ABSTRACT
The myth of intrinsic conflict between science and religion must be demythologized, as it has been by modern historians of the sciences. It was largely constructed in late nineteenth-century Europe and North America. Chronology was a science within the practice of human historiography. Chronologers analysed historical records, both texts and material artefacts, in order to reach accurate and reliable dates for historical events: first within some specific culture, but then correlating those dates on to a standard cross-cultural timeline. Jean-Andre De Luc was well qualified to become Hutton's most formidable and persistent critic. They were of the same generation, indeed they were born less than a year apart. De Luc was certainly not a marginal figure in intellectual life, either in Europe as a whole or even just in England. Like Buffon, Hutton and many others, de Luc devised his own Theory of the Earth or geotheoretical model.
