Winner of the ASE Science Book of the Year Award 2016/17.
Geologists are among that group of scientists who must factor the
passage of time into their investigations and they thus have a
perspective on time that sets them apart from many other researchers.
The proposition that geological time is vast, encompassing thousands of
millions of years, is relatively recent. It is a concept that remains
controversial and unacceptable to many people today who still consider
the Earth to have been made to a timetable covering no more than ten
thousand years.
Paul Lyle examines how our fascination with time has developed from our
earliest ancestors' recognition of the cycles of the sun and the moon.
It considers the passage of time as a series of non-repeatable events,
Time's Arrow, in contrast to time as a series of repeated processes,
Time's Cycle, both of which can be used to explain geological features
on the Earth's surface.
The author argues for a greater understanding of geological or 'deep
time' as society becomes more aware of the vulnerability of the Earth's
resources to over-exploitation by an expanding consumer society. This
debate and the controversy surrounding global warming emphasises the
importance of geological time to the process of economic and political
decision-making. It is a book for those interested in the intellectual
challenge presented by the extent of geological time. It is written for
environmentalists and policy-makers who wish to better place their
concerns and decisions in proper context but, above all, it is a book
that offers to share a geologist's appreciation of time with the widest
possible audience.
