Deep Time

Deep Time

Author: Noah Heringman

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2023-01-03

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0691235791

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"Deep Time: A Literary History challenges the exclusive association between deep time and the modern science of geology by focusing on late Enlightenment writings that used narrative form to integrate new empirical data and methods with Western and non-Western traditions of chronology, earth history, and human origins. Choosing the mid-eighteenth century as a starting point, Heringman aims to demonstrate how deep time became associated with Earth history in the first place, expanding its conceptual domain to include colonial natural history, oral tradition, and scientific romance-all frontiers of the expanded time horizons associated with modernity. It considers the conceptual opening of a modern geological timescale in literary, scientific, and travel writing in the late-Enlightenment/Romantic period, with chapters on the explorer-naturalist team of John Reinhold and George Forster, who sailed with Captain Cook (1772-1775); Buffon's protogeochronological Epochs of Nature (1778); Herder, Blake, and prehistory through oral tradition; and Charles Darwin's dialogue with anthropology and archaeology, especially in The Descent of Man (1871). When eighteenth- and nineteenth-century explorers, naturalists, poets, and philosophers wrote about the "abyss of time," they referred to a large and diverse set of new ideas that unsettled the established time scale: ideas about cultural evolution inspired by Pacific peoples recently encountered by James Cook and other voyagers; a new sense of the depth and diversity of the Earth's strata, produced by increased attention to their structure and deposition; the study of oral traditions by poets and scholars associated with the ballad revival; and the study of non-Western scriptures such as the Mahabharata, which calculated time on an entirely different scale. The latter two pursuits dovetailed with the investigations of voyagers from Johann Reinhold Forster to Charles Darwin, who sought to measure the age of non-European civilizations by way of the geological age of their environments. Ultimately, Heringman argues that the concept of deep time, now associated primarily with modern geology, "was a composite of human and natural history to begin with.""--


Scenes from Deep Time

Scenes from Deep Time

Author: Martin J. S. Rudwick

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1995-12-15

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9780226731056

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How did the earth look in prehistoric times? Scientists and artists collaborated during the half-century prior to the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species to produce the first images of dinosaurs and the world they inhabited. Their interpretations, informed by recent fossil discoveries, were the first efforts to represent the prehistoric world based on sources other than the Bible. Martin J. S. Rudwick presents more than a hundred rare illustrations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to explore the implications of reconstructing a past no one has ever seen.


Deep Time, Dark Times

Deep Time, Dark Times

Author: David Wood

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2018-12-04

Total Pages: 143

ISBN-13: 082328137X

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The new geological epoch we call the Anthropocene is not just a scientific classification. It marks a radical transformation in the background conditions of life on Earth, one taken for granted by much of who we are and what we hope for. Never before has a species possessed both a geological-scale grasp of the history of the Earth and a sober understanding of its own likely fate. Our situation forces us to confront questions both philosophical and of real practical urgency. We need to rethink who “we” are, what agency means today, how to deal with the passions stirred by our circumstances, whether our manner of dwelling on Earth is open to change, and, ultimately, “What is to be done?” Our future, that of our species, and of all the fellow travelers on the planet depend on it. The real-world consequences of climate change bring new significance to some very traditional philosophical questions about reason, agency, responsibility, community, and man’s place in nature. The focus is shifting from imagining and promoting the “good life” to the survival of the species. Deep Time, Dark Times challenges us to reimagine ourselves as a species, taking on a geological consciousness. Drawing promiscuously on the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and other contemporary French thinkers, as well as the science of climate change, David Wood reflects on the historical series of displacements and de-centerings of both the privilege of the Earth, and of the human, from Copernicus through Darwin and Freud to the declaration of the age of the Anthropocene. He argues for the need to develop a new temporal phronesis and to radically rethink who “we” are in respect to solidarity with other humans, and responsibility for the nonhuman stakeholders with which we share the planet. In these brief, lively chapters, Wood poses a range of questions centered on our individual and collective political agency. Might not human exceptionalism be reborn as a sort of hyperbolic responsibility rather than privilege?


