Deep Time

This volume by Stephen Baxter is a non-fiction book Ages in Chaos: James Hutton and the Discovery of Deep Time (Viking/Forge, 2004).

It's hard to believe, but not so long ago (and in parts of the world it is still true) it was generally believed that the age of the Earth could be measured in a (relatively) few generations of man. James Ussher, a famous bishop, spent a considerable amount of time calculating the age of Earth based on the chronology of the Old and New Testaments, plus post-Biblical history, and came up with a sequence of about 4,000 years total.

The problem was, if you looked at the Earth, things did not match with what these learned men (who generally operated in their armchairs, through thought; not in the field and lab, with observations) were saying. How, as Leonardo da Vinci found, did seashells get into mountains? What caused layers in rocks? Why were some rocks made up of the bones and shells of animals?

Baxter examines the life of James Hutton, a man who spent considerable time thinking about the Earth, but also observing the way the Earth seemed to have evolved. Baxter points out Hutton's strengths and weaknesses, and his methods. He also touches on a lot of folks that I'm encountering in a lot of my other recent reading (for example, Hutton's life touches the chronology of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle), so its interesting to get fresh perspectives on various historic figures I've been encountering.

I've had a long interest in geology, which slumbered for a couple of decades. My interest was re-awakened a few years ago by John McPhee's Annals of the Former World. This book fit in nicely with that overview, teaching me more about the roots of the science.

If there's any weakness to the book, it is that it is relatively brief. Baxter spends more of the book talking about Hutton's life than Hutton's theories; I would have liked to have heard more about the theories and what was proven to be true. There is some amusing stuff here about the life of a Scottish intellectual and one laugh-out-loud hint that the French were behind the American Revolution.

A real strong point will of course, have me spending more money. Baxter lists a number of books that he consulted in the course of the writing of the book. I've got a few of the titles (and in fact Simon Winchester's book The Map That Changed the World: The Tale of William Smith and the Birth of a Science is among the next books I'll be reading) and no doubt will be spending money for more!