Author: Noah Heringman 

In this interdisciplinary book, Noah Heringman argues that the concept of “deep time”—most often associated with geological epochs—began as a metaphorical language used by philosophers, poets, and naturalists of the 18th and 19th centuries to explore the origins of life beyond the written record.

Their ideas about “the abyss of time” created a way to think about the prehistoric before it was possible to assign dates to the fossil record.

Heringman, examining stories about the deep past by visionary thinkers ranging from William Blake to Charles Darwin, challenges the conventional wisdom that the idea of deep time came forth fully formed from the modern science of geology.