The Shadow of Great Britain

Darwin froze.

He instinctively raised his hand to touch his forehead, his fingertips lingering near the hairline for a moment, as if trying to press the words he had just blurted out back into his mind.

”It’s nothing.” Darwin forced a smile, but his tone became noticeably cautious: ”Just some... thoughts on classification. You know, reclassifying species to see if there’s some sort of continuity between them, that’s all.”

However, his friends were clearly not buying Darwin’s evasion.

After all, in private conversations, Darwin had more or less hinted to his friends about his doubts regarding creationism.

Although his friends were quite interested in Darwin’s new theory, Great Dumas and Dickens even had the urge to get to the bottom of it, most of them advised Darwin after the discussion not to put forth this new theory until he had decisive evidence.

Some even subtly suggested that Darwin focus his energies elsewhere. Because after completing his global voyage, even if Darwin merely organized the data he brought back step by step, it would be enough for him to secure a place in the British Scientific Community.

His friends’ concern was certainly not due to jealousy of Darwin’s scientific achievements, but rather genuine worry that Darwin’s research might provoke the Church’s anger.

Although the scientific community had challenged the religious community more than once or twice, both sides have long tacitly drawn an insurmountable line during the persistent reconciliation between science and religion.

Take the formation time of the Earth, for example.

In the 17th century, the respected Archbishop of All Ireland, James Ussher, meticulously calculated based on the genealogies recorded in the Bible that the Earth was created by God on October 22nd, 4004 BC. This date not only appeared in the margins of many English Bibles but also served as teaching material and historical chronology in Church Universities like Oxford and Cambridge.

However, as time progressed to the late 18th century, geologist James Hutton proposed different opinions in ”Theory of the Earth,” pointing out through observations of Scotland’s strata, ”We find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end in the geological records.”

Although Hutton’s words were spoken very diplomatically, it was evident to the clever ones that what he truly meant was that the Earth’s formation time far exceeded several thousand years.

This new viewpoint quickly caused a stir in academic circles and made the religious community deeply uneasy. But considering Hutton did not directly attack the Bible, and the general public seemed indifferent to this point, the social impact was limited, so the bishops who could still evade did not make a big fuss about it.

As geology developed, the order of the strata and the discoveries of various fossils made the religious community’s long-standing narrative of ”creationism and the great flood” increasingly untenable, thanks to the relentless efforts of outstanding geologists like William Smith.

This geological time bomb finally exploded completely after the publication of Charles Lyell’s ”Principles of Geology” in 1833.

Lyell straightforwardly asserted: ”The natural processes we see today are sufficient to explain all of the past.”

In other words, in Lyell’s view, geological processes like volcanic activity, erosion, and sedimentation require no divine miracles or a great flood for explanation; he systematically rejected the Church’s catastrophism, replacing the Bible’s explanation with observations of reality.

Although Lyell had madly fortified himself within the ”Principles of Geology” and tried his best to avoid mentioning the Bible, no matter how much Lyell knew about being tactful, it did not prevent his theory of uniformitarianism from logically completely undermining the Bible.

Though the religious community did not publicly condemn Lyell, as a weather vane for academia and the religious community, Oxford University’s internal reactions were quite noteworthy.

After the emergence of uniformitarianism, Oxford University quickly released the ”Bridge Water Essay Collection,” an extensive work of Natural Philosophy divided into eight parts, covering astronomy, geology, physiology, chemistry, mathematics, and philosophy.

Interestingly enough, Charles Lyell, the proposer of uniformitarianism and a renowned geologist, was not invited to participate in compiling the ”Bridge Water Essay Collection.” The two authors responsible for compiling the geological part were Oxford University geology Professor William Buckland, Lyell’s mentor during his time studying at Oxford, and Cambridge University moral and decision theology Professor William Whewell (the same Professor Whewell who invited Darwin to serve as the Secretary of the Geographical Society).

Among them, Buckland was an early supporter of catastrophism, long attempting to match stratal evidence with Noah’s flood. Although he began accepting the possibility of an ancient Earth in recent years, Buckland has always been an opponent of uniformitarianism.

And what about William Whewell?

If we look at Professor Whewell’s achievements as a whole, we must admit that he is a distinguished scholar with an encyclopedic breadth. In literature, he published personal poetry collections, translated works by Goethe, and consistently wrote sermons and theological essays. In the Natural Philosophy realm, he proposed the Whewell equation, with academic works covering mechanics, physics, geology, astronomy, architecture, and economics.

However, if forced to choose Whewell’s greatest contribution in his life, it would be those scientific terms he invented: scientist, physicist, linguistics, concordism, catastrophism, uniformitarianism, and astigmatism—all creations of his. In addition to these, terms like electrode, ion, dielectric, anode, cathode in electromagnetism were also suggested by him to Faraday.