The Sixth Extinction: Quotes
An Unnatural History
Book by Elizabeth Kolbert
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Summary
In "The Sixth Extinction," Elizabeth Kolbert takes us on a riveting journey through the tumultuous history of life on Earth, revealing how human activity is driving a catastrophic modern extinction event that may ultimately imperil our own survival.
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These are the best quotes from The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. If you want to read a full summary of this book for free, click here.
"The Present Is the Key to the Past": Lyell's Uniformitarian Geology
"The present is the key to the past."
This famous maxim encapsulates geologist Charles Lyell's uniformitarian view. He argued the same gradual geological processes observable today, like erosion and sedimentation, shaped Earth's features over immense time. This contrasted with Cuvier's catastrophism. Lyell claimed the apparent "revolutions" in the fossil record simply reflected its incompleteness. Species extinctions occurred piecemeal, not en masse. Lyell's "Principles of Geology" was hugely influential, though he was ultimately wrong about the continuity of the fossil record and the ability of modern causes to explain mass extinctions.
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
"We Are in the Midst of One of the Great Die-Offs of Geological History"
"Very, very occasionally in the distant past, the planet has undergone change so wrenching that the diversity of life has plummeted. Five of these ancient events were catastrophic enough that they're put in their own category: the so-called Big Five. In what seems like a fantastic coincidence, but is probably no coincidence at all, the history of these events is recovered just as people come to realize that they are causing another one. When it is still too early to say whether it will reach the proportions of the Big Five, it becomes known as the Sixth Extinction."
Section: 1, Chapter: 5
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