apparent age

views updated May 14 2018

apparent age
1. An alternative name that has been proposed for absolute age.

2. An idea current in the nineteenth century among certain naturalists who opposed evolutionary theory (e.g. Philip Henry Gosse, 1810–88), that God had placed fossils on the Earth to give it an apparently great age as a test of their faith.

apparent age

views updated May 08 2018

apparent age See ABSOLUTE AGE.