What is Life?

Problems:

· Complexity

· Replication

· Anthropocentrism http://animalliberty.com/animalliberty/articles/penelope/pene-2.html

Life: The Viewpoint of the Three Traditions

A review of Hugh Kearney’s book about the three traditions: http://courses.unt.edu/rdecarvalho/h5040/StudentPapers/Kearney,Hugh.htm

The Age of the Earth

· James Ussher (1581-1656) http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/ussher.htm

· Irish Archbishop

· Fixed creation at 9:00 a.m., October 23, 4004 B.C.

Geological Theories

Neptunism http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/heat/heat-2/heat241f.htm

Plutonism (early Uniformitarianism)

· James Hutton (1726-1797) http://faculty.uca.edu/~benw/biol4415/lecture1b/tsld024.htm

· Theory of the Earth, 1785

· http://www.geology.utoronto.ca/glg105h/lecture9/lect9discourse2003.html

Catastrophism

· Cataclysmic events due to different forces in the past

· Georges Cuvier (1769-1832)

· http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv4-56

· Founded comparative anatomy

· Technique: correlation of parts

· http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Cuvier.html

· William “Strata” Smith

· http://www.unh.edu/esci/wmsmith.html

Diluvialism

· All explained by Noah’s Flood

· William Buckland (1784-1856) http://www.grisda.org/bclausen/papers/co48.htm

· http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/geology/chamber/Buckland1.html

· Buckland’s book, Relics of the Flood

· Fossils at high altitudes were evidence of the Flood

Uniformitarianism

http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/10c.html

· Charles Lyell (1797-1875) http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/klmno/lyell_charles.html

· Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, 3 volumes (1830-1833) http://www.victorianweb.org/science/lyell.html