Introduction
13
known, Benoît de Maillet, in the late 1740s.
2 These theories, and the
“Vulcanist” successors that were to challenge them from the 1760s
onwards, replace abstract mechanical models of geological formation
with an emphasis on the natural forces shaping the Earth, be they watery (Neptunist) or fiery (Vulcanist), focussing specifically on what
Buffon would consider to be “actual causes”, that is, observable geological processes active in the present world.
3 This conceptual break is
reinforced with the explosion of both theorizing and fieldwork that accompanied the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, a scientific obsession with
all things telluric which, if anything, intensified in the following decades. The upper limit of our chronological range – 1940 – approximately marks a further shift in geological thinking, this time away
from the paradigm established on the basis of Enlightenment and postEnlightenment work in the earth sciences to the widespread discussion
and ultimate acceptance of such key theories of twentieth- and twentyfirst-century geology as continental drift, plate tectonics and the radioactivity of the Earth’s core.
4
Yet it is also worth noting that while we have periodized or historicized our study of the contribution of earth sciences to French culture from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth century,
many of the chapters make it abundantly clear that these earth sciences
constitute in themselves a fundamental historicizing force for their
contemporaries. That is, they provide an optic through which to revise
traditional chronologies, specifically those of established religion.
What is more, the vast temporal panoramas laid out by geology do
much more than reveal a past more distant than was ever imagined before; as certain chapters here show, they also serve to redefine perceptions of the historical present (the Lisbon earthquake is a key
moment in this process) and to shape anticipations of the future. The
implicit or explicit attacks on religion are one of the most salient features of the historicizing perspective afforded by the early earth sciences of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Thus the
___________________________
2 De Maillet’s Telliamed (Amsterdam: 1748), whose title is his name spelt backwards,
contains wildly speculative visions of a universal, primordial sea and a chronology of
the Earth stretching back millions of years, both notions that Buffon would develop
more circumspectly and empirically.
3 See Rudwick, Bursting the Limits of Time, pp. 140, 178.
4 See for instance Oldroyd, Thinking about the Earth, pp. 248-82.
13
known, Benoît de Maillet, in the late 1740s.
2 These theories, and the
“Vulcanist” successors that were to challenge them from the 1760s
onwards, replace abstract mechanical models of geological formation
with an emphasis on the natural forces shaping the Earth, be they watery (Neptunist) or fiery (Vulcanist), focussing specifically on what
Buffon would consider to be “actual causes”, that is, observable geological processes active in the present world.
3 This conceptual break is
reinforced with the explosion of both theorizing and fieldwork that accompanied the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, a scientific obsession with
all things telluric which, if anything, intensified in the following decades. The upper limit of our chronological range – 1940 – approximately marks a further shift in geological thinking, this time away
from the paradigm established on the basis of Enlightenment and postEnlightenment work in the earth sciences to the widespread discussion
and ultimate acceptance of such key theories of twentieth- and twentyfirst-century geology as continental drift, plate tectonics and the radioactivity of the Earth’s core.
4
Yet it is also worth noting that while we have periodized or historicized our study of the contribution of earth sciences to French culture from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth century,
many of the chapters make it abundantly clear that these earth sciences
constitute in themselves a fundamental historicizing force for their
contemporaries. That is, they provide an optic through which to revise
traditional chronologies, specifically those of established religion.
What is more, the vast temporal panoramas laid out by geology do
much more than reveal a past more distant than was ever imagined before; as certain chapters here show, they also serve to redefine perceptions of the historical present (the Lisbon earthquake is a key
moment in this process) and to shape anticipations of the future. The
implicit or explicit attacks on religion are one of the most salient features of the historicizing perspective afforded by the early earth sciences of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Thus the
___________________________
2 De Maillet’s Telliamed (Amsterdam: 1748), whose title is his name spelt backwards,
contains wildly speculative visions of a universal, primordial sea and a chronology of
the Earth stretching back millions of years, both notions that Buffon would develop
more circumspectly and empirically.
3 See Rudwick, Bursting the Limits of Time, pp. 140, 178.
4 See for instance Oldroyd, Thinking about the Earth, pp. 248-82.