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TSRTheSedimentary Record
SEPM | Society for Sedimentary Geology
Editorial
The revolutionary impact of the Deep Time concept:
Geology’s modernity and societal implications
Andrea Fildani1,∗
1The Deep Time Institute, 13809 Research Boulevard, Suite XXXXXXXXXX, Austin, Texas 78750, USA
The world as we have created it is a process of ou
thinking. It cannot be changed without changing ou
thinking.
–Albert Einstein
I propose throughout this short op-ed that Geology, asone of the most recently established core sciences, is
the one most at risk of societal misinterpretation precisely
ecause of its innovativeness. The discovery of ‘deep time’
and the revelation of temporal change were triggered by
the advance of geological methodology, which pushed the
oundary of the scientific establishment of the time (Rossi,
1979). These discoveries had profound societal implica-
tions that are deeply embedded into the scientific progress
of the last few centuries but we, at times even geologists
ourselves, still struggle to fully em
ace the historical as-
pect of geology, instead accepting it as a ‘derivative’ of the
physical sciences (Dodick and Orion, XXXXXXXXXXBy the end of
this op-ed I will reason that geology expands on the physi-
cal sciences and should be involved at all decision-making
levels, and that geologic literacy should become a top pri-
ority in terms of public education and policy making.
The core natural sciences: physics, astronomy, chemistry,
iology and geology are at different stages of development
and societal acceptance, based on time (how long they
have been practiced), tangibility (how measurable thei
questions are), and palatability (how comfortably their con-
cepts fit social norms and trends). The establishment of a
scientific field demands codes and definitions, a consen-
sus from a scientific community that shares methods and
manuals (Rossi, XXXXXXXXXXThese manuals, the foundation fo
the science, are constantly revised and rewritten, and thei
existence is essential, in that they constitute and build the
science itself.
Copyright © 2022 by the SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geologydoi: XXXXXXXXXX/sedred XXXXXXXXXX
∗Co
esponding author: XXXXXXXXXX
However, the consensus and convergent thinking
needed for a science to grow are not always present: they
are built hardily and slowly with time. In his work, philoso-
pher of science Paolo Rossi (Rossi, 1979) noticed that the
consensus for mathematics and astronomy has been estab-
lished for a very long time, as these disciplines trace back
to early human civilizations (and consequently blend the
scientific consensus with religious protocols). Even though
geological concepts have peppered human writings since
ancient times (i.e., Democritus, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the
Younger, and Lucretius are offered as very few examples)
and Medieval into Renaissance times (Shen Kuo, Restoro
d’Arezzo, and eventually Leonardo da Vinci to mention
a few relevant contributors), it was not until the late 17th
century and early 18th century that the formative manuals
and the scientific consensus for geology really started to
shape up. As a science, geology is a late bloomer.
Its tardiness to the scene reflects the seriousness of the
intellectual ba
iers that geology had to overcome. Geology
is conceptually one of the most modern and revolutionary
sciences; revolutionary in the strict sense that it caused
a complete and dramatic change in our way of thinking.
Physics and natural philosophy claimed to deal with the
world as it is (in the Newtonian sense, as it was put in
movement by God), and so there was no impetus to pose
questions about the formation of the world and the be-
ginning of time to such sciences. Geological thinking, on
the other hand, gave us tools to understand nature and to
educe risk, but this also added a vulnerability to human
existence that required major psychological adjustments
for society. Perhaps because of its revolutionary aspect, the
consensus for geology has been harder to establish. Indeed,
evolutions are unsettling; early geological discourse was
shaped by fear. How would institutions and the general
public react to the concepts of geology? But what was it
about geology that was so unsettling?
TSR, Vol. 20, No. 1, p. 1–4, January 2022 1
mailto: XXXXXXXXXX
THE GIFT OF ’DEEP TIME’ THINKING: A
PROMETHEAN TASK
The introduction of the concept of Deep Time caused a
profound transformation in the way we think. This shift
equired centuries to pass before it could be fully achieved,
with the key period being between the late 1600s and late
1700s (Rossi, XXXXXXXXXXIn our modern days we fully under-
stand that the history of the universe, the history of Earth,
and the history of the human species were built at com-
pletely different chronological scales. However, that was
not always the case. Natural history and human history
were conceived as parallel for a long time, commingled
with pre-Christian and then biblical time scales; an Earth
not populated by humans was unimaginable and would
have been unacceptable if proposed. Early attempts and
proposals to detangle human history from natural history
and to extend the natural timeframe were rejected as mate-
ialistic (e.g., Democritus and Lucretius).
