THE FIRMAMENT OF TIME

by Loren Eisley ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 25, 1960

No man today can face the malignity of man's notion that nature exists to be harnessed or destroyed, that man strives against man, that the ethic of the group is paramount, and that progress is a beckoning mirage. Without the light that brought man up from the slime we are lost, as man is caught in the trap of his own ingenuity. Loren Eisley urges the study of the history of science that we may trace in our minds the relation of one step to the next. It should bring greater tolerance, and an extension of horizon that might restore the light. And so he goes back to man's earliest concept of natural law, to the first faint signs beyond awareness of night and day, the round of seasons, the sense of a divine system, a naive faith in catastrophe as a dominant force. Fossils are studied, voyages expand the knowledge of the world, the first telescope opens the heavens, the first microscope the earth. The discovery of the speed of light, of gravitation, contribute to a changing intellectual climate. He then traces the men who revolutionized thinking- the acceptance, reluctancy, of geological and then organic change:- Hutton, Lyell, Wollaston, Coleridge, Chambers, Darwin, Lamarck, and others. Four key propositions are historically assessed:- the antiquity of the planet, the true geological succession of forms, the amount and significance of individual variation, the notion of a balanced world machinery yielding to the recognition of life as subject to change. These propositions were accepted before Bruckner, Malthus. Blyth, Agassiz added to the sum of knowledge and theory. And today- armed with more power than we reckoned with- we are threatened with -- What? The material included herein consisted originally of six lectures, now woven into an integrated whole- the intent to promote a better understanding of the role of science past and present, through its own evolutionary progress. Even those not scientifically oriented will find it challenges our too placid acceptance of current aspects of the drama.

Pub Date: July 25, 1960

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories: NONFICTION