Abstract
Andrew Ure was one of the top chemists of his day with an international reputation as a meticulous scientist, a prolific writer and an effective teacher. But he was also one of those brilliantly versatile men of science in the early 19th century whose understanding of many subjects, both scientific and otherwise, was encyclopaedic. Although not a geologist, he gained a good knowledge of geology by reading the works of leading geologists. In 1829 he published A New System of Geology in which he sought to expand the understanding of geology among the common people while at the same time defending the biblical teaching of recent creation and a global catastrophic Flood against what he perceived to be the undermining of morality and faith in the Scriptures by the writings of anti-Christian scientists. He also proposed some new theoretical ideas for the reconstruction of earth history, one of which was one of the earliest conceptions of an ice age, which he speculated would have resulted from the Flood. Though his book was appreciated by some geologically well-informed readers, it received scathing criticism from the leading Cambridge geologist, Adam Sedgwick, whose remarks may reveal as much, if not more, about old-earth geologists of that day as they do about Ure.