FREE ESSAY ON KELVIN - DARWIN

KELVIN - DARWIN

"Thomson's view on the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest
troubles, (pg. 107)" This quote is used to collaborate the author's idea that Darwin was
deeply opposed to Kelvin's calculations about the ago of the earth. The author further
backs up this idea by using another quote in which Darwin calls Kelvin an "odious
spectre, (pg. 107)." It is then stated that Darwin did eventually compromise with
Kelvin's calculations. Gould uses a quote from the last edition of the Origin to make the
statement more concrete. Darwin's reasons for compromising with Kelvin's theory are then
explained in the following paragraphs. 
Gould discusses Darwin's distress as his leading supporters in England, Wallace and
Huxley, didn't agree with him. He uses a quote by Wallace to show this: "if Kelvin
limited the earth to 100 million years, then natural selection must operate at generally
higher rates than we had previously imagined, (pg. 107)." Using several examples to back
up the fact that Huxley wasn't standing behind Darwin further promotes this. 
Building upon the previous ideas, Gould goes on to display Darwin's distress. Britain's
leading geologists tended to follow Wallace and Huxley; therefor they went along with
Kelvin's calculations and theories. In the book Gould says, "They stated that Kelvin had
performed a service for geology, (pg. 108)." The author concludes by showing how
geologists finally rebelled against Kelvin, and his more rigid estimate of 20 million
years. 
Topics are changed and a discussion of the challenge imposed on Kelvin develops. The
author states the various parts of Uniformity, and how Kelvin managed to work his way
around it. He shows how Charles Lyell, the creator of Uniformity, cleverly implied that,
to be a scientist, one had to accept uniformity. Kelvin worked around this by fully
accepting uniformity and even basing his calculations upon it. He just attacked the false
side of Lyell's view of uniformity.