Changes

In the early nineteenth-century, the so called [[uniformitarian]]s conspired to overthrow the [[Biblical chronology]] that would measure geologic time in generations of man.<ref name="Richter">{{cite journal |title=Geological Notes: Kelvin and the Age of Earth |author=F.M. Richter |publisher=Journal of Geology |year=1986 |volume=94 |pages=395-401 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/30068713}}</ref> The dictum as a fundamental maxim for their geological speculation and worldview<ref name="PerryInAS">{{cite web |title=Kelvin, Perry and the Age of the Earth |author=Philip C. England, Peter Molnar, Frank M. Richter |date= |url=http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/page2/kelvin-perry-and-the-age-of-the-earth |accessdate=13 June 2015 |quote=Before dissecting Kelvin's arguments, it is worth describing the worldview that he was opposing.}}</ref> was expressed through [[James Hutton]]’s aphorism<ref name="ingv"/>, coming from his 1785 book ''Theory of the earth'': ''“The revolt, therefore, of this physical inquiry is, that we find [[Singularity#Antipathy_to_the_idea_of_beginning|no vestige of a beginning]], [[Horror of a Divine Foot|no prospect of an end]].“''<ref name="KelvinOnDynamics">{{cite web |title=On Geological Dynamics |author=W. Thomson (Lord Kelvin) |publisher= Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow |year=1869 |url=http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/on_geological_dynamics.html |aaccessdate=May 17, 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Theory of the earth; or an investigation of the laws observable in the composition, dissolution and restoration of land upon the globe. |author=James Hutton |publisher=Royal Society of Edinburgh |year=1785 |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=RjYAAAAAQAAJ}}</ref> Hutton's theory of the earth was not based on field observations but on his wishful, speculative confusion of geological process with [[Newton]]ian [[physics]].<ref name="GOULDinNYT">{{cite web |title=IT'S AN OLD, OLD , OLD, OLD WORLD |publisher= NYT |author=D. R. Wallace |date= June 14, 1987 |url=http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/09/home/gould-arrow.html |accessdate=7 June 2015 |quote=Hutton's theory of the earth as a geological clockwork of eroding continents balanced against uplifting ocean basins was not based on field observations but on his wishful, speculative confusion of geological process with Newtonian physics....Hutton and Lyell were dedicated not to modern notions of geological dynamism but to antique ones of geological steady-state...The textbook legend of Hutton and Lyell seems dim and confused compared with that of Copernicus and Galileo. In demonstrating the shallowness of that legend}}</ref>

In the early nineteenth-century, the so called [[uniformitarian]]s conspired to overthrow the [[Biblical chronology]] that would measure geologic time in generations of man.<ref name="Richter">{{cite journal |title=Geological Notes: Kelvin and the Age of Earth |author=F.M. Richter |publisher=Journal of Geology |year=1986 |volume=94 |pages=395-401 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/30068713}}</ref> The dictum as a fundamental maxim for their geological speculation and worldview<ref name="PerryInAS">{{cite web |title=Kelvin, Perry and the Age of the Earth |author=Philip C. England, Peter Molnar, Frank M. Richter |date= |url=http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/page2/kelvin-perry-and-the-age-of-the-earth |accessdate=13 June 2015 |quote=Before dissecting Kelvin's arguments, it is worth describing the worldview that he was opposing.}}</ref> was expressed through [[James Hutton]]’s aphorism<ref name="ingv"/>, coming from his 1785 book ''Theory of the earth'': ''“The revolt, therefore, of this physical inquiry is, that we find [[Singularity#Antipathy_to_the_idea_of_beginning|no vestige of a beginning]], [[Horror of a Divine Foot|no prospect of an end]].“''<ref name="KelvinOnDynamics">{{cite web |title=On Geological Dynamics |author=W. Thomson (Lord Kelvin) |publisher= Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow |year=1869 |url=http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/on_geological_dynamics.html |aaccessdate=May 17, 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Theory of the earth; or an investigation of the laws observable in the composition, dissolution and restoration of land upon the globe. |author=James Hutton |publisher=Royal Society of Edinburgh |year=1785 |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=RjYAAAAAQAAJ}}</ref> Hutton's theory of the earth was not based on field observations but on his wishful, speculative confusion of geological process with [[Newton]]ian [[physics]].<ref name="GOULDinNYT">{{cite web |title=IT'S AN OLD, OLD , OLD, OLD WORLD |publisher= NYT |author=D. R. Wallace |date= June 14, 1987 |url=http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/09/home/gould-arrow.html |accessdate=7 June 2015 |quote=Hutton's theory of the earth as a geological clockwork of eroding continents balanced against uplifting ocean basins was not based on field observations but on his wishful, speculative confusion of geological process with Newtonian physics....Hutton and Lyell were dedicated not to modern notions of geological dynamism but to antique ones of geological steady-state...The textbook legend of Hutton and Lyell seems dim and confused compared with that of Copernicus and Galileo. In demonstrating the shallowness of that legend}}</ref>

