This article aims to correct some common misconceptions on the nature and origin of fossils in Europe between the fourteenth and the early eighteenth century.Building upon recent scholarship,I argue that the possibili...This article aims to correct some common misconceptions on the nature and origin of fossils in Europe between the fourteenth and the early eighteenth century.Building upon recent scholarship,I argue that the possibility of a world older than a few thousand years was largely acceptable throughout this period,and that explanations for the formation of fossils(notably,marine fossils)that required long timescales were mainstream.Until c.1300,fossils of marine creatures were normally seen as the remains of actual fish and shells brought inland by a succession of partial or global inundations,or by local telluric upheavals.Alongside,aborted spontaneous generations caused by astrological forces or slow geological revolutions gained ground in the following centuries.It was only in the late 1600s that fossils began to be widely regarded as physical evidence of a global inundation in historical times,in support of a young Earth and of the literal truth of the Bible.展开更多
文摘This article aims to correct some common misconceptions on the nature and origin of fossils in Europe between the fourteenth and the early eighteenth century.Building upon recent scholarship,I argue that the possibility of a world older than a few thousand years was largely acceptable throughout this period,and that explanations for the formation of fossils(notably,marine fossils)that required long timescales were mainstream.Until c.1300,fossils of marine creatures were normally seen as the remains of actual fish and shells brought inland by a succession of partial or global inundations,or by local telluric upheavals.Alongside,aborted spontaneous generations caused by astrological forces or slow geological revolutions gained ground in the following centuries.It was only in the late 1600s that fossils began to be widely regarded as physical evidence of a global inundation in historical times,in support of a young Earth and of the literal truth of the Bible.
