Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this book.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
Look at a cliff or a river valley and you are seeing slow work that took ages. Charles Lyell argued that the Earth was shaped gradually, by the same rain, rivers, volcanoes, and seas you can watch today, given enormous time. This is the later, ninth edition of his great book, packed with examples from around the world. Darwin read Lyell closely. His ideas changed how everyone thinks about our planet's age.
Charles Lyell was a Scottish lawyer turned geologist who set out to explain the earth's past using only causes we can watch at work today: rain, rivers, volcanoes, earthquakes and the slow rising and sinking of land. The book first appeared in 1830 and reshaped geology. Be aware that the text read here is the ninth edition, revised in 1853, so it carries two decades of Lyell's further evidence and argument.
Across fifty chapters in three books, Lyell first clears away old prejudices and reviews the history of geology, then examines modern changes in the inorganic world, from deltas and volcanoes to the shifting crust, and finally turns to the organic record: fossils, extinction, and how species are embedded in strata, closing with the formation of coral reefs. The young Darwin carried the first edition aboard the Beagle and saw the world through Lyell's eyes.
Much detail has been superseded, but the method, patient, evidence first and hostile to catastrophe, remains the grammar of earth science. Readers who enjoy deep time, volcanoes, or watching a discipline invent itself will find this long, rewarding book absorbing.
Charles Lyell, a Scottish lawyer turned geologist, first published Principles of Geology in 1830 to argue that slow, ordinary causes explain the earth's past. This text is the ninth edition of 1853, carrying fifty chapters on rivers, volcanoes, earthquakes, fossils, and the slow rise and fall of land. It offers the book that taught Darwin how to think in deep time, calm and massively documented.
The text on this page is not the famous first edition of 1830. It is Lyell's ninth edition, with a preface dated 11 Harley Street, May 24, 1853, by which time the Principles had been rethought and rewritten across more than two decades of new evidence. The work's first publication year is 1830; the words here are the mature 1853 version.
All fifty chapters are carried, in three books. Lyell opens by defining geology and sketching its history, answers the prejudices and supposed discordances that stood against his method, and then examines the causes of change now in progress: rivers excavating and transporting, tides and currents, springs and ice, volcanoes from Naples and Etna to Iceland, and earthquakes including Calabria in 1783. The final chapters turn to the organic world, the distribution, transmutation and extinction of species, and the embedding of fossils, closing with his concluding remarks.
Lyell's doctrine, that the present is the key to the past, shaped Darwin directly. This is a long, deliberate book. Read the opening and the chapters on rivers and volcanoes first, and the scale of his patience will do the rest.
Edition: Ninth edition, 1853 (preface dated May 24, 1853). The work was first published in 1830. Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 33224.
The first chapter
Geology defined--Compared to History--Its relation to other Physical Sciences--Not to be confounded with Cosmogony.
Geology is the science which investigates the successive changes that have taken place in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature; it inquires into the causes of these changes, and the influence which they have exerted in modifying the surface and external structure of our planet.
By these researches into the state of the earth and its inhabitants at former periods, we acquire a more perfect knowledge of its present condition, and more comprehensive views concerning the laws now governing its animate and inanimate productions. When we study history, we obtain a more profound insight into human nature, by instituting a comparison between the present and former states of society. We trace the long series of events which have gradually led to the actual posture of affairs; and by connecting effects with their causes, we are enabled to classify and retain in the memory a multitude of complicated relations--the various peculiarities of national character--the different degrees of moral and intellectual refinement, and numerous other circumstances, which, without historical associations, would be uninteresting or imperfectly understood. As the present condition of nations is the result of many antecedent changes, some extremely remote, and others recent, some gradual, others sudden and violent; so the state, of the natural world is the result of a long succession of events; and if we would enlarge our experience of the present economy of nature, we must investigate the effects of her operations in former epochs.
We often discover with surprise, on looking back into the chronicles of nations, how the fortune of some battle has influenced the fate of millions of our contemporaries, when it has long been forgotten by the mass of the population. With this remote event we may find inseparably connected the geographical boundaries of a great state, the language now spoken by the inhabitants, their peculiar manners, laws, and religious opinions. But far more astonishing and unexpected are the connections brought to light, when we carry back our researches into the history of nature. The form of a coast, the configuration of the interior of a country, the existence and extent of lakes, valleys, and mountains, can often be traced to the former prevalence of earthquakes and volcanoes in regions which have long been undisturbed. To these remote convulsions the present fertility of some districts, the sterile character of others, the elevation of land above the sea, the climate, and various peculiarities, may be distinctly referred. On the other hand, many distinguishing features of the surface may often be ascribed to the operation, at a remote era, of slow and tranquil causes--to the gradual deposition of sediment in a lake or in the ocean, or to the prolific increase of testacea and corals.
