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John Gould Analysis

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the discoveries in physics of Sir Isaac Newton finally laid to rest the idea that the Earth might be the center of the universe; the (study of living things/qualities of living things) of Charles Darwin made it hard to believe that human beings were different in kind from the rest of the animal kingdom; and, later, the mental explanations of Sigmund Freud left it impossible to hope even that human beings were owners of a basically clear and sensible mind. Organizing scientific history in terms of this (development or increase over time/series of events or things) of thought has its attractions, Gould argues, but it misses an extremely important discovery and an extremely important science, the science being (the study of rocks), and the discovery …show more content…

(related to Charles Darwin's ideas of evolution) (change for the better, over time), for example, rests on the idea (you think is true) that the chance processes of natural selection must have very long periods of time in which to develop and to allow (related to studying numbers) advantages to change the shapes of species. Yet not long before Darwin's lifetime--and a little bit during it--it was the majority opinion even among learned men that the Earth was something like six millennia old, a period of very much the same length as known human history. In contrast, modern science classes are given some image or other of human history that pushes it away to the last second of the twenty-four-hour "day" which represents the age of the Earth, or that says, even more (in a way that ignores other people's feelings), that if the age of the Earth were to be measured as a traditional English yard, the distance from nose to outstretched fingertip, then one stroke of a nail file on the middle fingertip would erase the whole time in history of people/(the kindness of

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