Charles Lyell

the Alps, Andes, and other chains, had been lifted up in a few months, his machinery was as extravagant and visionary as that of his most fanciful predecessors; and

As Hooke declared the favorite hypothesis of the day ('that marine fossil bodies were to be referred to Noah's flood') to be wholly untenable, he appears to have felt himself called upon to substitute a diluvial theory of his own, and thus …

he does not doubt but that there had been as many earthquakes in the parts of the earth under the ocean, as in the parts of the dry land

The elevating of the bottom of the sea, the sinking and submersion of the land, and most of the inequalities of the earth's surface, might, he said, be accounted for by the agency of these subterranean causes.

Hooke enumerated all the examples known to him of subterranean disturbance

This doctrine, it is true, had been laid down in terms almost equally explicit by Strabo, to explain the occurrence of fossil shells in the interior of continents, and to that geographer, and other writers of antiquity, Hooke frequently …

principal object was to account for the manner in which shells had been conveyed into the higher parts of 'the Alps, Apennines, and Pyrenean hills, and the interior of continents in general.' These and other appearances, he said, might …

he leans to the opinion that species had been lost

In some parts of his writings

Hooke was aware that the fossil ammonites, nautili, and many other shells and fossil skeletons found in England, were of different species from any then known

'The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke M.D.,'... appeared in 1705, containing 'A Discourse of Earthquakes'... His treatise... is the most philosophical production of that age, in regard to the causes of former changes in the organic and …

'Either,' said he, 'these were terriginous, or if otherwise, the animals they so exactly represent have become extinct. This writer appears to have been the first who was aware of the continuity over large districts of the principal groups …

Lister, to his accurate account of British shells, in 1678, added the fossil species

It will be necessary to dwell on futile reasoning and visionary hypothesis because the most extravagant systems were often invented or controverted by men of acknowledged talent.

also inferred that the present mountains had not existed ever since the origin of things, suggesting that many strata of submarine origin had been accumulated in the interval between the creation and deluge. Here he displayed his great …

Scilla, a Sicilian painter, published in 1670, a work on the fossils of Calabria, illustrated by good engravings. This was written in Latin, with great spirit and elegance, and it proves the continued ascendency of dogmas often refuted; …

The most remarkable work of that period was published by Steno

pointed out the different states of shells buried in the strata, distinguishing between, first, the mere mould or impression; secondly, the cast or nucleus; and thirdly, the remains of the shell itself. He had also the merit of being the …

although he gave way to the dogma that all fossil remains were to be referred to the Noachian deluge

that petrified shells had all been deposited by the universal deluge.

undertook, in 1580, to combat the notions

conceived that fossil shells had been left on the land by the sea, and had concreted into stone during the consolidation the soil

The title of a work of Cardano's, published in 1552, 'De Subtilitate' (corresponding to what would now be called Transcendental Philosophy), would lead us to expect, in the chapter on minerals, many far fetched theories characteristic of …

The system of scholastic disputations encouraged in the Universities of the middle ages had unfortunately trained men to habits of indefinite argumentation, and they often preferred absurd and extravagant propositions, because greater …