[Rockhounds] The benefits of 'deep time thinking'

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

In 1788, three men set off to search a stretch of coast in eastern
Scotland, looking for a very special outcrop of rocks. It would reveal that
Earth was far, far older than anybody thought.

Leading the party was James Hutton, one of the first geologists. His goal
was to show his peers an "unconformity" – two juxtaposing rock layers,
separated by a sharp line.

If you stumbled on one, you might not recognise its significance, but it
proved that aeons of "deep time" had passed before humans emerged on Earth.
There was no other way to explain these features.


For centuries, the Biblical account of time had been dominant in Europe. By
one analysis of the generations in the Old Testament, conducted by an
archbishop in 1650 <https://archive.org/details/AnnalsOfTheWorld>, the
Earth must have been created in 4004BC.

Hutton, however, would transform that view.

His companions to Siccar Point, east Scotland, in 1788 were astonished. As one
of them
<https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Works_of_John_Playfair/f5kQAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=playfair+The+mind+seemed+to+grow+giddy+by+looking+so+far+back+into+the+abyss+of+time&pg=PA81&printsec=frontcover>
wrote
afterwards: "The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far back into the
abyss of time. And while we listened with earnestness and admiration to the
philosopher who was now unfolding to us the order and series of these
wonderful events, we became sensible how much further reason may sometimes
go than imagination may venture to follow."

The insight would be one of geology’s most transformational contributions
to human thought, allowing us to "burst the limits of time", as one eminent
scientist later put it
<https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/62918/pg62918-images.html>.
Time, according
to Hutton <https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12861/pg12861-images.html>,
had "no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end".


https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230329-the-benefits-of-deep-time-thinking