OLD MOTHER EARTH

To many people the present discussion as to the age of the earth seems as far fetched as those theological controversies which raged in medieval times over such subjects as whether or not a camel could be passed through a needle's eye. The reckoning of the age of the earth is however, not quite such a chimerical proposition, as it would first suggest. Geologists must necessarily have strong imaginations to deal in such immense portions of time, but their conclusions are based on the accumulated results of long research.

There has lately been a tendency to belittle and criticize this painstaking method of scientists, who spend their lives investigating the habits of a Paleozoic jelly fish or some other equally narrow subject. Naturally this attention to apparently picayune detail has very little importance per se, but in relation to the broader aspects of science which deal in theories and hypotheses it is invaluable. If science did not have this foundation of minute and detailed facts, it would pass over into the realm of romance where the imagination is uncontrolled.

All men engaged in science are not able to gather together the loose ends of scientific data into logical and significant theory. The majority of scientists have no very far sighted vision of a broader, more embracing field than their own limited specialty. It requires far more than average intellect to comprehend the complexities of natural phenomena and to be able to build up the scattered fragments of knowledge into a coherent structure. Such capacities of thought were necessary in transiting the obscure and difficult geologic evidence of the age of the earth into terms of millions of years. The figure arrived at involves such cons of time that it completely transcends human imagination, and yet the conclusions are deduced entirely from observational data.