To select another example, we find in certain localities subterranean deposits of coal, consisting of vegetable matter, formerly drifted into seas and lakes. These seas and lakes have since been filled up, the lands whereon the forests grew have disappeared or changed their form, the rivers and currents which floated the vegetable masses can no longer be traced, and the plants belonged to species which for ages have passed away from the surface of our planet. Yet the commercial prosperity, and numerical strength of a nation, may now be mainly dependent on the local distribution of fuel determined by that ancient state of things.
Geology is intimately related to almost all the physical sciences, as history is to the moral. An historian should, if possible, be at once profoundly acquainted with ethics, politics, jurisprudence, the military art, theology; in a word, with all branches of knowledge by which any insight into human affairs, or into the moral and intellectual nature of man, can be obtained. It would be no less desirable that a geologist should be well versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy, botany; in short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic nature. With these accomplishments, the historian and geologist would rarely fail to draw correct and philosophical conclusions from the various monuments transmitted to them of former occurrences. They would know to what combination of causes analogous effects were referable, and they would often be enabled to supply, by inference, information concerning many events unrecorded in the defective archives of former ages. But as such extensive acquisitions are scarcely within the reach of any individual, it is necessary that men who have devoted their lives to different departments should unite their efforts; and as the historian receives assistance from the antiquary, and from those who have cultivated different branches of moral and political science, so the geologist should avail himself of the aid of many naturalists, and particularly of those who have studied the fossil remains of lost species of animals and plants.
The analogy, however, of the monuments consulted in geology, and those available in history, extends no farther than to one class of historical monuments--those which may be said to be undesignedly commemorative of former events. The canoes, for example, and stone hatchets found in our peat bogs, afford an insight into the rude arts and manners of the earliest inhabitants of our island; the buried coin fixes the date of the reign of some Roman emperor; the ancient encampment indicates the districts once occupied by invading armies, and the former method of constructing military defences; the Egyptian mummies throw light on the art of embalming, the rites of sepulture, or the average stature of the human race in ancient Egypt. This class of memorials yields to no other in authenticity, but it constitutes a small part only of the resources on which the historian relies, whereas in geology it forms the only kind of evidence which is at our command. For this reason we must not expect to obtain a full and connected account of any series of events beyond the reach of history. But the testimony of geological monuments, if frequently imperfect, possesses at least the advantage of being free from all intentional misrepresentation. We may be deceived in the inferences which we draw, in the same manner as we often mistake the nature and import of phenomena observed in the daily course of nature; but our liability to err is confined to the interpretation, and, if this be correct, our information is certain.
It was long before the distinct nature and legitimate objects of geology were fully recognized, and it was at first confounded with many other branches of inquiry, just as the limits of history, poetry, and mythology were ill-defined in the infancy of civilization. Even in Werner's time, or at the close of the eighteenth century, geology appears to have been regarded as little other than a subordinate department of mineralogy; and Desmarest included it under the head of Physical Geography. But the most common and serious source of confusion arose from the notion, that it was the business of geology to discover the mode in which the earth originated, or, as some imagined, to study the effects of those cosmological causes which were employed by the Author of Nature to bring this planet out of a nascent and chaotic state into a more perfect and habitable condition. Hutton was the first who endeavored to draw a strong line of demarcation between his favorite science and cosmogony, for he declared that geology was in nowise concerned "with questions as to the origin of things."
An attempt will be made in the sequel of this work to demonstrate that geology differs as widely from cosmogony, as speculations concerning the mode of the first creation of man differ from history. But, before entering more at large on this controverted question, it will be desirable to trace the progress of opinion on this topic, from the earliest ages to the commencement of the present century.
Continue: Chapter II: Historical Sketch of the Progress of Geology
Source: Project Gutenberg. First published 1830-1833; this text is the ninth edition of 1853. Author died 1875. Public domain worldwide. Share this book: WhatsApp
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