Why did people assume that strata were deposited over eons and represent different ages? Many of these layers can be viewed in the Grand Canyon, and there is a notable lack of erosion between them. As I see it, these paraconformities are a strong evidence that there were not large gaps of time between the strata - they must have been laid down rapidly over a relatively short period (e.g. by a great flood).
It was assumed (correctly) by not long after Cowper's time that the strata were of different ages because of the different fossil assemblages in them, but of course no one had any data-derived numbers to put on the different eras.
Furthermore, there is abundant evidence for erosion between many of the layers in the Grand Canyon, and they don't look anything like flood deposits, which are generally chaotic (unsorted, discontinuous bedding, etc) because of the high energy in the environment during deposition. Paraconformities indicate a cessation of deposition, which is often accompanied by erosion. They are 'para' conformities not because of the gap in time between the layers, but because there wasn't major deformation of the Earth's crust during that time (this means substantial tectonic activity), which would cause regional tilting of the lower (older) rocks. Throughout much of the middle of the country, there are young sediments deposited in a paraconformable relationship on top of rocks that are 400 million years old (making up the surficial bedrock of the region), because there hasn't been major tectonic activity in the region since those 400 million year old rocks were deposited (and indeed, for close to a billion years before that in much of the midcontinent).
As much as I like poetry, why do we attribute to a poet that which we owe to a most observant and introspective canal digger who felt free to question dogma and received wisdom?
We don’t. The article explains and credits the scientific research that the poet is referring to. And to answer your question a second way: because that research came decades earlier than Smith’s work.
Slightly OT, but Cowper street in Palo Alto is named after William Cowper. So a fun shibboleth (and as OP points out) is that the name is pronounced KOO-per.
Why did people assume that strata were deposited over eons and represent different ages? Many of these layers can be viewed in the Grand Canyon, and there is a notable lack of erosion between them. As I see it, these paraconformities are a strong evidence that there were not large gaps of time between the strata - they must have been laid down rapidly over a relatively short period (e.g. by a great flood).
It was assumed (correctly) by not long after Cowper's time that the strata were of different ages because of the different fossil assemblages in them, but of course no one had any data-derived numbers to put on the different eras.
Furthermore, there is abundant evidence for erosion between many of the layers in the Grand Canyon, and they don't look anything like flood deposits, which are generally chaotic (unsorted, discontinuous bedding, etc) because of the high energy in the environment during deposition. Paraconformities indicate a cessation of deposition, which is often accompanied by erosion. They are 'para' conformities not because of the gap in time between the layers, but because there wasn't major deformation of the Earth's crust during that time (this means substantial tectonic activity), which would cause regional tilting of the lower (older) rocks. Throughout much of the middle of the country, there are young sediments deposited in a paraconformable relationship on top of rocks that are 400 million years old (making up the surficial bedrock of the region), because there hasn't been major tectonic activity in the region since those 400 million year old rocks were deposited (and indeed, for close to a billion years before that in much of the midcontinent).
You could start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratigraphy and go from there.
For the upper bound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson#Measur...
TalkOrigins.org has many detailed rebuttals to creationist lies. This one hybridizes two topics, or maybe it’s a garbled version of CD210.
Grand Canyon: https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH581.html https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/icr-science.html https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD210.html
Erosion: https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD610.html https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD620.html
As much as I like poetry, why do we attribute to a poet that which we owe to a most observant and introspective canal digger who felt free to question dogma and received wisdom?
William Smith deserves so much of our respect. Cf, e.g., https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Map_that_Changed_the_Wor..., which summarizes the most excellent book.
We don’t. The article explains and credits the scientific research that the poet is referring to. And to answer your question a second way: because that research came decades earlier than Smith’s work.
Slightly OT, but Cowper street in Palo Alto is named after William Cowper. So a fun shibboleth (and as OP points out) is that the name is pronounced KOO-per.