Discourses: Biological and Geological — Geological Reform Pt 2

I have said that the three schools of geological speculation which I have termed Catastrophism, Uniformitarianism, and Evolutionism, are commonly supposed to be antagonistic to one another; and I presume it will have become obvious that in my belief, the last is destined to swallow up the other two.

But it is proper to remark that each of the latter has kept alive the tradition of precious truths.

CATASTROPHISM has insisted upon the existence of a practically unlimited bank of force, on which the theorist might draw; and it has cherished the idea of the development of the earth from a state in which its form, and the forces which it exerted, were very different from those we now know.

That such difference of form and power once existed is a necessary part of the doctrine of evolution.

UNIFORMITARIANISM, on the other hand, has with equal justice insisted upon a practically unlimited bank of time, ready to discount any quantity of hypothetical paper.

It has kept before our eyes the power of the infinitely little, time being granted, and has compelled us to exhaust known causes, before flying to the unknown.

To my mind there appears to be no sort of necessary theoretical antagonism between Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism.

On the contrary, it is very conceivable that catastrophes may be part and parcel of uniformity.

Let me illustrate my case by analogy.

The working of a clock is a model of uniform action; good time-keeping means uniformity of action.

But the striking of the clock is essentially a catastrophe; the hammer might be made to blow up a barrel of gunpowder, or turn on a deluge of water; and, by proper arrangement, the clock, instead of marking the hours, might strike at all sorts of irregular periods, never twice alike, in the intervals, force, or number of its blows.

Nevertheless, all these irregular, and apparently lawless, catastrophes would be the result of an absolutely uniformitarian action; and we might have two schools of clock-theorists, one studying the hammer and the other the pendulum.

Still less is there any necessary antagonists between either of these doctrines and that of Evolution, which embraces all that is sound in both Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism, while it rejects the arbitrary assumptions of the one and the, as arbitrary, limitations of the other.

Nor is the value of the doctrine of Evolution to the philosophic thinker diminished by the fact that it applies the same method to the living and the not-living world; and embraces, in one stupendous analogy, the growth of a solar system from molecular chaos, the shaping of the earth from the nebulous cub-hood of its youth, through innumerable changes and immeasurable ages, to its present form; and the development of a living being from the shapeless mass of protoplasm we term a germ.

I do not know whether Evolutionism can claim that amount of currency which would entitle it to be called British popular geology; but, more or less vaguely, it is assuredly present in the minds of most geologists.

Such being the three phases of geological speculation, we are now in position to inquire which of these it is that Sir William Thomson calls upon us to reform in the passages which I have cited.

It is obviously Uniformitarianism which the distinguished physicist takes to be the representative of geological speculation in general.

And thus a first issue is raised, inasmuch as many persons (and those not the least thoughtful among the younger geologists) do not accept strict Uniformitarianism as the final form of geological speculation.

We should say, if Hutton and Playfair declare the course of the world to have been always the same, point out the fallacy by all means; but, in so doing, do not imagine that you are proving modern geology to be in opposition to natural philosophy.

I do not suppose that, at the present day, any geologist would be found to maintain absolute Uniformitarianism, to deny that the rapidity of the rotation of the earth _may_ be diminishing, that the sun _may_ be waxing dim, or that the earth itself _may_ be cooling.

Most of us, I suspect, are Gallios, "who care for none of these things," being of opinion that, true or fictitious, they have made no practical difference to the earth, during the period of which a record is preserved in stratified deposits.

The accusation that we have been running counter to the _principles_ of natural philosophy, therefore, is devoid of foundation.

The only question which can arise is whether we have, or have not, been tacitly making assumptions which are in opposition to certain conclusions which may be drawn from those principles.

And this question subdivides itself into two:--the first, are we really contravening such conclusions?

the second, if we are, are those conclusions so firmly based that we may not contravene them?

I reply in the negative to both these questions, and I will give you my reasons for so doing.

Sir William Thomson believes that he is able to prove, by physical reasonings, "that the existing state of things on the earth, life on the earth--all geological history showing continuity of life--must be limited within some such period of time as one hundred million years" (_loc.

cit.

_ p. 25).

The first inquiry which arises plainly is, has it ever been denied that this period _may_ be enough for the purposes of geology?

The discussion of this question is greatly embarrassed by the vagueness with which the assumed limit is, I will not say defined, but indicated,-- "some such period of past time as one hundred million years."

Now does this mean that it may have been two, or three, or four hundred million years?

