Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)
Studies - Donald E. Morse: The End of the World in American History and Fantasy: The Trumpet of the Last Judgement
discovery at the end of the eighteenth century to Newton's discovering the immensity of space: Such views of the immensity of past time, like those unfolded by the Newtonian philosophy in regard to space, were too vast to awaken ideas of sublimity unmixed with a painful sense of our incapacity to conceive a plan of such infinite extent. Worlds are seen beyond worlds immeasurably distant from each other, and beyond them all innumerable other systems are faintly traced on the confines of the visible universe, (qtd. in Gould, Arrow 2) Lyell and Hutton together forced a confrontation with the concept of deep time. A concept so alien to human experience that it was not until well into the nineteenth century that it became generally accepted in the scientific community. Moreover, most people even today appear unable to comprehend this concept except through metaphor. "John McPhee has provided the most striking metaphor of all (in Basin and Range [1980]): Consider the earth's history as the old measure of the English yard, the distance from the king's nose to the tip of his outstretched hand. One stroke of a nail file on his middle finger erases human history" (Gould. Arrow 3). A second ontological shock occurred with Darwin's discovery and publication of the principle of natural selection. Darwin's idea, that local adaptation could, over time, lead to the creation of an entirely new species, came into conflict with received wisdom which often meant simple biblical literalism. All species were present at the initial creation as described in Genesis. "Each one is perfectly adapted to its place in the world, according to the wisdom of God" (Wertenbaker 35). All were accounted for in Noah's Ark, according to the literalists. God had not created anything new since the time described in Genesis. Darwin's local adaptation—he studiously avoided using the word, "evolution" until forced to by Herbert Spencer's popularization — vastly increased the world's time by postulating continuous creation over eons. Such seismic shocks to popular, received wisdom and belief proved exhilarating to the scientific community. Who could ever match the thrill of the earlier discovery vouchsafed to geologists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, that time comes in billions ... rather than thousands of years. Once geology grasped this great reform, no other intellectual reconstruction could ever again be so vast. And whatever the 229
