Here is the longer original article, scanned by Google Books and hosted by the HathiTrust project:
"Age of the Sun -- Force and Heat"
Scientific American Vol IX -- No. 7
August 15 1863
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x001601382&view=1...
"Age of the Sun -- Force and Heat"
Scientific American Vol IX -- No. 7
August 15 1863
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x001601382&view=1...
So just keep in mind, what's written does not necessarily represent the scientific consensus, but the opinion of an enthusiastic amateur.
That said, given the explanation of the conservation of energy in the opening paragraphs, I wonder if this the original purpose was actually partly to convince the readers of The Presbyterian, presumably religious people familiar with the Genesis accounts of creation, that "young earth" creationist theories are incorrect: i.e.:
1. If the sun were burning a fuel -- even coal, one of the highest-energy fuels we know* -- it would be less than 5000 years old.
2. If rather the sun is incandescent, then it is at minimum 100 million years old.
3. Either way, 6000 years old doesn't fit.
(* I have no idea if this would have been true in 1863 or not)
There are long chronologies in Genesis that include, "A lived for X years and begat B. B lived for Z years and at C." If you assume these are contiguous and precise, and that the meaning of "year" hasn't changed, and that Adam was "born" on day 6 of creation, and the universe was created 6*24 hours before that, then you can calculate when various Biblical events happened -- including when the world was made. Ussher made his estimate in the 1600s; according to that Wikipedia article, Rabbi Jose ben Halfata made an estimate as far back as the 2nd century AD.
But I'm pretty sure even in Ussher's time, there were lots of Christians who said that those kinds of calculations weren't necessarily useful or accurate: that the book of Genesis wasn't trying to teach people Geology, but Theology.
Read through the Babylonian creation myth [1], in which the Earth is created by the carcass of a murdered god ripped in half and humans are made from the droplets of blood of another god "to serve the gods", and ask yourself: "What is the world like? What is my place in it as a normal human being?" Then read Genesis 1 and ask yourself the same questions. You'd reach quite different conclusions.
No, 6000 years had lots of belief before that. It's just that it had nothing to do with YEC, i.e. a 6000 year figure and YEC are not the same thing.
Prior to the modern YEC people believed that just like Adam was created as an adult, the earth was created already "old".
https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/jewish-calendar.html
This may have had some influence on western thinking. I don't know.
"He has enlightened our globe from one generation to another without any apparent diminution of strength, and we have formed the instinctive belief that no limit in the past or any in the future can be assigned to his functions. No proof of progress or decay has been detected ; and it has been thought that nothing but the fiat of the Almighty can quench his rays. Principles have now been recognized, however, which enable us to assign limits, and to show that he has not shone from a past eternity, and that he has a limited existence as an incandescent body. This limit assigned to the solar system forces us to recognize the hand of a Creator."
"The meteoric stones that sometimes fall to our earth may be regarded as balls, but moving with much greater velocity. They strike against our atmosphere with so much force that the force is converted into heat, so intense that they glow or become incandescent. .... Assuming that the heat of the sun has been kept up by meteoric bodies falling into it, and proof has been given of such fall, it is possible from the mass of the solar system to determine approximately the period during which the sun has shone as a luminary"
"Limits can be set to the fuel of the solar system, and therefore limits can also be assigned to the existence of the sun as our luminary. The limits lie between 100 millions and 400 millions of years. These are enormous periods, but still they are definite. The mass is so great,and the cooling is so slow, that, even on the supposition that no fuel was added, it might be five or six thousand years before the sun cooled down a single degree."
I wonder if they picked pronouns for the planets in accordance with the associated gods of Greco-Roman mythology? IIRC, the Greco-Roman sun gods were all male (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios).
If I'm correct they'd use male pronouns for the sun, Mars, and Jupiter; and female pronouns for Earth, the Moon (Luna), and Venus.
It seems more likely to me that people just kept using the latin genres since old scientific literature was in latin.
One place you see this is in terms relating to food. Words relating to rustic activities like agriculture and raising animals such as "cow" tend to have German roots. While culinary words like beef and veal tend to have french roots.
Mars, Jupiter, etc. are used as proper nouns, without a definite article nor a gender. If any, we use the male gender, as in "the (m) planet Venus".
"sun (n.) [...] Old English sunne was feminine (as generally in Germanic), and the fem. pronoun was used in English until 16c.; since then masc. has prevailed." [1]
"moon (n.) [...] A masculine noun in Old English." [2]
[1] https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=sun [2] https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=moon
Many languages have gendered nouns. In mine sun is also a "he".
It's also common to gender objects when talking about them affectionately or poetically (e.g. talking about a motorcycle as a "she" or a "he").
In languages with gendered nouns, objects which can have humans inside of them (e.g. cars, boats, houses) are almost universally female (presumably because females have wombs), and this leaks into English pronouns as well.
In Brazilian Portuguese, we use masculine pronouns for cars ("o carro"). Same goes for boat ("o barco") and plane ("o avião"). This can also be seen in Spanish ("el coche", "el barco", "el avión").
I believe that the gender these things are referred to in languages with gendered nouns is more linked to the etymology and development of linguistics than psychology, although it is very likely that the later has some influence as well.
- earth, sun and time are feminine words and can to this day still be referred to as 'she'
- heaven, road and stone were referred to as 'he', although this has disappeared from modern Swedish.
Because, as a native English speaker, this seems like misinformation to me, perhaps partly influenced by your teacher having a first language where nouns do still have gender.
Oh, you weren't joking?