Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle

Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time

Stephen Jay Gould

    1. The Discovery of Deep Time

    Deep Time

    Myths of Deep Time

    On Dichotomy

    Time's Arrow and Time's Cycle

    Caveats

    2. Thomas Burnet's Battleground of Time

    Burner's Frontispiece

    The Burnet of Textbooks

    Science versus Religion?

    Burnet's Methodology

    The Physics of History

    Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Conflict and Resolution

    Burnet and Steno as Intellectual Partners in the Light of Time's Arrow and Time's Cycle

    3. James Hutton's Theory of the Earth: A Machine without a History

    Picturing the Abyss of Time

    Hutton's World Machine and the Provision of Deep Time

    The Hutton of Legend

    Hutton Disproves His Legend

    The Sources of Necessary Cyclicity

    Hutton's Paradox: Or, Why the Discoverer of Deep Time Denied History

    Borges's Dilemma and Hutton's Motto

    Playfair: A Boswell with a Difference

    A Word in Conclusion and Prospect

    4. Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle

    The Case of Professor Ichthyosaurus

    Charles Lyell, Self-Made in Cardboard

    Lyell's Rhetorical Triumph: The Miscasting of Catastrophism

    Lyell's Defense of Time's Cycle

    Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle

    The Partial Unraveling of Lyell's World View

    Epilogue

    5. Boundaries

    Hampton's Throne and Burnet's Frontispiece

    The Deeper Themes of Arrows and Cycles

    Bibliography

    Index

  • Cover: Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle
  • A photo of the author

Stephen Jay Gould was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University and Vincent Astor Visiting Professor of Biology at New York University. A MacArthur Prize Fellow, he received innumerable honors and awards and wrote many books, including Ontogeny and Phylogeny and Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle (both from Harvard).