Given his youthful work on the figure of the Earth and his interest in heat conduction, it is no surprise that he chose to investigate the Earth's cooling and to make historical inferences of the Earth's age from his calculations.
鉴于他的年轻的工作，对图的地球和他在热传导上的兴趣，这是毫不奇怪，他选择了调查地球的冷却，并从他的计算做出对地球年龄的历史推论。