Because this really makes all the difference.

[15] [Footnote 15: Sir William Thomson implies (_loc.

cit_.

p. 16) that the precise time is of no consequence: "the principle is the same"; but, as the principle is admitted, the whole discussion turns on its practical results.

] I presume that 100,000 feet may be taken as a full allowance for the total thickness of stratified rocks containing traces of life; 100,000 divided by 100,000,000 = 0. 001. Consequently, the deposit of 100,000 feet of stratified rock in 100,000,000 years means that the deposit has taken place at the rate of 1/1000 of a foot, or, say, 1/83 of an inch, per annum.

Well, I do not know that any one is prepared to maintain that, even making all needful allowances, the stratified rocks may not have been formed, on the average, at the rate of 1/83 of an inch per annum.

I

suppose that if such could be shown to be the limit of world-growth, we could put up with the allowance without feeling that our speculations had undergone any revolution.

And perhaps, after all, the qualifying phrase "some such period" may not necessitate the assumption of more than 1/166 or 1/249 or 1/332 of an inch of deposit per year, which, of course, would give us still more ease and comfort.

But, it may be said, that it is biology, and not geology, which asks for so much time--that the succession of life demands vast intervals; but this appears to me to be reasoning in a circle.

Biology takes her time from geology.

The only reason we have for believing in the slow rate of the change in living forms is the fact that they persist through a series of deposits which, geology informs us, have taken a long while to make.

If the geological clock is wrong, all the naturalist will have to do is to modify his notions of the rapidity of change accordingly.

And I venture to point out that, when we are told that the limitation of the period during which living beings have inhabited this planet to one, two, or three hundred million years requires a complete revolution in geological speculation, the _onus probandi_ rests on the maker of the assertion, who brings forward not a shadow of evidence in its support.

Thus, if we accept the limitation of time placed before us by Sir W. Thomson, it is not obvious, on the face of the matter, that we shall have to alter, or reform, our ways in any appreciable degree; and we may therefore proceed with much calmness, and indeed much indifference, as to the result, to inquire whether that limitation is justified by the arguments employed in its support.

These arguments are three in number.

-- I.

The first is based upon the undoubted fact that the tides tend to retard the rate of the earth's rotation upon its axis.

That this must be so is obvious, if one considers, roughly, that the tides result from the pull which the sun and the moon exert upon the sea, causing it to act as a sort of break upon the rotating solid earth.

Kant, who was by no means a mere "abstract philosopher," but a good mathematician and well versed in the physical science of his time, not only proved this in an essay of exquisite clearness and intelligibility, now more than a century old,[16] but deduced from it some of its more important consequences, such as the constant turning of one face of the moon towards the earth.

[Footnote 16: "Untersuchung der Frage oh die Erde in ihrer Umdrehung um die Achse, wodurch sie die Abwechselung des Tages und der Nacht hervorbringt, einige Veränderung seit den ersten Zeiten ihres Ursprunges erlitten habe, &c." --KANT's _Sämmntliche Werke_, Bd.

i.

p. 178. ] But there is a long step from the demonstration of a tendency to the estimation of the practical value of that tendency, which is all with which we are at present concerned.

The facts bearing on this point appear to stand as follows:-- It is a matter of observation that the moon's mean motion is (and has for the last 3,000 years been) undergoing an acceleration, relatively to the rotation of the earth.

Of course this may result from one of two causes: the moon may really have been moving more swiftly in its orbit; or the earth may have been rotating more slowly on its axis.

Laplace believed he had accounted for this phenomenon by the fact that the eccentricity of the earth's orbit has been diminishing throughout these 3,000 years.

This would produce a diminution of the mean attraction of the sun on the moon; or, in other words, an increase in the attraction of the earth on the moon; and, consequently, an increase in the rapidity of the orbital motion of the latter body.

Laplace, therefore, laid the responsibility of the acceleration upon the moon, and if his views were correct, the tidal retardation must either be insignificant in amount, or be counteracted by some other agency.

Our great astronomer, Adams, however, appears to have found a flaw in Laplace's calculation, and to have shown that only half the observed retardation could be accounted for in the way he had suggested.

There remains, therefore, the other half to be accounted for; and here, in the absence of all positive knowledge, three sets of hypotheses have been suggested.

(_a_.

) M.

Delaunay suggests that the earth is at fault, in consequence of the tidal retardation.

