M. J. S. Rudwick

There are three main themes that run through this interesting and informative book. Firstly, there is the importance of the discovery of Earth's deep history. Rudwick begins his story in the seventeenth century. At that time people generally believed that our world was only a few thousand years old and that humans had lived in that world throughout its history, except for the very brief period of the first few days before God created humans on the sixth day of Creation.

As Rudwick writes, "A show more world without human beings would have struck them as utterly pointless, except as a brief setting of the scene for the human drama to come."

The book shows how geologists eventually came to understand not only that the Earth is billions of years old but also that for most of that time humans did not exist. Rudwick traces the development of the understanding of Earth's history by looking at the work and ideas of scientists such as Steno, Hooke, Buffon, Hutton, Deluc, Scrope, Cuvier, Buckland, Lyell, and many others.

Rudwick quotes Scrope, writing in 1827: "The leading idea which is present in all our researches, and which accompanies every fresh observation, the sound of which to the student of Nature seems continually echoed from every part of her works, is - Time! - Time! - Time!"

The second theme of the book is the importance of understanding that geology is a HISTORICAL science, with much in common with the study of human history. "The Earth's deep history turned out to have shared the messy unpredictable contingency of human history, rather than the astonishingly precise predictability of, say, the motions of the Moon and planets in relation to the Sun."

Even the methods adopted by geologists and historians have parallels. Rudwick uses a nice quotation from Buffon from 1778: "As in civil history title deeds are consulted, coins are studied, and ancient inscriptions are deciphered in order to determine the epochs of human revolutions and to fix the dates of human events, so also in natural history it is necessary to excavate the world's archives, to extract ancient monuments from the Earth's entrails, to collect their remains, and to assemble in a body of evidence all the marks of physical changes that are able to take us back to the different ages of nature."

The third theme of the book involves the relationship between science and religion. Rudwick has no time at all for present-day Creationists, and he demolishes their views in an appendix. But on the other hand he asserts that the view that there is, and always has been, an ongoing conflict between science and religion is a "discredited stereotype". This reminds me of the view held by Rudwick's friend and colleague, the late Stephen Jay Gould, that there is no necessary conflict between the two, as long as each keeps to its own sphere. I can only go part of the way with Rudwick on this issue. Indeed, although I am a great fan of Gould, I think that he too was rather soft on religion at times.

It is true that the stories told of the conflict between religion and science are often over-stated and over-simplified. For example, Galileo continued to be a Christian throughout his life, as did many of the geologists discussed in this book. But on the other hand, Galileo WAS prosecuted by the Church and forced to recant, and his book WAS placed on the Index of Prohibited Books. Over-simplified it may often be, but the conflict between science and religion does exist.

Rudwick even shows sympathy for Archbishop Ussher, who in the 1600s calculated that God had created the Earth in the year 4004 BC. Rudwick says that Ussher does not deserve to be ridiculed, because although he was wildly wrong he was at least trying to establish a chronology of the Earth, using the only sources available to him at the time. (Though the fact that Ussher claimed to have tied Creation down not just to a particular year but precisely to the 23rd October (the Jewish New Year) of that year seems to me to be inviting ridicule.)

Rudwick also equates "modern atheistic fundamentalists" with religious fundamentalists, implying that they are both as bad as each other. I presume that his target here is people like the vocal atheist Richard Dawkins. Although I am an atheist myself, I do think that Dawkins's atheism is a very crude one. He has no real understanding of the social roots of religion. But you cannot equate the atheistic refusal to believe in things that there is no evidence for with the Creationists' refusal to face up to a massive amount of evidence.

The reason for Rudwick's uncritical approach to religion becomes clear in his conclusion, where he explicitly mentions his adherence to a "theistic tradition". (I also noticed the words "Deo gratias" on his dedication page.) Whether you are a believer, an agnostic or an atheist, if you are interested in how scientists have come to an understanding of the Earth's history, you will enjoy this book. But you do need to keep in mind that the book has a slant which reflects Rudwick's (non-Creationist) religious views.

