Deep Time
Gould ranks the development of the concept "deep time," which involved deliberately rejecting the biblical description of earth's past for nearly incomprehensible eons, with the revolutions associated with Copernicus and Darwin. To illustrate this, Gould picked three major figures in the history of geology, one traditional villain (Thomas Burnet) and two traditional heroes (James Hutton and Charles Lyell).
Read more about this topic: Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle
Famous quotes containing the words deep and/or time:
“The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation, and animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but employs them as signs. He knows why the plain, or meadow of space, was strewn with these flowers we call suns, and moons, and stars; why the great deep is adorned with animals, with men, and gods; for, in every word he speaks he rides on them as the horses of thought.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In the range of things toddlers have to learn and endlessly review—why you can’t put bottles with certain labels in your mouth, why you have to sit on the potty, why you can’t take whatever you want in the store, why you don’t hit your friends—by the time we got to why you can’t drop your peas, well, I was dropping a few myself.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)