It’s been a year to the day since defending my PhD thesis. I’ve returned to works that inspired my research on Earth histories in the early modern Low Countries. Here’s thread of some publications I’m indebted to.
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Martin Rudwick’s great work on the Earth sciences was hard to avoid. He frames the rise of the earth sciences as one of the scientific successes of a Christian rather than secularizing Enlightenment. Still, grasping deep time stands as a feature of modernity. I wanted something different.
Paolo Rossi’s 1984 'Dark Abyss of Time' (in its meandering way) brings out much more of the strangeness of Earth historical thinking in 17th and 18th centuries, showing how Vico’s work could be related to debates about rocks, fossils, linguistics and theology. As does William Poole's work.
As the editors of 'New Earth Histories' (2023) put it: “Geology was cosmology in the age of reason,” enmeshed with doctrinal debates about Bible interpretation. I might argue that prominent geological thinkers like Steno or Deluc were interested in Earth history primarily for religious reasons.
Lydia Barnett’s 'After the Flood' (2019) showed me how authors like Burnet, Woodward or Whiston could be read creatively to get at early modern ideas about the relationships between climate, environment and the agency of human sin in an age of Christian empire.
Pratik Chakrabarti's thoughtful 'Inscriptions of Nature' (2020) turned the connection between geological and human history around, delving into the ways colonial deep time visions shaped 19th-century ideas about ‘primitive’ human cultures around the Indian Ocean.
This led me to pay attention to cultural and religious meanings shaping the understanding of landscapes and their geological features—like the Dutch antiquarian interest in Roman-era coastal geographies. Alexandra Walsham’s 'Reformation of the Landscape' (2011) provided much insight.
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