He was burned at the stake in 1589. A bad time for scientific inquiry. Demonstrated that Hadrian's Wall was built by Romans and that after 1500 years there was no change. Thus, he suspected that Earth was much older than 6000 years. This is the theory of uniformitarianism , that slow processes shape earth.
Mountains arise continuously as a balance against erosion and weathering.
The physical and chemical laws that govern nature are uniform. In the mid 1800's, Scottish geoglist Sir Charles Lyell expanded on uniformitarianism to develop gradualism , the view that all features of the Earth's surface are produced by physical, chemical, and biological processes through long periods of geological time. Changes in climate have fluctuated around a mean, reflecting changes in the position of land and sea. In particular, Lyell believed that the species composition of the world remained unchanged, with at least some members of all classes of organisms existing throughout the history of the earth. In 1897, Lord Kelvin assumed that the Earth was originally molten and calculated a date based on cooling through conduction and radiation.