A Short History of Nearly Everything: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Bryson describes Scottish scientist and farmer James Hutton (born in 1726) as the inventer of geology but a painfully obtuse writer. In Hutton’s time, many scientists are wondering why so many clam fossils are found on mountaintops. “Neptunists” believe that changes in sea levels are responsible (meaning the mountains were once underwater), while “Plutonists” think volcanic eruptions spewed clams out from the sea and landed them on top of mountains. While examining soil on his farmland, however, Hutton has a brilliant insight: he realizes that if the mountains were once underwater, erosion would have made them smooth, like pebbles.

Mountains aren’t smooth, however—they’re clearly made of jagged surfaces that would have eroded away if they were once underwater. Hutton concludes this must mean that the mountains rose up out of the ground, taking even older clam fossils with them when the mountains formed. He also deduces that heat within Earth must be responsible for warping its surface to make mountains. Hutton’s intuitions are correct—they anticipate plate tectonics theory, which argues that mountains are created when tectonic plates that slide around on hot molten rocks smash into one another.

Hutton publishes several books on his findings, but unfortunately they’re written in such convoluted prose that nobody understands what he’s talking about. His insights are thus completely ignored by the scientific community. Charles Lyell, who later lays the foundations of modern geology, admits that “he couldn’t get through” Hutton’s books. Hutton’s insights are marginally salvaged when Hutton’s good friend, mathematician John Playfair (who “could write silken prose”) summarizes Hutton’s ideas in 1802, five years after Hutton’s death.

Geology takes the 19th-century world by storm. Roderich Murchison’s 1839 book The Silarium System (about rocks) is a bestseller, and Lyell’s 1841 lectures on marine zeolites are sold out in Boston. People venture to the country for a bit of leisurely “stone breaking”—in formal attire, no less—including Lyell’s eccentric professor, the Reverend William Buckland (who famously tried to eat one of every animal that existed).

In this period, geologists are divided into two camps about the events that shaped Earth in its early history. Buckland is a “catastrophist” who believes catastrophic events like floods shaped Earth. This also aligns with Buckland’s faith, since Christianity references ancient floods and plagues and such. His student Lyell, on the other hand, is a “uniformitarian”: he believes that change happened slowly and gradually. Eventually, the uniformitarian view wins out, and Lyell goes on to become the father of modern geological thought, publishing the landmark The Principles of Geology in 1830. His work is profoundly influential—Darwin even takes a copy with him when theorizing evolution in the Galapagos.

In this era, scientists agree on four broad geological eras—Precambian, Palezoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic—but they still don’t know what time periods apply for each age. Speculation abounds about Earth’s age, coming from every corner of Europe’s intellectual community. Irish Archbishop James Ussher concludes that Earth was created at “midday on October 23, 4004 B.C.,” to scientific ridicule. Even the eccentric Buckland thinks biblical genesis lasted “millions upon millions of years.”

Compte de Buffon, meanwhile, runs strange experiments that involve heating up model globes until they’re white-hot and then touching them to measure heat loss. He estimates that Earth is approximately 75,000-168,000 years old, while Darwin curiously claims that parts of Earth are 306,662,400 years old before rescinding his suggestion. Even the illustrious Lord Kelvin—who patents modern refrigeration, devises absolute temperature, and makes profound contributions in thermodynamics—is stumped. He assumes that the sun is young because it still has “fuel,” and he grossly underestimates Earth’s age despite fossil evidence to the contrary.