Natural processes taking time - on rocks

So here is the deep structure, Herr Hegel and all...

Processes that take place in time - this is wiring that can be applied to many things and can be studied.

It is one way to look at causes and consequences in logical sequence.

Or - in other words - how things have happened.

Also to some extent - why things have happened.


Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet Kt FRS

Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) was a close friend of Darwin who much because of him became an eager student of Geology.

Using our logical model from Hegel, we can say that Charles Lyell "observed processes in time" in Nature by studying geological formations, past and present. The slopes of Mt Etna in Sicily were so important to him as visual evidence of volcanic activity that has been going on for a while. He could see there active openings pushing lava today and older formations that have cooled off. There were many places were the volcanic hills had built one upon the other.

In England and Wales and elsewhere he could similarly see geomorphological formations been born in modern times, such as the silt gathering at river deltas or the erosion of rocks in deep ravines or the building up of soil.

Geological processes take place in time and the cross-sections of rocks, such as on the sea shore of Wales, reveal that history. It logically follows that a sediment under another sediment may contain evidence of life at an earlier time. There was thus a new interest and focus also on fossils as geologists influenced by the massive Principles of  Geology (1830-33). This work is often considered the starting point of modern Geology.

The history of Geology as a science is complex and long starting at late Renaissance. According to my understanding the crucially important step forward represented by Sir Charles Lyell's work came when the point of view changed and researchers began to look at processes taking place in time. They started to give due respect to history!


Darwin the geologist
Note also the time of publication just before Charles Darwin boarded HMS Beagle December 1831. In 1833 Darwin collected in Argentina many fossils of the amazing but now extinct Pleistocene animals of Patagonia including a skull of a Megatherium - the largest known mammal ever to live upon Earth.
(More about Darwin's work for example in The Geological Society page.)

Megatherium

Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins 

Johnsons Natural History (1871)