How old is the earth according to charles lyell

Thus these different phenomena were different aspects of the forces Lyell believed had operated over geological time to produce the world we see now. And Darwin, greatly influenced by Lyell, extended that principle to biology. Species, like geologic features, evolved gradually or died out gradually. Like the forces Lyell talked of, the shifting and rising and falling of land as illustrated by the Temple of Serapis , Darwin held that the forces seen today in the biologic world -- reproduction, inheritance, and competition -- gradually produced the whole diversity of life on Earth.

There, Lyell could not, and did not, go. He believed that every animal or plant, including humankind, was adapted to the niche in which it was created. Charles Lyell: Principles of Geology. Credits: By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University. Topics Covered: The Age of Darwin. Charles Lyell: Principles of Geology:. But I own that I have been rash and unguarded in the calculation. The stand-off was the subject of an early three-way conversation with Joseph Hooker and Charles Lyell. Along the way there was continued support from geologists like Joseph Beete Jukes who objected strongly when Darwin proposed omitting the 'Weald' argument altogether — leading Darwin to exclaim 'How hard it is to please everyone!

In , when Origin was in its third edition, Thomson calculated from its assumed rate of cooling that the earth itself was only between to million years old, and he continued to revise this figure inexorably down in succeeding years.

By the time Darwin was working on the fifth edition, Thomson had concluded that million years was the upper, rather than lower, limit of the age of the earth. Thompson, for I require for my theoretical views a very long period before the Cambrian formation. Evidence of soft-bodied larger animals and of abundant microscopic life in earlier periods has since been discovered, but Darwin was forced to postulate its existence, and explain the lack of evidence by the incompleteness of the fossil record.

Even then, there was no getting away from the fact that natural selection could only have produced such a wide variety of Cambrian life over a very long preceding timespan. The Cretaceous is now held to have spanned the period from to 65 million years ago.

The earth is now estimated to be around 4. Thomson and P. Tait, Treatise on natural philosophy , vol. CD is troubled by "brevity of the world", because pre-Silurian creatures must have lived during endless ages "else my views wd be wrong, which is impossible — Q. Returns book with thanks. Lyell is unwilling. Mentions H. CD greatly troubled by problem of age of the earth and calculations of Sir William Thomson. Asks about changes in the form of the globe.

Argues for great age of earth before the Cambrian period. Opposes measuring age from secular cooling. Opposes Sir William Thomson. Thanks for Moseley citation ["On the mechanical possibility of the descent of glaciers", Proc. Distinction made by THH between evolutionists and uniformitarians is too great. The internal heat [of the earth] will please geologists and evolutionists. Search site. International students Continuing education Executive and professional education Courses in education.

Research at Cambridge. For the curious Search form Search. The first to appreciate the antiquity of the Earth appears to have been James Hutton, a Scottish natural philosopher. Based on observations of uplift, sedimentation and erosion, his Theory of the Earth , published in , concluded that the age of the earth was essentially infinite with "no vestige of a beginning—and no prospect of an end.

Nevertheless, Charles Lyell extended and popularized his work with the publication of his own Principles of Geology in He maintained that the measurement of processes like erosion in the present era could be extended backwards to give some idea of the time required to create great geological features like river gorges. From the lack of fossil remains in older strata, Lyell concluded that man was of recent origin on the Earth. Darwin carried a copy of Lyell with him on his famous voyage on the Beagle.

With the expanded time horizon afforded by geology, Darwin was able to see how various species might arise by natural selection from a common precursor. From radiological dating of meteorites and homogenous terrestrial deposits of lead, it has been estimated that the Earth is about 4.