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

        ton s a man of t insig versation, a delig rival o uanding terious slo sunately, it    doanyone could begin to uand.    audiblesig entirely i of rorical apliss.” Nearly every liion to slumber. errations , discussing . . . something:

        t is posed of terials, not of te predecessor of t, but of t,    land    beerof the o.

        Yet almost singlee brilliantly, ed transformed our uanding of tton o a prosperousScottis of material fort t alloellectual betterment. udiedmedie, but found it not to urned i, 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 i in nearly everytometaped experiments igated metoured salt mines, speculated on ty, collectedfossils, and propouion of air, and tion,among muc icular i was geology.

        Among tions t attracted i 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,    voloes as, tinually 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 naturalclusion tually be e smoot everyional process, some form of re created neo keep taintops,    been deposited during floods, but ains t it    created s and t up mountain c is not too muco say t geologists grasp tions of t for te teics. Above all, on’s ted    Earts of time, far more ts o transform utterly our uanding of th.

        In 1785, toings 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 trinsi relation to t violent fracture and divulsion; but till to seek; andit appears not in t is not every fracture and dislocation of tanineral veins,are found.

        Needless to say, almost no one i idea . Enced by o expand ouble onto clarity in a more expansive format, to ten yearspreparing wo volumes in 1795.

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

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

        ton’s trong didate for t read important book in sce(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 uood    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 i in geology,,    to ge. And how.

        In ter of 1807, teen like-minded souls in London got toget tavern at Long Acre, in t Garden, to form a dining club to be called ty. to meet once a monto sions lass or t at a deliberately y fifteenso disce 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 uand, or even academics for t part, but simply gentlemeo 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 sce ever em, a plump and ponderous study of a type of rockcalled grey aseller, rag tions, even t costeigrue tonian style, unreadable. (As even a Murcer ceded, 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 maries and seismic perturbations in Campania.

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

        ttracted maraordinary figures, not least tioned Murc t ty or so years of er foxes, verting aeronauticallyco puffs of drifti, and sal agility o 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 spiracy called “t,” in o s King Gee III in t as    in    ter. Parkinson co Australia before t lydropped. Adopting a more servative approaco life, erest in geologyand became one of ty and tant geological text, anic 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 colleg of natural    til1805,    and tion    quite as remarkable in cer but more iial t ton died and only seventy miles atis of    Scots were feckless drunks.

        As terury gentlemen stists, Lyell came from abackground of fortable ellectual vigor. in 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.

        Bud    of a cy. s, but    least as mucricities. icularly noted for a menagerieof    o roam to eat ion. Depending ons to Bud’s    be served baked guinea pig, mibatter, roasted    Asian sea slug. Bud o fiin t ting. Almostiably, y on coprolites—fossilized feces—and ablemade entirely out of ion of spes.

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

        Bud 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 Bud a buffoon—t    Lyell appeared to find o go t 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 ding up” (to quote en     tocks    toug’s College in London from 1831 to 1833. It imet ed upon ts first voiced byton a geion earlier. (Altton in tudent of Playfair’s reon’s day and Lyell’s troversy, en fused unian–Plutonian dispute. ttlebecame an argumeroparianism—unattractive terms for animportant and very long-running dispute. Catastrops, as you mig from t t cataclysmic events—floods principally, ropunism are ofteropicularly f to clerics like Bud because it alloo incorporate to serious stific discussions. Uniformitarians by trast believedt early 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 textins    of a series in    and replaceds—a belief t turalist t. o “a succession ofrubbers of    t table and called for a neoo ve a o explaio foster indolence, and to blunt ty,” sniffed Lyell.

        Lyell’s        insiderable. o explain vingly 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 siime. On all of timately be proved wrong.

        Yet it o overstate Lyell’s influe tions in Lyell’s lifetime and tained notions t so tietury. Darook a first editioer “t merit of t it altered tone of one’s mind, and t,    partially t,    ion. It is a testament tt in tso abandon just a part of it to aodate t tins, 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 troversy.

        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 ter titlesof Martin J. S. Rud and somber at of t Devoniantroversy. tlemae” and “Unraveling t to “ttacked,” “Reproofs and Recriminations,” “ts ting a Provincial in t t tledin 1879    of ing up o beied betwo.

        Because tis active in tisin ty of Devon. Cambrianes 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.

        inally, geological ory o four spans of time: primary, sedary,tertiary, and quaternary. tem oo o last, and soon geologists ributing additional divisions    ofuse altogeternary    kept by otoday oiary remains as a on designation everys athing.

        Lyell, in roduced additional units knooe (“most ret”), Plioe(“more ret”), Mioe (“moderately ret”), and t a little ret”). Lyell inally inteo employ “-syns as Meiosyncial man, objected oymological grounds andsuggested instead an “-eous” pattern, produg Meioneous, Pleioneous, and so on. terminations hing of a promise.

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

        1toe, Mioe, and so o (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 es in Nortnames from tages in Europe and often only rougerse time. tian stage mostly corresponds age in Europe, plus atiny bit of tly earlier Carado stage.

        Also, all textbook to textbook and from person to person, so t someauties describe seve epot oo, you ertiary and quaternary taken out and replaced by periods of differeo t Arc Proterozoietimes too you ermPo describe the ozoic, Mesozoid Paleozoiceras.

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

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

        At least today ed datiable. For most ofteentury geologists could dra rating position t alted on tiquity of an I ter t t it eimesten thousand” years earlier.

        Alting periods, tage of peopleo try. t tempt orical sourd cluded, 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 abook ers ever since.

        2tent mytally—and one propounded in many serious books—tUssed stific 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 fined s of a literalistic exegesis ofGenesis.” Eveury produoted 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 stific e de Buffon, in t    ted appreciable amounts of —t    to a any imating te of dissipation. Buffon’sexperiment sisted of ing spil te    and timating te of    loss by toucly at first) as to be someimate, but a radiotion ened 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 plete. tion ly for being so arrestinglyspecific but even more for flying ih.

        3Itproved so tentious 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 isiingly 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).

        Kelviraordinary figures of teentury—indeed of aury. tist z, no intellectual sloucet Kelvi “intelligend lucidity, and mobility of t” of anyman . “I felt quite edly.

        timent is uandable, 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 os, and made innumerable improvements to sion, from tion of a popular marine pass to tion of t deptical acs.

        ical romagism, t,ionary.

        4 y to calculatet age of tion occupied mug 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 t ualmotion device because no matter , it ually run do la you t create energy and t you t reduce temperatures to absolute zero; tes, times expressedjocularly as (1) you t    break even, and (3) you t get out of the game.

        “souroo 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 tsplas ively, but inescapably, youthful.

        t nearly all tradicted teentury t of fossil evidence.
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