In 1822, [[Joseph Fourier|Fourier]] laid the groundwork for the mathematical analysis of the flow of [[heat]] in his treatise ''Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur''; and later, in 1827, he published arguments that the Earth must be cooling.<ref name="PerryKelvinCritique">{{cite journal | title=John Perry’s neglected critique of Kelvin’s age for the Earth: A missed opportunity in geodynamics |author=P. England, P. Molnar, F. Richter |journal=GSA Today |volume= 17 |number= 1 |date=January 2007 |doi=10.1130/GSAT01701A.1 |url=http://www.colorado.edu/GeolSci/faculty/molnarpdf/2007GSAT.England.PerryKelvinBlownOpportunity.pdf |accessdate=5 June 2015 |quote= Fourier ... made arguments that the Earth must be cooling (Fourier, 1827), with which Lyell was certainly familiar (Lyell, 1830, p. 140–141).}}</ref> This was in line with so called [[Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis]].   

In 1822, [[Joseph Fourier|Fourier]] laid the groundwork for the mathematical analysis of the flow of [[heat]] in his treatise ''Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur''; and later, in 1827, he published arguments that the Earth must be cooling.<ref name="PerryKelvinCritique">{{cite journal | title=John Perry’s neglected critique of Kelvin’s age for the Earth: A missed opportunity in geodynamics |author=P. England, P. Molnar, F. Richter |journal=GSA Today |volume= 17 |number= 1 |date=January 2007 |doi=10.1130/GSAT01701A.1 |url=http://www.colorado.edu/GeolSci/faculty/molnarpdf/2007GSAT.England.PerryKelvinBlownOpportunity.pdf |accessdate=5 June 2015 |quote= Fourier ... made arguments that the Earth must be cooling (Fourier, 1827), with which Lyell was certainly familiar (Lyell, 1830, p. 140–141).}}</ref> This was in line with so called [[Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis]], under which the earth would have gradually cooled from its assumed molten beginnings to its current state.   

In 1830 [[Charles Lyell]], despite being familiar with Fourier's arguments<ref name="PerryKelvinCritique"/>, supported with a convert's zeal the Hutton's idea of a

In 1830 [[Charles Lyell]], despite being familiar with Fourier's arguments<ref name="PerryKelvinCritique"/>, supported, with a convert's zeal, the Hutton's idea of a