Messrs. Adams, Thomson, and Tait work out this suggestion, and, "on a certain assumption as to the proportion of retardations due to the sun and moon," find the earth may lose twenty-two seconds of time in a century from this cause.

[17] [Footnote 17: Sir W. Thomson, _loc.

cit_.

p. 14. ] (_b_.

) But M. Dufour suggests that the retardation of the earth (which is hypothetically assumed to exist) may be due in part, or wholly, to the increase of the moment of inertia of the earth by meteors falling upon its surface.

This suggestion also meets with the entire approval of Sir W.

Thomson, who shows that meteor-dust, accumulating at the rate of one foot in 4,000 years, would account for the remainder of retardation.

[18] [Footnote 18: _Ibid.

_ p. 27. ] (_c_.

) Thirdly, Sir W. Thomson brings forward an hypothesis of his own with respect to the cause of the hypothetical retardation of the earth's rotation:-- "Let us suppose ice to melt from the polar regions (20° round each pole, we may say) to the extent of something more than a foot thick, enough to give 1. 1 foot of water over those areas, or 0. 006 of a foot of water if spread over the whole globe, which would, in reality, raise the sea-level by only some such undiscoverable difference as three-fourths of an inch or an inch.

This, or the reverse, which we believe might happen any year, and could certainly not be detected without far more accurate observations and calculations for the mean sea-level than any hitherto made, would slacken or quicken the earth's rate as a timekeeper by one- tenth of a second per year."

[19] [Footnote 19: _Ibid.

_] I do not presume to throw the slightest doubt upon the accuracy of any of the calculations made by such distinguished mathematicians as those who have made the suggestions I have cited.

On the contrary, it is necessary to my argument to assume that they are all correct.

But I desire to point out that this seems to be one of the many cases in which the admitted accuracy of mathematical process is allowed to throw a wholly inadmissible appearance of authority over the results obtained by them.

Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends upon what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat-flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.

In the present instance it appears to be admitted:-- 1. That it is not absolutely certain, after all, whether the moon's mean motion is undergoing acceleration, or the earth's rotation retardation.

[20] And yet this is the key of the whole position.

[Footnote 20: It will be understood that I do not wish to deny that the earth's rotation _may be_ undergoing retardation.

] 2. If the rapidity of the earth's rotation is diminishing, it is not certain how much of that retardation is due to tidal friction, how much to meteors, how much to possible excess of melting over accumulation of polar ice, during the period covered by observation, which amounts, at the outside, to not more than 2,600 years.

3. The effect of a different distribution of land and water in modifying the retardation caused by tidal friction, and of reducing it, under some circumstances, to a minimum, does not appear to be taken into account.

4. During the Miocene epoch the polar ice was certainly many feet thinner than it has been during, or since, the Glacial epoch.

Sir W. Thomson tells us that the accumulation of something more than a foot of ice around the poles (which implies the withdrawal of, say, an inch of water from the general surface of the sea) will cause the earth to rotate quicker by one-tenth of a second per annum.

It would appear, therefore, that the earth may have been rotating, throughout the whole period which has elapsed from the commencement of the Glacial epoch down to the present time, one, or more, seconds per annum quicker than it rotated during the Miocene epoch.

But, according to Sir W. Thomson's calculation, tidal retardation will only account for a retardation of 22" in a century, or 22/100 (say 1/5) of a second per annum.

Thus, assuming that the accumulation of polar ice since the Miocene epoch has only been sufficient to produce ten times the effect of a coat of ice one foot thick, we shall have an accelerating cause which covers all the loss from tidal action, and leaves a balance of 4/5 of a second per annum in the way of acceleration.

If tidal retardation can be thus checked and overthrown by other temporary conditions, what becomes of the confident assertion, based upon the assumed uniformity of tidal retardation, that ten thousand million years ago the earth must have been rotating more than twice as fast as at present, and, therefore, that we geologists are "in direct opposition to the principles of Natural Philosophy" if we spread geological history over that time?

II.

The second argument is thus stated by Sir W. Thomson:--"An article, by myself, published in 'Macmillan's Magazine' for March 1862, on the age of the sun's heat, explains results of investigation into various questions as to possibilities regarding the amount of heat that the sun could have, dealing with it as you would with a stone, or a piece of matter, only taking into account the sun's dimensions, which showed it to be possible that the sun may have already illuminated the earth for as many as one hundred million years, but at the same time rendered it almost certain that he had not illuminated the earth for five hundred millions of years.