Extinct Monsters to Deep Time

Extinct Monsters to Deep Time

Author: Diana E. Marsh

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2019-02-18

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1789201233

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Via the Smithsonian Institution, an exploration of the growing friction between the research and outreach functions of museums in the 21st century. Describing participant observation and historical research at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History as it prepared for its largest-ever exhibit renovation, Deep Time, the author provides a grounded perspective on the inner-workings of the world’s largest natural history museum and the social processes of communicating science to the public. From the introduction: In exhibit projects, the tension plays out between curatorial staff—academic, research, or scientific staff charged with content—and exhibitions, public engagement, or educational staff—which I broadly group together as “audience advocates” charged with translating content for a broader public. I have heard Kirk Johnson, Sant Director of the NMNH, say many times that if you look at dinosaur halls at different museums across the country, you can see whether the curators or the exhibits staff has “won.” At the American Museum of Natural History in New York, it was the curators. The hall is stark white and organized by phylogeny—or the evolutionary relationships of species—with simple, albeit long, text panels. At the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Johnson will tell you, it was the “exhibits people.” The hall is story driven and chronologically organized, full of big graphic prints, bold fonts, immersive and interactive spaces, and touchscreens. At the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, where Johnson had previously been vice president and chief curator, “we actually fought to a draw.” That, he says, is the best outcome; a win on either side skews the final product too extremely in one direction or the other. This creative tension, when based on mutual respect, is often what makes good exhibitions.


Digressions in Deep Time

Digressions in Deep Time

Author: Declan Lloyd

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2024-06-18

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 166694842X

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“Deep time” is a term which attempts to capture temporal scales far beyond human comprehension. These are stretches of time epitomised by geological and cosmic scale processes, vast enough to make the entirety of human existence appear as little more than a footnote. The past few years have seen a boom in texts dedicated to the study of deep time, extending across a broad range of disciplines which fall markedly outside of its geological roots. These studies are unified by two ideas in particular: that deep time thinking and ecocriticism should be considered in conjunction, and that literature and the arts play a vital role in fostering a deep time awareness. Digressions in Deep Time is the first collection of essays which considers the multifarious representations of deep time across literature and the arts, assembling the work of a wide range of prominent scholars whose research frequently engages with temporality and ecocriticism. Featured contributions include work by the Pulitzer-prize winning author John McPhee, who popularised the term deep time in the late seventies, as well as chapters by Richard Irvine (author of An Anthropology of Deep Time), Benjamin Morgan (author of The Outward Mind) and Andrew Tate (author of Apocalyptic Fiction).


Deep Time Reckoning

Deep Time Reckoning

Author: Vincent Ialenti

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2020-09-22

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 0262539268

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A guide to long-term thinking: how to envision the far future of Earth. We live on a planet careening toward environmental collapse that will be largely brought about by our own actions. And yet we struggle to grasp the scale of the crisis, barely able to imagine the effects of climate change just ten years from now, let alone the multi-millennial timescales of Earth's past and future life span. In this book, Vincent Ialenti offers a guide for envisioning the planet's far future—to become, as he terms it, more skilled deep time reckoners. The challenge, he says, is to learn to inhabit a longer now. Ialenti takes on two overlapping crises: the Anthropocene, our current moment of human-caused environmental transformation; and the deflation of expertise—today's popular mockery and institutional erosion of expert authority. The second crisis, he argues, is worsening the effects of the first. Hearing out scientific experts who study a wider time span than a Facebook timeline is key to tackling our planet's emergency. Astrophysicists, geologists, historians, evolutionary biologists, climatologists, archaeologists, and others can teach us the art of long-termism. For a case study in long-term thinking, Ialenti turns to Finland's nuclear waste repository “Safety Case” experts. These scientists forecast far future glaciations, climate changes, earthquakes, and more, over the coming tens of thousands—or even hundreds of thousands or millions—of years. They are not pop culture “futurists” but data-driven, disciplined technical experts, using the power of patterns to construct detailed scenarios and quantitative models of the far future. This is the kind of time literacy we need if we are to survive the Anthropocene.


