When I was young my family moved to Los Angeles, Calif. Every summer we’d travel by car back east of the Mississippi to visit relatives. Of course, we drove through Arizona passing the Roden Crater, now the lifetime sculpture project of James Turrell, and the meteor crater that was one mile wide. Something that large would strike fear in the minds of anyone seeing it in person. But, how old is the crater?

Geology, as much as any science, shows that trying to replace truth with consoling myth will fail - and insult human dignity along the way… more

Corbis

Determining the age of the Earth drew on so many areas of thought that Paul Richet’s new book reads like a history of science, Adam Kirsch writes. Above, the Meteor Crater, Arizona.

(Via Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate.)