A Curatorial Perspective on Two Objects

These engravings are drawn from works written at a pivotal moment in the development of scientific understanding of the Earth, but they also illustrate two geologists’ theories on a divisive issue in their then nascent field.

Today, children are taught in school that the Earth is over four billion years old, but the immensity of this time scale was a profound revelation when Scottish geologist James Hutton presented his Theory of Earth in 1788. Before Hutton’s articulation of what we now refer to as “deep time,” most of western culture accepted a biblical literalist timescale that calculated the age of the Earth at approximately 6,000 years. Hutton argued that not only was Earth much older than previously understood, but that the planet we inhabit today took shape over the course of hundreds of thousands of years through constant but gradual changes, a theory termed uniformitarianism. This claim would be addressed and tested by every geologist who worked following Hutton. Geologists such as William Buckland, who aimed to reconcile a biblical account with the geological record, argued for catastrophism, a theory that proposed that change occurred through cataclysmic events, such as floods. Geologists today work with a combination of these theories; Earth has been altered by both slow and sudden natural processes.

James Hutton’s Theory of Earth is considered the foundational text of modern geology, and its key argument--that rocks were formed in recurring cycles, for which visible layers of strata serve as evidence, kicked off a flurry of publications on geology. His interest in the field arose after he inherited the family farm, and began to closely observe rock formations on his land. This agricultural starting point is represented in the now famous accompanying engraving of the horses and cart sat atop multiple stratigraphic deposits, and this illustration is now considered the first image to illustrate the concept of deep time. In the final sentence of Hutton’s book, he summarizes his findings: “the result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of [Earth’s] beginning, - no prospect of an end.” Later, geologist Charles Lyell reaffirmed Hutton’s theory, and popularized it further, arguing against the catastrophist geologists who reacted to Hutton.

William Buckland’s Geology and Minerology Considered with Reference to Natural Theology was published as a work within an 1830s series now known as The Bridgewater Treatises, a collection of publications by leading scientists in a variety of disciplines who worked to prove the “the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation.” Buckland spent much of his early career looking for geological evidence of the biblical flood. At the time, the field of paleontology was under the umbrella of geology, and fossil evidence of extinct species was attributed to catastrophic events causing mass die-outs. By the time he wrote Geology and Minerology he had begun to accept evidence of glaciation (ice ages) as playing a part in extinctions. The remarkable illustration by Thomas Webster included in the volume shows strata, and their corresponding lifeforms found in the fossil record. The deposits immediately right of center are labeled diluvium, meaning deposited during a flood event. The long line of uncanny extinct species, the enormous mountain, and the erupting volcano all convey the sublimity of deep time in a way that does not discount the possibility of a divine hand.

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