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Abstract
At the turn of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Earth sciences were in a period of heated debates, with an arduous acquisition of basic principles for geology. Among the unresolved debates, was the well-known between Neptunists and Plutonists, and there was still disagreement between the supporters of a catastrophic flood and a long permanence of the sea in areas currently occupied by emerged lands. In such a climate of uncertainty appears the ‘Theory of the Earth’ of Ermenegildo Pini, an Italian Barnabite cleric. Pini was a many-faceted figure, including naturalist-scientist and technician, with interests ranging from architecture and engineering to natural sciences sensu lato. As a Diluvialist and a Neptunist, Pini strongly rejected the igneous theory – with Earth completely molten in origin – preferring instead one involving a fluidity in water and formation of ‘primary mountains’ due of centrifugal acceleration induced by Earth’s rotation. Alternatively, the so-called ‘transitional’ and ‘secondary’ mountains were entirely attributed to the rapid, catastrophic and universal flood literally interpreted from the Holy Scriptures. Despite his strongly theistic approach to the evolution of our planet, some of the intuitions and methodological approaches of Pini are extremely interesting and worthy of review and renewed discussion.
Acknowledgements
The Italian artist Emiliano Troco is warmly thanked for the beautiful illustration of Pini’s diluvial theory. Many thanks to Sean Modesto, Maren Jansen and Neil Brocklehurst for their corrections and suggestions that have substantially improved an early version of this manuscript. Fabiana Console is thanked for the bibliographic assistance and retrieval of important original plates form the ISPRA library.