Book description
One of the key works in the nineteenth-century battle between science
and Scripture, Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830-33) sought to
explain the geological state of the modern Earth by considering the
long-term effects of observable natural phenomena. Written with clarity
and a dazzling intellectual passion, it is both a seminal work of modern
geology and a compelling precursor to Darwinism, exploring the evidence
for radical changes in climate and geography across the ages and
speculating on the progressive development of life. A profound influence
on Darwin, Principles of Geology also captured the imagination of
contemporaries such as Melville, Emerson, Tennyson and George Eliot,
transforming science with its depiction of the powerful forces that
shape the natural world.
SIR CHARLES LYELL (1797-1875), British geologist. Lyell is most
famous for his great geological opus: The Principles of Geology: Being
an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface, by
Reference to Causes now in Operation (3 vols 1830-33).
Jim Secord is a lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy
of Science at Cambridge and is the author of Controversy in Victorian
Geology (1986).
