long-running tietury dispute over he Cambrian and Ordovician.

    At least today ed dating teco table. For most ofteentury geologists could dra rating position t alted on tiquity of an Icon ter t t it en ten timesten thousand” years earlier.

    Alting periods, tage of peopleo try. t tempt orical sourcesand concluded, in a y tome called Annals of testament , t testing  if you are ever required to memorize t riassic Jurassic, etc.) as ths.

    created at midday on October 23, 4004B.C. , an assertion t orians andtextbook ers ever since.

    2tent mytally—and one propounded in many serious books—tUssed scientific beliefs o teentury, and t it raigepime’s Arroes as a typicalexample tence from a popular book of til Lyell publis ted t t, no. As Martin J. S.

    Ruds it, “No geologist of any nationality s advocated a timescale confined s of a literalistic exegesis ofGenesis.” Even teentury produced,noted t no God made  day,but merely “in t beginning, ed “millions uponmillions of years.” Everyone agreed t t. tion was simply .

    One of tter early attempts at dating t came from ted t if you divided total amount of salt in t added eac t tence, unately no one kne increased eac impracticable.

    t attempt at measurement t could be called remotely scientific e de Buffon, in t  ted appreciable amounts of —t  to anyone  t any imating te of dissipation. Buffon’sexperiment consisted of ing spil te  and timating te of  loss by toucly at first) as to be someimate, but a radical notion nonetened ion for expressing it. A practical man,  oncefor less ed tions t ings.

    By teentury most learned people t t leasta fe probably notmore t. So it came as a surprise  created tretc, Surrey, and Sussex, aken, by ions,306,662,400 years to complete. tion ly for being so arrestinglyspecific but even more for flying in ted  th.

    3Itproved so contentious t Dar from tion of tually all books find a space for riking variability in tails associated  in 1650, otill ote te of Earted beginning as October 26. At least one book of note spells ;Us; tter isinterestingly surveyed in Step Little Piggies.

    3Dar number. In a later o be found in anaverage acre of Englisry soil was 53,767.

    problem at its  remained, obe old, but no one could figure out a o make it so.

    Unfortunately for Darion came to ttention of tLord Kelvin (, ill just plain illiam t be elevated to til 1892, ively).

    Kelvin  extraordinary figures of teentury—indeed of anycentury. tist z, no intellectual sloucet Kelvin est “intelligence and lucidity, and mobility of t” of anyman . “I felt quite edly.

    timent is understandable, for Kelvin really orian superman. , tics at titution ransferred to Glasgo ted to Glasgoy at tender age of ten. Bytime ies, udied at institutions in London and Paris,graduated from Cambridge (op prizes for roics, and someime to launcy as ed afelloerten (in Frencics of sucy t o publis ty-to Glasgoy totake up a professorsural pion  fifty-threeyears.

    In till 1907 and ty-te 661papers, accumulated 69 patents (from ed t led directly to tion of refrigeration, devised te temperaturet still bears ed ting devices t alloelegrams to be sentacross oceans, and made innumerable improvements to sion, from tion of a popular marine compass to tion of t deptical acs.

    ical romagnetism, t,ionary.

    4 y to calculatet age of tion occupied mucting it rig effort, in 1862 for an article in apopular magazine called Macmillan’s , suggested t tcautiously allo t ions could be icular ed tself, but I offer ion by t P.  Atkins, just to provide a sense of t;t; t, ted last; t La not even be a la; In briefest terms, tates t a little energy is aled. You cant ualmotion device because no matter , it ually run do la you cant create energy and t you cant reduce temperatures to absolute zero; tes, times expressedjocularly as (1) you cant  break even, and (3) you cant get out of the game.

    “sources noo us are prepared in t storeion”—but it   t unlikely.

    itime Kelvin  in ions and lesscorrect. inually revised imates doo 100 million years, to 50 million years, and finally, in 1897, to a mere 24 millionyears. Kelvin  being   t couldexplain inuously for more tens ofmillions of years at most  exing its fuel. t follo tsplanets ively, but inescapably, youthful.

    t nearly all tradicted teentury t of fossil evidence.