The estimates here are necessarily very vague; but yet, vague as they are, I do not know that it is possible, upon any reasonable estimate founded on known properties of matter, to say that we can believe the sun has really illuminated the earth for five hundred million years."

[21] [Footnote 21: _Loc.

cit.

_ p. 20. ] I do not wish to "Hansardise" Sir William Thomson by laying much stress on the fact that, only fifteen years ago he entertained a totally different view of the origin of the sun's heat, and believed that the energy radiated from year to year was supplied from year to year--a doctrine which would have suited Hutton perfectly.

But the fact that so eminent a physical philosopher has, thus recently, held views opposite to those which he now entertains, and that he confesses his own estimates to be "very vague," justly entitles us to disregard those estimates, if any distinct facts on our side go against them.

However, I am not aware that such facts exist.

As I have already said, for anything I know, one, two, or three hundred millions of years may serve the needs of geologists perfectly well.

III.

The third line of argument is based upon the temperature of the interior of the earth.

Sir W. Thomson refers to certain investigations which prove that the present thermal condition of the interior of the earth implies either a heating of the earth within the last 20,000 years of as much as 100° F. , or a greater heating all over the surface at some time further back than 20,000 years, and then proceeds thus:-- "Now, are geologists prepared to admit that, at some time within the last 20,000 years, there has been all over the earth so high a temperature as that?

I presume not; no geologist--no _modern_ geologist--would for a moment admit the hypothesis that the present state of underground heat is due to a heating of the surface at so late a period as 20,000 years ago.

If that is not admitted we are driven to a greater heat at some time more than 20,000 years ago.

A greater heating all over the surface than 100° Fahrenheit would kill nearly all existing plants and animals, I may safely say.

Are modern geologists prepared to say that all life was killed off the earth 50,000, 100,000, or 200,000 years ago?

For the uniformity theory, the further back the time of high surface-temperature is put the better; but the further back the time of heating, the hotter it must have been.

The best for those who draw most largely on time is that which puts it furthest back; and that is the theory that the heating was enough to melt the whole.

But even if it was enough to melt the whole, we must still admit some limit, such as fifty million years, one hundred million years, or two or three hundred million years ago.

Beyond that we cannot go."

[22] [Footnote 22: _Loc.

cit.

_ p. 24. ] It will be observed that the "limit" is once again of the vaguest, ranging from 50,000,000 years to 300,000,000. And the reply is, once more, that, for anything that can be proved to the contrary, one or two hundred million years might serve the purpose, even of a thoroughgoing Huttonian uniformitarian, very well.

But if, on the other hand, the 100,000,000 or 200,000,000 years appear to be insufficient for geological purposes, we must closely criticise the method by which the limit is reached.

The argument is simple enough.

_Assuming_ the earth to be nothing but a cooling mass, the quantity of heat lost per year, _supposing_ the rate of cooling to have been uniform, multiplied by any given number of years, will be given the minimum temperature that number of years ago.

But is the earth nothing but a cooling mass, "like a hot-water jar such as is used in carriages," or "a globe of sandstone," and has its cooling been uniform?

An affirmative answer to both these questions seems to be necessary to the validity of the calculations on which Sir W. Thomson lays so much stress.

Nevertheless it surely may be urged that such affirmative answers are purely hypothetical, and that other suppositions have an equal right to consideration.

For example, is it not possible that, at the prodigious temperature which would seem to exist at 100 miles below the surface, all the metallic bases may behave as mercury does at a red heat, when it refuses to combine with oxygen; while, nearer the surface, and therefore at a lower temperature, they may enter into combination (as mercury does with oxygen a few degrees below its boiling-point), and so give rise to a heat totally distinct from that which they possess as cooling bodies?

And has it not also been proved by recent researches that the quality of the atmosphere may immensely affect its permeability to heat; and, consequently, profoundly modify the rate of cooling the globe as a whole?

I do not think it can be denied that such conditions may exist, and may so greatly affect the supply, and the loss, of terrestrial heat as to destroy the value of any calculations which leave them out of sight.

My functions as your advocate are at an end.

I speak with more than the sincerity of a mere advocate when I express the belief that the case against us has entirely broken down.

The cry for reform which has been raised without, is superfluous, inasmuch as we have long been reforming from within, with all needful speed.

And the critical examination of the grounds upon which the very grave charge of opposition to the principles of Natural Philosophy has been brought against us, rather shows that we have exercised a wise discrimination in declining, for the present, to meddle with our foundations.

XI