steady-state Earth of indefinite age in ''Principles of Geology''<ref name="ingv" />, a book that later influenced [[Darwin]]. Lyell started his book with a self-serving history of geology that [[Academician Burdenko syndrome|uncritically hailed]] any insight anticipating uniformitarianism and under the banner ''“to free the science from Moses”''<ref>{{cite book |author= Charles Lyell |title= Principles of Geology |Volume= 1 |year=1881 (1990)|publisher=University of Chicago Press (reprint) |pages=268 (XVII)  |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=9WjnbzHpvfEC |quote=Most other geologists, whether or not they agreed with Lyell on specific issues, would in fact have considered themselves his allies in hoping “to free the science from Moses” (Lyell 1881, vol.1, p.268).}}</ref> [[Kerkut’s student syndrome|utterly dismissed]] the contributions of [[Catastrophism|catastrophists]] including [[Georges Cuvier]], the "lion of nineteenth-century French science" and founder of modern comparative anatomy and paleontology, who as early as 1796 announced ''"the existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some kind of catastrophe"'' and whose scientific arguments for the theory of special creation held back the tide of evolutionary thought for a generation.<ref name="Larson"/> Lyell shown up to be a disciple of Buffon, who resolutely refused to accept the notion of catastrophes, including the [[Noah's Flood|Biblical Flood]], which many of their contemporaries upheld. Before Darwin boarded the HMS Beagle in 1831, his Cambridge tutor Adam Sedgwick, who had supplied Darwin with a reading list for the voyage, conspicuously omitted controversial Lyell’s ''Principles''. Darwin was however given a copy of the book by the ship's aristocratic captain Robert FitzRoy.<ref name="Larson"/><ref>{{cite web |title=The Voyage of Charles Darwin, Part 1 |publisher=BBC |year=1978 |pages=7-part series Part 1, 46min:15sec  |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hoDaxVIVPE&feature=youtu.be&t=2850 |accessdate=May 17, 2015 |quote=}}</ref> Darwin was fascinated by book, he dedicated his own writings about the voyage to Lyell, and in his letters claimed that ''"I always feel as if my books came half out of Lyell's brains ... the great merit of the Principles, was that it altered the whole tone of one's mind & therefore that when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes."''<ref>{{cite web |title=Darwin Correspondence Database: Darwin, C. R. to Horner, Leonard 29 Aug 1844 |author=Ch.Darwin |publisher=Darwin Correspondence Project by Cambridge University Library |url=http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/entry-771 |accessdate=May 17, 2015}}</ref> In his 1859 ''[[The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection|Origin of species by means of Natural selection]]'', Darwin declared that ''‘He who can read Sir Charles Lyell’s grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having produced a revolution in natural science, yet does not admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume.’''<ref name="KelvinOnDynamics"/><ref>{{cite book |title= On the Origin of Species |author= Charles Darwin |year=1859 |pages=282 |edition=1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RdIp_XRopbcC&q=incomprehensibly+vast#v=snippet&q=incomprehensibly%20vast&f=false}}</ref> Darwin based his views on Hutton and Lyell who were dedicated not to modern notions of geological dynamism but to antique ones of geological steady-state.<ref name="GOULDinNYT"/> It is believed a feeling of guilt at having helped Darwin arrive at his heretical theories was a factor that might have contributed to FitzRoy’s tragic decision to suicide on 30th April, 1865.<ref>{{cite web |title= FitzRoy's Bicentenary|publisher= The Friends of Charles Darwin |url=http://friendsofdarwin.com/articles/fitzroy/ |quote= The ridicule over the weather forecasts was probably the last straw that drove FitzRoy to suicide on 30th April, 1865. But there were numerous other factors that might have contributed to his tragic decision: his failed New Zealand governorship; a feeling of guilt at having helped Darwin arrive at his heretical theories; his belief that suicide was a family trait; who knows what else might have helped push him over the edge? |accessdate=May 17, 2015}}</ref>

steady-state Earth of indefinite age in ''Principles of Geology''<ref name="ingv" />, a book that later influenced [[Darwin]]. Lyell started his book with a self-serving history of geology that [[Academician Burdenko syndrome|uncritically hailed]] any insight anticipating uniformitarianism and under the banner ''“to free the science from Moses”''<ref>{{cite book |author= Charles Lyell |title= Principles of Geology |Volume= 1 |year=1881 (1990)|publisher=University of Chicago Press (reprint) |pages=268 (XVII)  |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=9WjnbzHpvfEC |quote=Most other geologists, whether or not they agreed with Lyell on specific issues, would in fact have considered themselves his allies in hoping “to free the science from Moses” (Lyell 1881, vol.1, p.268).}}</ref> [[Kerkut’s student syndrome|utterly dismissed]] the contributions of [[Catastrophism|catastrophists]] including [[Georges Cuvier]], the "lion of nineteenth-century French science" and founder of modern comparative anatomy and paleontology, who as early as 1796 announced ''"the existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some kind of catastrophe"'' and whose scientific arguments for the theory of special creation held back the tide of evolutionary thought for a generation.<ref name="Larson"/> Lyell shown up to be a disciple of Buffon, who resolutely refused to accept the notion of catastrophes, including the [[Noah's Flood|Biblical Flood]], which many of their contemporaries upheld. Before Darwin boarded the HMS Beagle in 1831, his Cambridge tutor Adam Sedgwick, who had supplied just twenty-two years old Darwin with a reading list for the voyage, conspicuously omitted controversial Lyell’s ''Principles''. Darwin was however given a copy of the book by the ship's aristocratic captain Robert FitzRoy, who wished to have some scientific person on board.<ref name="Larson"/><ref>{{cite web |title=The Voyage of Charles Darwin, Part 1 |publisher=BBC |year=1978 |pages=7-part series Part 1, 46min:15sec  |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hoDaxVIVPE&feature=youtu.be&t=2850 |accessdate=May 17, 2015 |quote=}}</ref> Darwin was fascinated by book, he dedicated his own writings about the voyage to Lyell, and in his letters claimed that ''"I always feel as if my books came half out of Lyell's brains ... the great merit of the Principles, was that it altered the whole tone of one's mind & therefore that when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes."''<ref>{{cite web |title=Darwin Correspondence Database: Darwin, C. R. to Horner, Leonard 29 Aug 1844 |author=Ch.Darwin |publisher=Darwin Correspondence Project by Cambridge University Library |url=http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/entry-771 |accessdate=May 17, 2015}}</ref>  

