Science manifestly has the capacity to change our views of the world. Major transformations of our world view, however, are relatively rare. The paradigm case is that of the Scientific Revolution of the 16th & 17th Centuries in which the traditional view of a closed universe with the stationary earth at its center was replaced by an infinite universe in which the earth is one of several planets circling the sun. Another radical transformation of our world view occurred at the start of the 19th century. In this case, geological sciences replaced the classical understanding of a brief history of the earth traditionally derived from the Bible, to the vastly extended histories associated with modern radiometric methods and modern cosmologies. This temporal transformation, as significant in its extent as the spatial transformation of the Scientific Revolution, is surprisingly poorly understood and is too often described in terms limited to the simplistic models of the conflict of science and religion. Although the issues are generally framed in terms of an expanding time scale, the magnitude of time itself was actually of less importance than the character of the history (of the earth and of life, including human life) that was believed to have filled it. The crucial period in this outstandingly important development was the first half of the 19th century (with the last years of the 18th). With this grant, Professor Rudwick will undertake research necessary for a new synthetic account and interpretation of the building of earth-history during this decisive half century.
