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William Buckland Quotes

William Buckland DD, FRS was an English theologian who became Dean of Westminster. He was also a geologist and palaeontologist. He wrote the first full account of a fossil dinosaur, which he named Megalosaurus. His work proved that Kirkdale Cave had been a prehistoric hyena den, for which he was awarded the Copley Medal. It was praised as an example of how scientific analysis could reconstruct distant events. He pioneered the use of fossilised faeces in reconstructing ecosystems, coining the term coprolites.

Buckland followed the Gap Theory in interpreting the biblical account of Genesis as two widely separated episodes of creation. It had emerged as a way to reconcile the scriptural account with discoveries in geology suggesting the earth was very old. Early in his career Buckland believed he had found evidence of the biblical flood, but later saw that the glaciation theory of Louis Agassiz gave a better explanation, and played a significant role in promoting it. Wikipedia  

✵ 12. March 1784 – 14. August 1856
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Famous William Buckland Quotes

“Life to each individual is a scene of continued feasting in a region of plenty; and when unexpected death arrests its course, it repays with small interest the large debt which it has contracted to the common fund of animal nutrition, from whence the materials of its body have been derived. Thus the great drama of universal life is perpetually sustained; and though the individual actors undergo continual change, the same parts are filled by another and another generation; renewing the face of the earth and the bosom of the deep with endless successions of life and happiness.”

William Buckland

Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (1841), p. 109

“Geology holds the keys of one of the kingdoms of nature; and it cannot be said that a science which extends our Knowledge, and by consequence our Power, over a third part of nature, holds a low place among intellectual employments.”

William Buckland

As quoted in A Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical Geologies (1825) by Granville Penn, p. 8

“Geology has shared the fate of other infant sciences, in being for a while considered hostile to revealed religion; so like them, when fully understood, it will be found a potent and consistent auxiliary to it, exalting our conviction of the Power, and Wisdom, and Goodness of the Creator.”

William Buckland

As quoted in The Age of the World : Moses to Darwin (1959) by Francis C. Haber, p. 221

“The taste of mole was the most repulsive I knew until I tasted a bluebottle”

William Buckland

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As quoted in The Violinist's Thumb 2012 by Sam Kean, p. 204

“I have eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king.”

William Buckland

As quoted in The Violinist's Thumb 2012 by Sam Kean, p. 233
Dubious

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