Once the hammers of geologists began turning
up startlingly clear fossils like the one shown here, it became much harder
for scientists, naturalists, and the general public to sustain the idea
of a neatly organized creation that had popped up during seven days  in
the year 4004 BC (the date established on Biblical authority by Bishop
Ussher of Ireland). The geological record offered compelling evidence of
an earth that was constantly undergoing changes of many kinds, from the
slow motions of erosion and sedimentation to the cataclysmic upheavals
of volcanoes and landslides. Charles Lyell's Principles
of Geology (1830-33) agreed with James Hutton that the geological
forces of the ancient past were identical to those still operating. This
meant that while millions of years might have been necessary to bring about
geological phenomena (metamorphic and igneous rock, fossilized organisms),
it was likewise true that no formation on earth was permanent. Fossils
contributed directly to debates about evolution and extinction, two concepts
that were clearly not in keeping with the Biblical account of creation.
Some natural theologians went so far as to argue that God had placed fossils
in the earth in order to test the faithful. Others claimed that these curious
objects were the remains of antediluvian giants and creatures that did
not make it onto Noah's ark. For poets, discoveries in geology and
earth science also made it much harder to find metaphoric images
of natural stability. "That sturdy mountain?"; well, it won't last. "That
mighty river?"; it wasn't here a million years ago, and it won't be in
this location a million years from now.
In 1797, one of Coleridge's metaphors for the human imagination derives from his image of a mountain throwing up a raging river and the gigantic rocks on its banks:
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
William Hamilton Drummond published The Giant's Causeway, A Poem in Belfast in 1811. His "epic" offers a lyrical history of Ireland based around the giant polygonal basalt formation along the north Antrim Coast, with copious notes on earth science and mythology. By 1850, Tennyson's personified "Nature" sounds like a Victorian geologist hammering away at a fossil-filled rock face: "From scarpèd cliff and quarried stone / She cries, 'A thousand types are gone: / I care for nothing, all shall go'." (In Memoriam, 56). The dynamic organicism that characterized the emerging science of biology thus found parallels in the canyons, cliffs, and waterfalls. The world beneath us was suddenly moving, shifting and always changing. (A.N.) |