Re: New Rudwick book

 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Armstrong <jarmstro@qwest.net>
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 11:43:07 -0700
Subject: Re: New Rudwick book

Just another reminder of the peculiarly repeated process wherein faith motivates exploration, then is troubled by having to deal with the results...
Let's verify that the celestial bodies trace perfect circles, as it should be. Wait! They're ellipses?! Parabolas!?! Must be wrong!
Let's go find geologic confirmation of the flood. Uh oh, the ages and sequences are not quite what we expected. Must be somethin' wrong!
Perhaps there is cosmological evidence of a creative beginning. Aha! There was a big bang! But wait a minute, the time scales are wrong! Oh dear!
Let's look at the substance of life. A wonderful, even awesome DNA/natural selection process emerges. But wait.....
And so it goes. There must be a lesson here somewhere. Seems somewhat akin to kicking against the goads.
The sad part of this to me is that the testimony of the "natural world" - a Creation once declared "good" - can be so cavalierly discounted as an unreliable voice as from a corrupted creation.
OK, 'nuff of that!

This book looks like a good offering. Thanks!
JimA

 
Karl replies:
I'm not exactly sure where you're going with this, but just because something such as the Flood was a legitimate scientific [sic] pursuit in the 18th century doesn't necessarily mean that it still should be. The intertwining of religious, social, scientific, etc. thought produces a much more interesting tapestry than any idealogical approach, be it an apologia for religion or atheism. All the while keeping in mind that there is no "view from nowhere" -- at least not for us mortals.
 
Karl
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cmekve@aol.com wrote:
When was the last time you finished a 700 page book and were sorry to see it end? For me it was yesterday. Fortunately a sequel is promised.
 
Martin Rudwick, the dean of earth science historians (and also a paleontologist by training), has published a magnificent work entitled Bursting the Limits of Time (Univ. Chicago Press, 2005). Unlike most histories of geology, this one includes the center of research at the time (Paris) and other work on the Continent -- thanks to Rudwick's facility with languages other than English. It's a history of ideas (which should please Ted D.!) while also including them in the social settings of the time (sort of a "weak" Strong Programme approach). The era covered is approximately from de Saussure's ascent of Mont Blanc in 1787 to Cuvier and Buckland in the early decades of the 1800's, thus spanning the Terror in France.
 
Of special interest to this list is the way Rudwick adds yet another nail in the coffin of the "Conflict of Science and Religion". The actual history is so much more complicated (and interesting!) than that tired old cliche. As one aspect of the development of a sense of "geohistory" (i.e., an actual history recorded in the rocks of the earth), he emphasizes the important roll of Judeo-Christian thought. For example:
 
"Far from "retarding the Progress of Science", a lively concern to understand Genesis in scientific terms, and more particularly an interest in identifying the physical traces of the Flood, facilitated just the kind of thinking that was needed in order to develop a distinctively geohistorical practice within the sciences of the Earth." [p.236]
 
Also this footnote regarding his rejection of the idea that religion had retarded the progress of science:
"I should put it on record that the conclusion summarized in this paragraph came to seem compelling only at a late stage in the writing of this book, as a result of my detailed research; it was not a guiding feature of my interpretation from the start. My own personal [Christian] beliefs may have made me more open to the evidence in its favor than I might otherwise have been--I did not approach the sources with the usual knee-jerk hostility to all things religious--but I did not expect this conclusion, still less strive to demonstrate it." [p. 7]
 
I can't recommend this book too highly!! Buy it or borrow it if you have the slightest interest in the history of the earth sciences. (Besides, he prominently references our own Michael R.'s article in the Churchman, "Geology and Genesis Unearthed" !)
 
Karl
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Karl V. Evans
cmekve@aol.com
 
Received on Thu Jan 26 16:34:15 2006