 |
Business | Industries | Finance | Tax |
| Index: > A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
|
|||||
| First Prev [ 1 2 3 ] Next Last |
In the centuries preceding the scientific revolution, the age of the Earth was determined by religious creation tales. The Han Chinese thought the Earth was created and destroyed in cycles of over 23 million years. Westerners were more conservative. In a book published in 1654, not long before his death, Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh, Ireland, calculated from the Bible (augmented by some astronomy and numerology) that creation began on October 23October 23 is the 296th day of the year (297th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 69 days remaining. Events 4004 BC The universe was created, according to the Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar. 42 BC Roman Republican civil wars: Second Battle of Phili, 4004 BC. Other scholars and scientists such as Martin LutherFor other people named Martin Luther see: Martin Luther (disambiguation Martin Luther (originally Martin Luder ( November 10, 1483 February 18, 1546) was a German theologian of the Christian religion and an Augustinian monk whose teachings inspired the Pr and Johannes KeplerThis article is about Johannes Kepler the astronomer. For the planned planet-finding space telescope, see Kepler Space Mission. Johannes Kepler ( December 27, 1571 November 15, 1630), a key figure in the scientific revolution, was a German astronomer, mat believed in a similar date (see Old-earth or young-earth belief).
Few people had conceived the idea of a time that stretched far into the past before the arrival of humankind, or far into the future beyond the end of humankind. One who did was AristotleAristotle ( Greek Αριστοτλης Aristotelēs) ( 384 BCE March 7, 322 BCE) was a Greek scientist and philosopher. Along with Plato, he is often considered to be one of the two most influential philo, who thought the Earth and universeAlternate uses: See Universe (disambiguation In the first half of the 20th century, the word universe was used to mean the whole spacetime continuum in which we exist, together with all the energy and matter within it. Attempts to understand the universe had existed from eternity.
By the 18th century17th century 18th century 19th century more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701- 1800; however, historians will sometimes specifically refer to the 18th Century as 1715- 89,, a few naturalistsNatural history is an umbrella term for what are now usually viewed as a number of distinct scientific disciplines. Most definitions include the study of living things (e. biology, including botany and zoology); other definitions extend the topic to inclu were trying to place the age of the Earth on a more scientific basis. The naturalist Mikhail Lomonosov, regarded as the founder of Russian science, was one of the first to undertake this exercise, suggesting in the mid- 18th Century that the Earth had been created separately from the rest of the universe, several hundred thousands of years before.
Lomonosov's ideas were mostly speculative, but in 1779 the French naturalist the Comte du Buffon tried to obtain a value for the age of the Earth using an experiment. He created a small globe that resembled the Earth in composition and then measured its rate of cooling. This led him to estimate that the Earth was about 75,000 years old.
Very few of their colleagues paid them much mind. Many left the question of the age of the Earth to creation tales, or simply assumed that the Earth always had been, always would be. However, there were many naturalists whose studies of strata, the layering of rock and earth, gave them an appreciation that the Earth had been through many changes during its existence, however long that might be.
These layers often contained fossilized remains of unknown creatures, and there seemed to be a progression of types of such creatures from layer to layer. In the 1790s, the British naturalist William Smith pointed out that if two layers of rock at widely differing locations contained similar fossils, then it was very plausible that the layers were the same age.
Other naturalists used this idea to construct a history of the Earth, though their timelines were inexact as they did not know how long it took to lay down such layers. Smith's nephew and student, John Phillips, later calculated by such means that the Earth was about 96 million years old.
In 1830, the geologist Charles Lyell took the next step and proposed that the features of the Earth were in perpetual change, eroding and reforming continuously, and the rate of this change was roughly constant. This was a challenge to the traditional view, which saw the history of the Earth as static, with changes brought about by intermittent catastrophes. Many naturalists were influenced by Lyell to become "uniformitarians" who believed that changes were constant and uniform.
| Politics | Business | Finance |
 |
 |
 |
|