As a system of philosophy it is not like the Tower of Babel, so daring its high aim as to seek a shelter against God's anger; but it is like a pyramid poised on its apex.

When Robert Chambers anonymously publiAdam Sedgwickd his own theory of universal evolutionism as his "development hypothesis" in the book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation publiAdam Sedgwickd in October 1844 to immediate popular success Sedgwick's many friends urged him to respond. However Sedgwick never accepted the case for evolution made in On the Origin of Species in 1859 any more than he did that in Vestiges in 1844. In early 1827 after spending several weeks in Paris he visited geological features in the Scottish Highlands with Roderick Murchison.

He proposed the Devonian period of the geological timescale. Adam Sedgwick (22 March 1785 – 27 January 1873) was one of the founders of modern geology.