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2 - The End Is Not Near

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2019

J. L. Schellenberg
Affiliation:
Mount St Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
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Summary

In Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle, Stephen Jay Gould tells the story of one John Playfair, who in 1788 accompanied the great British geologist James Hutton to see an ‘unconformity’ at Siccar Point in Scotland. With the help of this geological visual – an ancient erosion surface dividing two layers of rock, one gently sloping, the other vertically tilted – Hutton explained to Playfair that the Earth is a machine ceaselessly repeating a cycle of erosion, deposition, and uplift. Playfair later wrote: “The impression made will not easily be forgotten … Revolutions still more remote appeared in the distance of this extraordinary perspective. The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Religion after Science
The Cultural Consequences of Religious Immaturity
, pp. 19 - 26
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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  • The End Is Not Near
  • J. L. Schellenberg, Mount St Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
  • Book: Religion after Science
  • Online publication: 09 August 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108614832.003
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  • The End Is Not Near
  • J. L. Schellenberg, Mount St Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
  • Book: Religion after Science
  • Online publication: 09 August 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108614832.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The End Is Not Near
  • J. L. Schellenberg, Mount St Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
  • Book: Religion after Science
  • Online publication: 09 August 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108614832.003
Available formats
×