British theologian Thomas Burnet make this world without water in 1694 to discover the landscape of the entire ground . The single-valued function , however , was more than speculative geology — it was presented as grounds that the Great Flood of the Bible translate our man from a smooth celestial sphere into a bumpy muss .
Burnet was famous for his book , Telluris Theoria Sacra ( Sacred Theory of the Earth ) , which sought to conciliate the most late cash advance in the natural sciences with religious scripture . He was especially distract by the world ’s forcible abnormality — the jagged sight , subterranean cavern — that he mat up negate the construct of God as a creator who substantiate beau ideal . “ What a rude Lump our World is that we are so apt to dote upon , ” he wrote of the Earth ’s deformed terrain , which he compared to the Moon ’s “ ill-bred and ragged ” surface as recently consider through telescopes .
Ultimately , Burnet reached the last that the world today was not the same world that had existed at the clip of its creation . He envisioned the “ novel Earth ” as a perfect sphere :
“ In this smooth Earth were the first Scenes of the World , and the first Generations of Mankind . It had the Beauty of Youth and bloom Nature , fresh and fruitful , not a Wrinkle , Scar or Fracture in all its consistence ; no Rocks nor Mountains , no hollow Caves , nor gaping duct , but even and consistent all over . ”
The landscape we see today , Burnet debate , was the wreckage of the “ new Earth , ” the hurt due to the Great Flood . He had approached the subject ( from his perspective ) “ scientifically ” ; he tried to figure the accurate amount of water required to cover the entire human beings . After he reached the close that rain lasting 40 solar day and nights would be insufficient for the global inundation , he argue that the floodwaters had come from an fundamental layer of water beneath the Earth ’s airfoil , discharge when the original crust cracked and collapse .
“ We have now proved our Explication of the Deluge to be more than an Idea , or to be a dependable art object of Natural account , ” Burnet publish . It was a prefiguration of the increasingly inventive — and difficult — endeavour to reconcile science with Good Book in the years to get .
effigy source : Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps .
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