Lyell's "The Student's Elements
of Geology"
Introduction by Philip Stott
Introduction:
The Student's Elements of Geology
Chapter 1: On the Different Classes of Rocks
Chapter
2:
Aqueous Rocks
Chapter 3:
Fossils in Strata
Chapter 4:
Consolidation of Strata and Petrifaction
Chapter 5:
Strata Above the Sea
Chapter 6:
Denudation
Lyell's interpretation of the
"record of the rocks" is the one which has dominated geology for more than a
century. The first few chapters of his famous text book are reproduced here
(with thanks to the Gutenberg Project). I have made a few comments. It is worth
remembering that the uniformity principle on which Lyell based his reasoning
about what he saw in the rocks has been discredited, though his conclusions have
largely gone unchanged.
Lyell's principle of
uniformitarianism: "No processes have, from the earliest times to which we can
look back, to the present, ever acted but those now acting, and they have never
acted with degrees of energy different to which they now exert." has been
replaced by: "the laws of science have remained constant over time."
These two assumptions allow
totally different interpretations of the rock record. The abandoning of Lyell's
principle has been forced upon geologists by evidence for enormously
catastrophic incidents:- huge meteorite impacts, vulcanism on a vast scale, etc.
which Lyell's principle specifically excluded. The time scale deduced using
Lyell's principle is still held. There is now no defensible basis for that time
scale. As can be seen from Lyell's own work, such basis as did exist was
unsound.
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