Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time

246 Pages·1988·4.73 MB·English

by  Stephen Jay Gould

STEPHEN JAY GOULD
TIME'S ARROW, TIME'S CYCLE
Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time
THE JERUSALEM-HARVARD LECTURES
Sponsored by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
and Harvard University Press
TIME'S ARROW
TIME'S CYCLE
Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery
of Geological Time
STEPHEN JAY GOULD
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
and London, England
Copyright © 1987 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America Ninth printing, 1996
Set in Linotron Galliard and designed by Marianne Perlak
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gould, Stephen Jay.
Time's arrow, time's cycle.
(The Jerusalem-Harvard lectures)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Geological time—Study and teaching—History.
2. Burnet, Thomas, 1635?–1715. Telluris theoria sacra.
3. Hutton, James, 1726–1797. Theory of the earth.
4. Lyell, Charles, Sir, 1797–1875.I. Tide.
II. Series.
′ ′
QE508.G68 1987 551.7 01 09 86-29485
ISBN 0–674–89198–8 (alk. paper) (cloth)
ISBN 0–674–89199–6 (paper)
For
RICHARD WILSON, M.D.
KAREN ANTMAN, M.D.
Sine quibus non
In the most brutal, literal sense.

Acknowledgments
The genesis of this book lies in the same conflict and interaction of metaphors—
arrows of history and cycles of immanence—that fueled the discovery of deep time
in geology. If I have succeeded in conveying the intended order of my thoughts, this
book may strike readers as forged to some unity in a rational manner—as a product,
in other words, of immanent structure reflected in the metaphor of time's cycle. But
such a view, while reflecting (I hope) the logic of construction, would grossly
misrepresent the psychologic of origin, for this volume is cobbled together from bits
and pieces of time's arrow, quirky and unpredictable moments of my own contingent
history. Tiny events that seemed meaningless at the time are horseshoe nails in the
final structure. I cannot begin to specify all these incidents of "just history." My
father took me to see a Tyrannosaurus when I was five. George White, great
gentleman and bibliophile, gave me a seventeenth-century edition of Burnet's Tdluris
theoria sacra in lieu of an honorarium for a talk. John Lounsbury illustrated
uniformitarianism by an example that conflated distinct meanings during an
introductory course in geology at Antioch College. I knew that something was
wrong, but didn't understand what, until I studied David Hume on induction. I visited
the Portrush Sill in Northern Ireland on a spring field course at the University of
Leeds (during an undergraduate year abroad), and saw the dichotomy of neptunism
and plutonism etched in rocks. I stood in mixed horror and fascination before the
skeleton(s) of Ritta-Christina, the Siamese twin girls of Sardinia, in a Paris museum.
I perceived Burnet's frontispiece in the glittering beauty of
viii Acknowledgments
James Hampton's Throne for Christ's second coming at the Na- tional Museum of
American Art. I listened to Malcolm Miller, self- appointed sage of Chartres, reading
medieval metaphors in glass and statuary. R. K. Merton then showed me what a
vainglorious fool I had been in thinking I had discovered the origin of Newton's
phrase about the shoulders of giants in the south transept of that greatest among
cathedrals.
I owe a more profound and immediate debt to colleagues who have struggled to
understand the history of geology. I present this book as a logical analysis of three
great documents, but it is really a collective enterprise. I am embarrassed that I
cannot now sort out and properly attribute the bits and pieces forged together here. I
am too close to this subject. I have taught the discovery of time for twenty years, and
have read the three documents over and over again (for I regard such repetition as
the best measuring stick of an intellectual life-when new insights cease, move on to
something else). I simply do not remember which pieces came from my own
readings of Burnet, Hutton, and Lyell, and which from Hooykaas, or Rudwick,
Porter, or a host of other thinkers who have inspired me-as if exogeny and endogeny
could form separate categories in any case!
In the most immediate sense, I owe great thanks to Don Patinkin, of Hebrew
University, Jerusalem-and to Eitan Chernov, Danny Cohen, and Rafi Falk, guides
and friends during my visit. This book is a greatly elaborated and reworked version
of the first series of Harvard-Jerusalem lectures, presented at Hebrew University in
April 1985. Arthur Rosenthal, director of Harvard University Press, conceived this
series and brought it to fruition-and to him as godfather my deepest thanks. I can
only hope that I have set a worthy beginning to a series that, by time's arrow of
progress, will soon supersede its inception (while I hope for some remembrance in
time's cycle of memory).
As for Jerusalem, the truly eternal city, I can only say that I finally understand Psalm
137: "If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I
prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy." Now that's quite a tribute from a man who
lives by lecturing!
Contents
1. The Discovery of Deep Time 1
Deep Time 1
Myths of Deep Time 3
On Dichotomy 8
Time's Arrow and Time's Cycle 10
Caveats 16
2. Thomas Burners Battleground of Time 21
Burnet's Frontispiece 21
The Burnet of Textbooks 23
Science versus Religion? 24
Burnet's Methodology 26
The Physics of History 30
Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Conflict and Resolution 41
Burnet and Steno as Intellectual Partners in the Light
of Time's Arrow and Time's Cycle 51
3. James Hutton's Theory of the Earth: A Machine
without a History 61
Picturing the Abyss of Time 61
Hutton's World Machine and the Provision of Deep Time 63
The Hutton of Legend 66
Hutton Disproves His Legend 70
The Sources of Necessary Cyclicity 73
Hutton's Paradox: Or, Why the Discoverer of Deep Time
Denied History 80
Borges's Dilemma and Hutton's Motto 92
Playfair: A Boswell with a Difference 93
A Word in Conclusion and Prospect 96