Kelvin’s Influence: The Initial Reception

Abstract

Speaking before the geological section of the British Association in 1899, Archibald Geikie reminded his audience oi how geologists in the 1860’s had been “startled by a bold irruption into their camp from the side of physics.”¹ He referred, of course, to the publication of Kelvin’s papers on the age of the earth. But time had telescoped events in his memory, and his recollections were somewhat distorted. By 1899 Kelvin’s influence had produced a major change in geological thought. The more radical implications of uniformitarianism had been left behind, and the infinite or vaguely indefinite time scales of the midcentury had given way to an earth of finite and calculable antiquity. By 1899, indeed, Kelvin’s original estimate of 100 million years for the earth’s age had become so entrenched among geologists that they were sharply at odds with his more restrictive later results. But such changes had hardly been sudden. Far from taking geology by storm, Kelvin’s chronology had been adopted gradually by individual scientists, and nearly a decade passed before its full impact began to be felt.