Breaking Through the Limits of Time : Modern Changes in Conceptions About the Age of Nature and Culture
Abstract
This chapter deals with the development of the idea of deep time from Renaissance and Enlightenment all the way to the threshold of Modern historicism and evolutionism. It describes the experiences and theoretical steps which enabled a conceptualisation of a long historical development in the four following areas:
1. Earth's geological past and fossils (archives of nature);
2. Ancient past against the background of literary legacy and tradition (archives of written history);
3. Cultural prehistory based on material artefacts (archives of unwritten history);
4. Multilingualism and history of human speech (archives of language). The notion of deep time based on revealed temporal layers and epochs is seen as being of decisive importance for modern historical and biological thought.