Our modern idea of time, which frames today’s scien-
tific knowledge, commenced its maturation toward ou
cu
ent understanding around the second half of the 1600s
(Rossi, XXXXXXXXXXIn the Western world, there was no reason to
challenge pre-Christian stories or biblical teachings. Most
people did not question the concept that Earth was created
specifically for humans by an act of God (or gods)—they
were either too scared to doubt a deity’s work or perhaps
just so comfortable with the idea that there was no need fo
change. With bewildering precision, at least for the modern
eader’s eyes, the Archbishop James Ussher (1581–1656)
appointed Sunday, the 23rd of October, 4004 BC as the day
when it all started. It is important to note that Ussher was a
scholar and practitioner of the historical research known as
chronology, which attempted to reconstruct world history
y combining biblical and secular texts (Rudwick, 2014).
Ussher, as many chronologists of his time, believed that
world history had finite limits in the past and the future,
with an overall length of exactly six millennia. According
to his calculations the end of the world should have been
precisely in 1996! So, the women and men of the second
half of the 1600s understood Earth’s history to be about
6000 years long and with a relatively near end. However, a
century later, the women and men of the times knew that
Earth was millions of years old with no end in sight.
The leap took a formidable amount of communal effort.
Evidence challenging the comfortable setting offered by
the Bible and scholarly establishment came from the “shells
and fish” (the ones that eventually would be called fossils)
that would occasionally be found on mountain trails; these
findings triggered curiosity and long debates. Although
initially dismissed as meal scraps, some scholars would
claim those shells were evidence of the biblical deluge,
while others would appeal to philosophical theories (Aris-
totelian and neo-Platonic) in which fossils were ‘organisms’
that could form by “spontaneous generation” from non-
living material (Rossi, XXXXXXXXXXAccording to such theories,
this happened inside the Earth.
While the collection and reporting of more complete and
intriguing fossils continued, acute observers noticed how
these contrasted living species and started to realize that
some species were not living anymore, that they had gone
extinct. To acknowledge the possibility of extinction was
equivalent to recognizing elements of imperfection and
incompleteness in God’s work. The idea that nature has a
history and that the shells document an extinct past started
to form in intellectual circles, where nature was not as fixed
and immutable as previously believed.
Two figures (savants) gave fundamental contributions
to the lively fossils debate of the late 17th century: Nicolas
Steno XXXXXXXXXXand Robert Hooke XXXXXXXXXXSteno
introduced rigorous criteria to read the sedimentary rocks
and recognized that fossils were an important component
of these strata, contributing to newer ways to interpret the
stratigraphic record. In the anatomical descriptions of the
head of a shark washed upon the shores of Tuscany (Fig. 1),
Steno recognized the similarities between the teeth and the
well-known fossils called Glossopetrae (Steno, XXXXXXXXXXThese
tongue-shaped objects were petrified and found embedded
in rocks. He argued that the Glossopetrae were teeth of much
larger sharks from earlier periods in history. At the same
time, Hooke firmly distanced himself from the biblical
deluge and its followers who tied the presence of fossils
to such an event (Steno was still in this camp). Hooke
thought this hypothesis was improbable and not supported
y evidence. In A Discourse of Earthquakes Hooke disputed
the biblical view of Earth’s age, proposed the extinction of
species, and argued that fossils atop hills and mountains
had become elevated by geological processes—quite an
unsettling view for his times.
Figure 1 Steno’s illustration of a shark’s head and its teeth,
which appeared in a report published in 1667.
2 Fildani
As intellectuals and philosophers (they called them-
selves “savants”) continued to challenge the reassuring
Biblical view, it was in mainland Europe where debates
were most vi
ant. One of the intellectual catalysts of these
times was Georges-Louis Leclerc, later known as Comte
de Buffon (1706–1788). During Buffon’s lifetime the idea
of a ‘deeper time’ and an older Earth and cosmos had al-
eady been diffused throughout intellectual circles. Buffon
himself was involved in attempts to calculate a reasonable
age for the Earth. He adopted the chronologic tables by
Jaques Roger (eventually published in 1778) and timed the
cooling of spherical objects of different sizes and material
to be scaled up to Earth-size. After many hesitations he
settled on a conservative age of 75,000 years, released via
a comprehensive thirty-six tome Histoire Naturelle. Hav-
ing second thoughts, he recalculated the age of Earth to
e about three million years, but the new figure was not
communicated to the public because he wo
ied about
the reader’s response. He was convinced that Le Som
e
Abîme du Temps (the Abyss of Time) would put the reade
in a state of dismay (Rossi, XXXXXXXXXXThe debate over Earth’s
genesis summarized by Buffon, who largely drew on and
enefitted from the work of Descartes, Diderot, Thomas
Wright, and d’Holbac, was already elevated by Emmanuel
Kant in his 1755 Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmles
where he finally removed the old view of a fixed cosmos
and situated humans in their new position: infinite space
in front and deep time behind.
James Hutton (1726—1797), considered the “father of
modern geology” in the Anglophile tradition, was ex-
tremely influential