Tracing the development of geological inquiry, knowledge and understanding, between the seventeenth and the twenty-first centuries, Martin Rudwick's compact study touches on several major issues expected in a survey of this nature, and roughly divides into two parts: the making of geology and the history of geology. The meaning of fossils in relation to scriptural accounts of history, the role of antiquarianism in shaping concepts of earth history, and the correlation between strata and extinct and extant flora and fauna dominate the first half of the book. The second half focuses on the history of terrestrial physics in geology, which includes the effects of climate, evolution, continental ‘drift’ and ancient meteor impacts on the history of the planet.

Rudwick begins with an adroit demonstration how early modern questions about the antiquity of the Earth branched from traditions of seventeenth-century biblical chronology. Treating the Bible as a historical and truthful account of human history, chronologists debated dates and the sequence of events to calculate the exact age of the world. Just as the Bible functioned as textual evidence of a human past, rocks and fossils were considered, by natural philosophers, supplementary ‘documents’ that accounted for an antediluvian history of the Earth. The ‘theories of the Earth’ that largely constituted earth science during the eighteenth century continued to be shaped by biblical accounts of creation, human history and cataclysmic events such as the Deluge. Early geological theorists attempted to explain the Earth's origins in a cosmological context, and to understand the physical causes behind the variety of geological formations observed. The theory of the cooling Earth proposed by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, claimed that heat from the Earth's incandescent beginnings had gradually dissipated over time, essentially expanding notions of a ‘six-day’ creation into six epochs of much longer periods. James Hutton, having completed his medical dissertation ‘On the Blood and Its Circulation in the Body’ at the University of Leiden in 1749, applied cyclical principles to earth history. The slow processes of erosion and deposition gradually changed the shape of the Earth within a ‘steady-state’ system, and, according to Hutton, adequately explained the remarkable strata junctions he observed in the field. Concluding in the twenty-first century, Rudwick reflects on the role of plastics in the shaping of future geology, an apt point in light of recent work on the pervasiveness of plastics in the oceans, and its ingestion by zooplankton. These pollutants may well become the ‘characteristic fossil’ of the geology of the present age.

A major theme that persists throughout the book is the relationship between ‘science’ and ‘religion’. Whenever possible Rudwick addresses popular misconceptions regarding long-standing conflicts between the two, and takes several opportunities to demonstrate how natural historians and philosophers reconciled scientific theory and Scripture. The author convincingly argues that scientific practitioners relied on interpretations of biblical narratives, such as the Creation story and Genesis, to model scientific theories about earth history. Addressing more contemporary issues, an attached appendix outlines a brief history of the twentieth-century creationist movement that rejects two hundred years of scientific development for a ‘young Earth’ argument similar to theories proposed during the eighteenth century. Revamped as ‘intelligent design’ in the 1990s, its reconfiguration is described by Rudwick as concealing the biblical literalism of the movement. Even still, creationists are ‘out of their depth’, according to the author (p. 315). As Galileo was said to have remarked, the Bible shows us how to go to Heaven, and not how the Heavens go.

Rudwick's claims about the meaning of geo-history revolve around the difference between ‘descriptive’ and ‘analytic’ geology; these two categories of inquiry also divide the first and second halves of the book. According to the author, early studies of the Earth did not provide adequate causal explanation for it to be characterized as ‘geo-historical’. For instance, William Smith's famous A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales with part of Scotland (1815) only described the location and position of strata and did not suggest the means by which that sequence came about. The end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth is a fascinating period in which the tensions between natural history and philosophy come to the forefront in definitions of this bourgeoning science. ‘Descriptive’ natural history and ‘analytic’ natural philosophy is an old schism that can be traced to the early days of the Royal Society when members wanted to define their identity as practitioners. While it is extremely useful as a template for thinking about general trends in the history of geology, as an academic reader I do question the validity of this division within a more localized historical context. Strong analytic arguments existed in descriptive surveys of geological landscapes such as that produced by geologist and antiquarian Samuel Hibbert on the Shetland Islands during the early nineteenth century. Hibbert proposed a sequence of geological events for Shetland based on mineralogical and chemical knowledge, and, as such, is not part of the larger fossil history that Rudwick devolves. Grey areas and exceptions to historical generalization are quite useful for scholars in considering the direction, interpretation and methodology of their research. How generalizations do or do not work is an important point of scholarly reflection, and the source of potential future inquiry and exploration. In this way Rudwick's lucid account provides a good foundation for scholars in the expansion of the field.

The ways in which practitioners developed credible arguments about the age and history of the Earth are the central problem that the author describes in this very complex history. Many of the arguments presented are discussed in greater detail in the numerous contributions that Rudwick has made to the history of geology throughout his career as a historian. While the historical narrative in this particular publication remains uncited, an annotated ‘Further reading’ section at the end, as well as other helpful glossaries and notes, is included for the novice. In this way, Earth's Deep History is accessible to a more general readership, and offers an excellent introduction to the history of earth science for the student.