I love Playfair’s quote about his time on that boat trip: “The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far back into the abyss of time”.<br><br>When accepted knowledge was that the Earth was only a few thousand years old, this sudden acceptance that it was actually much much much older must have had quite the overview effect.,(reply>), I doubt we can even understand these numbers. We view time with the eyes of something that won't be here for more than a century.<br><br>To put it in perspective. If we could travel back in time at a speed of 1 year every second, we would see our birth in less than a minute an a half of travel. And 1 million years is very small in geological time, yet we would be sitting 11 days in our time machine just to travel that short "time distance",(reply>), What an amazing quote.,(reply>), And angered people who were going to lose their grants. 😅,(reply>), exactly. 1000% true!!