In his 1859 ''[[The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection|Origin of species by means of Natural selection]]'', Darwin declared that ''‘He who can read Sir Charles Lyell’s grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having produced a revolution in natural science, yet does not admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume.’''<ref name="KelvinOnDynamics"/><ref>{{cite book |title= On the Origin of Species |author= Charles Darwin |year=1859 |pages=282 |edition=1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RdIp_XRopbcC&q=incomprehensibly+vast#v=snippet&q=incomprehensibly%20vast&f=false}}</ref> Darwin based his views on Hutton and Lyell who were dedicated not to modern notions of geological dynamism but to antique ones of geological steady-state.<ref name="GOULDinNYT"/> It is believed a feeling of guilt at having helped Darwin arrive at his heretical theories was a factor that might have contributed to FitzRoy’s tragic decision to suicide on 30th April, 1865.<ref>{{cite web |title= FitzRoy's Bicentenary|publisher= The Friends of Charles Darwin |url=http://friendsofdarwin.com/articles/fitzroy/ |quote= The ridicule over the weather forecasts was probably the last straw that drove FitzRoy to suicide on 30th April, 1865. But there were numerous other factors that might have contributed to his tragic decision: his failed New Zealand governorship; a feeling of guilt at having helped Darwin arrive at his heretical theories; his belief that suicide was a family trait; who knows what else might have helped push him over the edge? |accessdate=May 17, 2015}}</ref><ref name="BBC67">{{cite web |title=The Voyage of Charles Darwin, Part 6&7 |publisher=BBC |year=1978 |pages=7-part series Part 6&7, 1h:49min:35sec  |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXY-EWZU5qo&feature=youtu.be&t=6575

|accessdate=July 18, 2015 |quote=}}</ref>

|}

|}

* The ‘celebrated’ '''Poisson’s hypothesis''', that the present underground heat of Earth is due to a passage, at some former period, of the Solar system through hotter stellar regions, would not serve uniformitarians and evolutionists right, since it either grants only short time periods with moderate temperature on earth’s surface or, if the transition from hot region to cold region is shifted further back in time, it leads to extreme temperatures that must have destroyed all animal and vegetable life.     

* The ‘celebrated’ '''Poisson’s hypothesis''', that the present underground heat of Earth is due to a passage, at some former period, of the Solar system through hotter stellar regions, would not serve uniformitarians and evolutionists right, since it either grants only short time periods with moderate temperature on earth’s surface or, if the transition from hot region to cold region is shifted further back in time, it leads to extreme temperatures that must have destroyed all animal and vegetable life.     

* The '''Leibnitz’s theory''', which simply supposes the earth to have been at one time an incandescent liquid, without explaining how it got into that state, is the best for view of the geologists who require the longest periods,

* The '''Leibnitz’s theory''', which simply supposes the earth to have been at one time an incandescent liquid, without explaining how it got into that state, is the best for view of the geologists who require the longest periods.

