It was a speculative cosmogony, in which Burnet suggested a hollow earth with most of the water inside until Noah's Flood, at which time mountains and oceans appeared.

Burnet was to some extent influenced by Descartes who had written on the creation of the earth in Principia philosophiae (1644), and was criticised on those grounds by Roger North.

[6] The heterodox views of Isaac La Peyrère included the idea that the Flood was not universal; Burnet's theory was at least in part intended to answer him on that point.

[7] Burnet's system had its novel features, as well as those such as the four classical elements that were very traditional: an initially ovoid Earth, a Paradise before the Flood that was always in the spring season, and rivers flowing from the poles to the Equator.

They engendered a great deal of controversy at the time, and Burnet defended himself against selected critics, John Keill and Erasmus Warren.

[9]Some of the views expressed in this work, also known as Archaeologiae Philosophicae sive Doctrina Antiqua de Rerum Originibus (1692), were so unacceptable to contemporary theologians that he had to resign his post at Court.

Thomas Newton, Bishop of Bristol and Dean of St. Paul's, criticised Gibbon and claimed that Burnet's views were exactly the opposite.