Finally, I would like to recommend something else on this subject, and that is Mark Twain's brilliant and amusing essay, "Was the World Made for Man?", in which he demolishes the idea that the whole of Earth's history was just paving the way for us humans. (Twain's essay is available in The Faber Book of Science.) show less

A very informative history of geological science, which avoids the pitfall of presenting the development of the sciences as a triumphant journey away from religious ignorance. Rudwick pays attention to the way in which concepts within theology might have inspired an outlook on nature that could suddenly think on a scale of billions of years.

This is the heaviest book I have ever tried to read - in terms of kilograms. This is because of the superb quality of the paper and the illustrations - mainly copies of fine engravings. But the book defeated me. I got weary of the hundreds of references to Saussure and the way the helpful summaries at the end of each section took the action back, instead of propelling it forward. Rudwick’s “Deep Time” and “Fossils” books are accessible summaries of his other works - although the show more illustrations in Deep Time are appallingly reproduced (cheap, grainy paper in a very expensive book). This volume I turned to first to see the details of the pictures, and got briefly hooked. I also read his Great Devonian Controversy (which was incredibly detailed) with appreciation and wonder, but pivoting this narrative “before Saussure” and “after Saussure”, while an appealing device for a lecture series - is not appropriate for a book. Luckily, I did not buy volume 2, or I would have felt obliged to persevere. Rudwick does explain very well how science and knowledge advanced, step by step, often by setting aside earlier firm conclusions. He also illustrates how wide and deep were the relationships between the ‘scientists’ / savants engaged in these geo-historical efforts which preceded the science of geology. Not wasted reading time by any means. And the superb illustrations are worth an outing on their own. show less

Three or four stars for most people but a solid five stars for two sorts of persons:
(1) Any geologist or scientist in a related field, or more importantly
(2) Any reader among the 95% of us who thinks that science is a collection of facts
But not one per cent of one per cent of group 2 will touch this, because it's about (OMG): "science, a collection of facts".

"The Great Devonian Controversy" relates the discovery of and scientific controversies surrounding the identification of the Devonian show more period and geologic system. It happened primarily in England from about 1834 to 1843. The Devonian period lasted from about 420 to 360 million years ago, when fish first appeared and plants began colonizing the land.

The geologists fell into three camps: gentlemen geologists whose wealth enabled them to do geology full-time as they pleased, poorer geologists working for the government primarily to locate coal deposits more cheaply but pursuing more general geology along the way, and local amateurs who knew just what was valuable in their regions and exactly where to find it. The Devonian and other periods and systems that they identified as meaningful are still in use.

As for general results, they confirmed the suspicion that geological systems are uniquely identifiable and are correlated among continents. And they demonstrated that fossil evidence is more reliable than rock type for correlating strata, consequent to their realization (with paleontologists' help) that fossils tend to be unique in any system although layers of the same age may differ in rock type in different regions.

The rationale for 494 pages on this short period is to show how science works up close. Everyone should know this.

The "Controversy" of the title reflects some of the relations among the geologists, who interact in part in gentlemanly discussion and in part with hammer and tongs (figuratively speaking). It is an example of the usual style of constructive dialectic essential to scientific inquiry.

Two particular aspects of the controversy are worth mentioning as comprising a general scientific style. One is the considerably contingent quality of the various revelations. Another is the non-Kuhnian style of the synthesis, unless seen at a distance darkly. Kunhian paradigm shifts seem to reduce in proportion as historical magnification increases.

By the way, the Devonian system is present but is poorly characterized around Devon: another contingency.

The book is well researched, documented and written, even if it has more geological and other detail than the layman may want. The author sums up and then summarizes the summary, yikes. Then he considers various general viewpoints, including the philosophical (like realist vs. constructivist) and rhetorical. The thinking is clear and commendable. show less