Earth achieved a lot before humans appeared

Share This
« Back to Index

An example of anthropomorphism in popular science writing:

"Using the age-old analogy of a 24-hour clock that started ticking when the Earth formed and which reached midnight at the present day, it would show that humans only arrived at a few minutes before midnight. Most of those 24 hours passed prior to the appearance of humans, and the planet achieved a lot in that time. For starters, the Earth had to form from a cloud of dust and gas and establish itself as one of the most important objects in the solar system, one of the eight planetary bodies that owned its orbit around the Sun. It then had to create oceans and an atmosphere, and allow lifeforms to grow and thrive on and in it. Earth even had to recover many times from space objects repeatedly impacting its surface; it formed its own Moon; and it found a way to continually change its external appearance, destroying and re-forming its surface many times over, something that it continues to do at the present day, even if it isn't very obvious on the scale of human lifetimes."

Natalie Starkey

Starkey, N. (2018). Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the solar system. Bloomsbury Sigma.

Read about anthropomorphism

Read examples of anthropomorphism in science

Tags: Earth
[Please be aware that a word may have different nuances, or even a different meaning, according to context.]« Back to Index

Author: Keith

Former school and college science teacher, teacher educator, research supervisor, and research methods lecturer. Emeritus Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.