Embryos in Deep Time

Embryos in Deep Time

Author: Marcelo Sánchez-Villagra

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2012-04-03

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 0520952308

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How can we bring together the study of genes, embryos and fossils? Embryos in Deep Time is a critical synthesis of the study of individual development in fossils. It brings together an up-to-date review of concepts from comparative anatomy, ecology and developmental genetics, and examples of different kinds of animals from diverse geological epochs and geographic areas. Can fossil embryos demonstrate evolutionary changes in reproductive modes? How have changes in ocean chemistry in the past affected the development of marine organisms? What can the microstructure of fossil bone and teeth reveal about maturation time, longevity and changes in growth phases? This book addresses these and other issues and documents with numerous examples and illustrations how fossils provide evidence not only of adult anatomy but also of the life history of individuals at different growth stages. The central topic of Biology today—the transformations occurring during the life of an organism and the mechanisms behind them—is addressed in an integrative manner for extinct animals.


Underland: A Deep Time Journey

Underland: A Deep Time Journey

Author: Robert Macfarlane

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2019-06-04

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 0393242153

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National Bestseller • New York Times "100 Notable Books of the Year" • NPR "Favorite Books of 2019" • Guardian "100 Best Books of the 21st Century" • Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award "Mesmerizing…Underland is a portal of light in dark times." —Terry Tempest Williams, New York Times Book Review In Underland, Robert Macfarlane delivers an epic exploration of the Earth’s underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. Traveling through the dizzying expanse of geologic time—from prehistoric art in Norwegian sea caves, to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, to a deep-sunk "hiding place" where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come—Underland takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind. Global in its geography and written with great lyricism, Underland speaks powerfully to our present moment. At once ancient and urgent, this is a book that will change the way you see the world.


In Search of Deep Time

In Search of Deep Time

Author: Henry Gee

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780801487132

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Cladistics--the science of comparison--is transforming the way paleontologists view evolution. In Search of Deep Time strips away conventional assumptions about the evolution of life to reveal a world that may be far stranger and more humbling than had been previously imagined. The concept of deep time was first used by John McPhee to describe intervals of time incomprehensibly greater than our daily experience. Henry Gee explains the rise of cladistics as the best technique for making sense of the organic changes that unfold within deep time.


Notes on the Underground, new edition

Notes on the Underground, new edition

Author: Rosalind Williams

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2008-04-11

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0262731908

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Real and imagined undergrounds in the late nineteenth century viewed as offering a prophetic look at life in today's technology-dominated world. The underground has always played a prominent role in human imaginings, both as a place of refuge and as a source of fear. The late nineteenth century saw a new fascination with the underground as Western societies tried to cope with the pervasive changes of a new social and technological order. In Notes on the Underground, Rosalind Williams takes us inside that critical historical moment, giving equal coverage to actual and imaginary undergrounds. She looks at the real-life invasions of the underground that occurred as modern urban infrastructures of sewers and subways were laid, and at the simultaneous archaeological excavations that were unearthing both human history and the planet's deep past. She also examines the subterranean stories of Verne, Wells, Forster, Hugo, Bulwer-Lytton, and other writers who proposed alternative visions of the coming technological civilization. Williams argues that these imagined and real underground environments provide models of human life in a world dominated by human presence and offer a prophetic look at today's technology-dominated society. In a new essay written for this edition, Williams points out that her book traces the emergence in the nineteenth century of what we would now call an environmental consciousness—an awareness that there will be consequences when humans live in a sealed, finite environment. Today we are more aware than ever of our limited biosphere and how vulnerable it is. Notes on the Underground, now even more than when it first appeared, offers a guide to the human, cultural, and technical consequences of what Williams calls “the human empire on earth.”