* The initial temperature of molten blob to be 7000°F or 3888°C, respectively, corresponding to a high estimate of generally assumed temperature of melting rock. Later Kelvin explained that he could take lower value as more probable, but was most anxious not to underestimate the age of the earth based on the very meager information then available.<ref name="KelvinNature1895"/>

* The initial temperature of molten blob to be 7000°F or 3888°C, respectively, corresponding to a high estimate of generally assumed temperature of melting rock. Later Kelvin explained that he could take lower value as more probable, but was most anxious not to underestimate the age of the earth based on the very meager information then available.<ref name="KelvinNature1895"/>

* The measurements of underground temperatures near Edinburgh served as basis for the estimated “general increase of temperature in the Earth downwards” alias mean geothermal gradient of 1/50th of a degree Fahrenheit per foot (~ ca 36°C/km)

* The measurements of underground temperatures near Edinburgh served as basis for the estimated “general increase of temperature in the Earth downwards” alias mean geothermal gradient of 1/50th of a degree Fahrenheit per foot (~ ca 36°C/km).

After taking into account the estimated uncertainties in thermal gradient and thermal conductivity, Kelvin broadened an upper limit for the age of the Earth to interval between 20 and 400 millions of years (20 ~ 400 Ma). In a later paper, based on experimental results performed by Carl Barus (who found out that diabase, a typical basalt of very primitive character, melts between 1100°C and 1170°C and is thoroughly liquid at 1300°C)<ref name="KelvinNature1895">{{cite journal |title=On the Age of the Earth |author= Lord Kelvin |journal= Nature (reprint in SA)|date= January 3, 1895 |pages= 334-337 |url=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lord-kelvin-on-the-age-of-the-earth/ |accessdate=14 June 2015 |quote= Carl Barus (Phil. Mag., 1893, first half year, pp. 186, 187, 301-305) that diabase, a typical basalt of very primitive character, melts between 1,100° C. and 1,170° and is thoroughly liquid at 1,300°.}}</ref>, he modified the value for supposed initial molten rock temperature to 1200°C<ref name="Richter"/>, thus by the end of the 1800s narrowed down the interval to 20 ~ 40Ma<ref name="chemeu">{{cite web |title=William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin |publisher=chemeurope.com |url=http://www.chemeurope.com/en/encyclopedia/William_Thomson%2C_1st_Baron_Kelvin.html |accessdate=14 June 2015 |quote= Thomson ultimately settled on an estimate that the Earth was 20-40 million years old }}</ref>, with personal preference for the lower value which is also the most quoted one.<ref>{{cite book |title= The Dating Game: One Man's Search for the Age of the Earth  |author= Cherry Lewis  |publisher= Cambridge University Press |year= 2012 |pages= 39 |isbn= 978-11076-59599 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=vU1yZQ03Kz0C }}</ref><ref name="West"/>

After taking into account the estimated uncertainties in thermal gradient and thermal conductivity, Kelvin broadened an upper limit for the age of the Earth to interval between 20 and 400 millions of years (20 ~ 400 Ma). In a later paper, based on experimental results performed by Carl Barus (who found out that diabase, a typical basalt of very primitive character, melts between 1100°C and 1170°C and is thoroughly liquid at 1300°C)<ref name="KelvinNature1895">{{cite journal |title=On the Age of the Earth |author= Lord Kelvin |journal= Nature (reprint in SA)|date= January 3, 1895 |pages= 334-337 |url=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lord-kelvin-on-the-age-of-the-earth/ |accessdate=14 June 2015 |quote= Carl Barus (Phil. Mag., 1893, first half year, pp. 186, 187, 301-305) that diabase, a typical basalt of very primitive character, melts between 1,100° C. and 1,170° and is thoroughly liquid at 1,300°.}}</ref>, he modified the value for supposed initial molten rock temperature to 1200°C<ref name="Richter"/>, thus by the end of the 1800s narrowed down the interval to 20 ~ 40Ma<ref name="chemeu">{{cite web |title=William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin |publisher=chemeurope.com |url=http://www.chemeurope.com/en/encyclopedia/William_Thomson%2C_1st_Baron_Kelvin.html |accessdate=14 June 2015 |quote= Thomson ultimately settled on an estimate that the Earth was 20-40 million years old }}</ref>, with personal preference for the lower value which is also the most quoted one.<ref>{{cite book |title= The Dating Game: One Man's Search for the Age of the Earth  |author= Cherry Lewis  |publisher= Cambridge University Press |year= 2012 |pages= 39 |isbn= 978-11076-59599 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=vU1yZQ03Kz0C }}</ref><ref name="West"/>