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MARTIN RUDWICK offers unusual advice in his introduction: the picture captions in Bursting the Limits of Time effectively summarise this superb account of the debate over the history of the Earth. It would be a pity to take him at his word, though, because this is a vigorous tale of the gradual realisation and proof that the Earth is immensely old and always changing, that it was not bound by fixed laws created (according to Archbishop Usher) on 22 October 4004 BC. The idea that Earth had a pre-human history created a rift between science and religion; but whether…