The Biologist’s Time and Deep Time: Essay on the Psychology of the Paleobiologist

Abstract

The paleontologist is familiar with “Deep Time”, a concept which emerged during the late eighteenth century, slowly matured, but did not gain general recognition until the end of the twentieth century; although it did create a silent but nevertheless significant revolution in the layman’s mind. Being simultaneously a biologist and a geologist, the paleontologist has to deal with issues of Time which, though interrelated, fundamentally differ from those of the current biologist’s work. To this extent, the paleontologist may be understood as a paleobiologist: a specialized biologist who studies biological issues within Deep Time. Nevertheless, differences in time scope introduce fundamental discrepancies, especially in the ways that scientific evidence can be demonstrated and, accordingly, in the working and expression of scientific results. All this tends to set the paleobiologist apart psychologically from the current mainstream biologist, whose work is now too often pervaded by urgent biomedical issues. Conversely, the paleobiologist is familiar with general evolutionary issues which now tend to pervade “short time biology”, as evidenced by current concerns with, for example, bacterial evolution and the biodiversity crisis.

“… Pur di Tempo si breve

voi l’aurora, e non il fine…”

Disinganno in

Cardinale Benedetto Pamphilij ‘s libretto of G.F. Haendel’s “Il triumpho del Tempo e del Disinganno” (1707)