Geology discovered time as the natural history of the earth, but only through the activity of scientists could this discovery be translated into practice. The historical connection which existed between the scientific concern with the 'natural time'of the earth on the one hand, and the industrial revolution on the other, went deeper, however, than the finding of coal leads us to assume. For Geoffrey Bowker, at any rate, who has conducted a semiotic investigation into the temporal perceptions of English and French geologists in the 1830s, it is obvious that the time discovered by the geologists soon turned into an ideological justification of the new conception of time which had infiltrated society.
The discourse which took place within geology about the beginnings of time turned it into a key science in the legitimation of the new social system of time which entered society with machines. Bowker reconstructs a fascinating picture from contemporary scientific texts by geologists on both sides of the English Channel. He shows how through a series of analogies and linguistic transformations God, the Creator in his relationship with his creation, was gradually replaced by a different analogous relationship, that which is established between the scientist and his creation, the machine. Science appropriates the beginning of natural time so to speak, by placing itself at the beginning instead of religion. It has to define this beginning afresh and thereby becomes the creator.8
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Cronos's Fear of the New Age