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The theory hitches on wonderfully well to Lyell's uniformitarian theory in geology, that the thing that has been is the thing that is and shall be, that the natural operations now going on will account for all geological changes in a quiet and easy way, only give them time enough, so connecting the present and the proximate with the farthest past by almost imperceptible gradations, a view which finds large and increasing, if not general, acceptance in physical geology, and of which Darwin's theory is the natural complement.
The Law of Gravitation was so-and-so, but what was Gravitation? and he would have been thrown quite off his base if Sir Isaac had answered that he did not know. At the very outset Adams struck on Sir Charles's Glacial Theory or theories. He was ignorant enough to think that the glacial epoch looked like a chasm between him and a uniformitarian world.
The theory hitches on wonderfully well to Lyell's uniformitarian theory in geology that the thing that has been is the thing that is and shall be that the natural operations now going on will account for all geological changes in a quiet and easy way, only give them time enough, so connecting the present and the proximate with the farthest past by almost imperceptible gradations a view which finds large and increasing, if not general, acceptance in physical geology, and of which Darwin's theory is the natural complement.
Indeed, the following passage of the preface, in which De Maillet is supposed to speak of the Indian philosopher Telliamed, his alter ego, might have been written by the most philosophical uniformitarian of the present day:
But now came Charles Lyell with his famous extension of the "uniformitarian" doctrine, claiming that past changes of the earth's surface have been like present changes in degree as well as in kind. The making of continents and mountains, he said, is going on as rapidly to-day as at any time in the past.
Indeed, the following passage of the preface, in which De Maillet is supposed to speak of the Indian philosopher Telliamed, his 'alter ego', might have been written by the most philosophical uniformitarian of the present day:
The record in Genesis is confirmed, for modern science compels us to believe in Creation as the only possible origin of life, a Creation entirely different from anything now going on, and one that can never be made to fit into any scheme of uniformitarian evolution.
And the reply is, once more, that, for anything that can be proved to the contrary, one or two hundred million years might serve the purpose, even of a thorough-going Huttonian uniformitarian, very well. But if, on the other hand, the 100,000,000 or 200,000,000 years appear to be insufficient for geological purposes, we must closely criticise the method by which the limit is reached.
Nevertheless, all these irregular, and apparently lawless, catastrophes would be the result of an absolutely uniformitarian action; and we might have two schools of clock-theorists, one studying the hammer and the other the pendulum.
At last he resorted to what he thought the bold experiment of inserting a sentence in the text, intended to provoke correction. The hint produced no effect. Sir Charles said not a word; he let the paragraph stand; and Adams never knew whether the great Uniformitarian was strict or lax in his uniformitarian creed; but he doubted.
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