The Age of the Earth
552 THE COMMONWEAL October 14, 1925 Who will the next man be? Le roi Philippe? The very idea is scoffed at in this country, but the event certainly seems nearer than it has ever been since...
...The reason is not that many Frenchmen have suddenly recovered a fondness for courts and regal pomp, but that the resolutely national program of 1'Action Franchise does sponsor unity of effort, drastic financial reform, and permanence of the official stand on matters of general diplomatic concern...
...Another reason may be found in the fact that all other countries in Europe have moved toward the Right: and even Primo de Rivera has proved that strong government is sometimes profitable...
...Up to the discovery of radium, the mathematical calculations of Lord Kelvin and Professor Tait and other great physicists of the Victorian period seemed to hold the field, and they refused to allow more than 40,000,000 years...
...Whether one holds the "planetesimal" theory of Chamberlin or the "great star" theory of Jeans, it is pretty safe to believe that there was a time when the earth was far too hot to allow of water resting upon it, to say nothing of life existing on its surface...
...The very idea is scoffed at in this country, but the event certainly seems nearer than it has ever been since McMahon's presidency in 1875...
...L'Action Franchise, the organization that makes for royalty, has doubled its membership during the last year...
...Barrell calculated that not less than 250,000,000 years must have elapsed since the commencement of the palaeozoic period...
...Again ex hypothesi, all that salt has got into the waters of the sea since the earth became capable of carrying water: where did it come from...
...THE AGE OF THE EARTH HOW long is it since the globe on which we exist can fairly have been spoken of as the earth...
...It cannot too often be emphasized,that this is an eminently unsafe proceeding...
...Lyell declared that organic differentiation, as he viewed it, could not have been carried out in less than 240,000,000 years...
...Of course these figures are all guesses, and so long as they are known to be that, no harm is done, since of course they are highly intelligent guesses made by men whose guesses are worth every consideration...
...Today we are told that it must have been at least 20,000, and that some of the data had been inaccurately calculated...
...October 14, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL...
...The facts, as Professor Parkes puts it, "emphasize the danger incurred by 'the dictatorial hierarchy of exact scientists' in raising a mathematical structure on an insecure foundation...
...The discovery of radium and radio-activity came as a disturbing factor to many apparently settled beliefs...
...They are just like the varying estimates of the date when man first made his appearance on this earth and differ just as widely...
...The real danger of mistake enters when persons, who do not understand that these figures are guesses and at best very approximate determinations, start to philosophize from them...
...Thirty-two of the ninety-two "elements" are to be found dissolved in it...
...The denudation rate for example is a very tricky thing to calculate from...
...A fresh series of calculations became necessary, until now we are told by those who have made studies of radio-active minerals, that the figure of the earth's existence must be raised to 1,710,000,000 years—certainly "an extraordinary volte-face," as Professor Parkes puts it, on the part of the physicists...
...and its ideas and ideals have found their way into the general press to an extent unparalleled before...
...It is easy for a competent mathematician to work out conclusions from any given group of data, and no one doubts that his calculation will be correct...
...How is he or any other man to know that he has all the data or even that those he has are all correct...
...Basing his calculations on what we know of this, Professor Joly came to the conclusion that 100,000,000 years might be set down as the age of the ocean...
...And it would certainly be an ironical circumstance if the debt policy of the United States should aid in reestablishing a monarchy, the seed of whose destruction was carried back from America by Lafayette and his comrades...
...its centres of propaganda have been greatly strengthened...
...There is one grain per ton of gold and of silver, an aggregate, so it is said, amounting to 50,000 times as much as has been quarried from all mines since America was discovered, down to 1906...
...Ex hypothesi, this water would be, if not exactly like distilled water, free from mineral constituents...
...No, the return of the French king is not altogether impossible...
...that is, since life had come into being, and without making allowance for the pre-Cambrian rocks which underlie those of the period just mentioned...
...i.e., since the end of the last glacial period...
...There is only one answer—from river denudation...
...Not many years ago it was taught that 7,000 years or so had intervened since Niagara Falls were at Lewiston...
...Of course there have been many other estimates...
...But common salt is the chief ingredient...
...But what about the data...
...The question is one which has been often debated, and to which most diverse answers have been given...
...That did not at all satisfy contemporary geologists...
...Now the sea is of course full of these...
...Here again it has been calculated that if all the salt were extracted and laid upon the surface of the existing dry land, it would cover that entire area to a depth of 400 feet...
...Some years ago Professor Joly, of Dublin, endeavored to answer the question from the consideration of the saltness of the sea...
...It was once more raised by Professor Parkes, of Toronto, in his presidential address to the section of geology at the recent meeting of the British Association...
...Suppose we take the period when the earth had so far cooled down that it was possible for the waters, pent up in the dense clouds of moisture which we may suppose surrounded it, to condense and form the first collections of water on its surface...
...Underlying all this, is a very profound moral...
...while Darwin declared that 200,000,000 was all too short...
Vol. 2 • October 1925 • No. 23
