THE MECHANICAL CLOCK, THE QUANTIFICATION OF TIME, AND THE AGE OF THE EARTH

Over 200 years separate the seminal discoveries of a universe with immense size and an earth of exceptional antiquity. By the late 17^th century, the distances to even the nearest stars were understood to be enormous. In contrast, not until the late 19^thcentury did scientists become convinced that earth history required not just several thousand years, but most likely hundreds of millions, if not billions, of years.

A persistent, albeit erroneous, standard canon of popularized science history frames religion and science as antagonistic, with religion having restrained both the spatial and temporal dimensions of the universe, but with a markedly tighter grip on its age. Fueled by early social commentaries and by modern-day religious fundamentalism, “Conflict Theory” has not held up to serious historical scrutiny; in fact, during the period of scientific emergence in Western Europe, religion was simply one of many cultural influences.

A more historically accurate explanation for the lag in discovering Deep Time involves two interrelated factors: 1) The rise in quantification and usage of precisely measured time, and 2) the application of mechanistic philosophy to earth process. Together, these influences transformed the 18^th century descriptive and dominantly ahistorical “sciences of the earth” into a discipline capable of interpreting earth’s past.

By the late 18^th century, the mechanical clock had moved from its origins in church towers and town squares, into people’s homes and their pockets. It not only generated a public perception of time as highly measurable (literally quantized into hours, minutes, etc.), but the device itself became a symbol of mechanization and a metaphor for universal laws, e.g. the “clock-work universe.” The integration of measured time into the cultural consciousness generated an increase in antiquarian and horological pursuits; ultimately encouraging inquiry into earth’s origins. Combined with the success of the mechanistic philosophy, rocks and fossils, by the late 19^th century, could finally be used to force a radically new interpretation of earth’s age.