How A Contrarian Idea Gains Traction: The Incredible Story Of James Hutton
By: Peter Burns
Tags: Life Lessons, Innovation, Ideas, Science, Paradigm Shift

What led to Hutton forming his ideas and what was instrumental in them gaining traction?

In order to analyze this, we need to be very careful in trying to avoid survivorship bias. By looking at all the different contributing factors, we can surmise which ones were the crucial ones.

His starting line

James Hutton was living in an era which would subsequently be known as the Scottish Enlightenment. The waters of dogmatism were beginning to be lifted, and people were starting to question the official explanations of how the world works. The time was right for new ideas to emerge, and to gain a foothold.

The old establishment institutions like the Church no longer had the power to enforce their vision on everyone. Society was undergoing a huge transformation in the way things were done. A spirit of freedom was bursting out, slowly establishing itself in the minds of people.

Hutton was also lucky that he came from a family in good standing and had money. So this gave him an advantage over the vast majority of people from poorer conditions that did not have his opportunities.

While these factors played a role, they were not the determining ones. Many other people fit into these categories as well, yet they didn’t meet success. What made Hutton so special?

The birth of an idea

How was the idea born? Hutton started noticing patterns around him that caused him to start thinking about alternative explanations to how the world was formed.

Those patterns were out in the open for everyone to see though. People could see the different rock strata with their own eyes and at times fossils of water-borne creatures were found high up in the mountains. However these findings were usually taken to support Noah’s Flood.

What Hutton did was to take the same evidence that everyone else had access to, but reinterpret it in a different way.

He did have specialist knowledge. He studied medicine, which was the best place in those days to learn about chemistry, as well as other sciences. This distinguished him from the general masses and even much of the gentry, but there were still thousands of other guys who did this.

He had an interest in geology, but so did hundreds of others.

Looking at his starting line, it was not much different from that of thousands of other men of his generation and so he had no insider track to develop the ideas that he did. There must have been other factors that were crucial for this.

His strong points

1) Charisma

One thing that Hutton had and that had drawn many of the greatest Scottish thinkers towards associating with him, was his charisma. Jack Repcheck in his biography of Hutton “The Man Who Found Time” includes a telling description of the man:

“He was a late bloomer who came of age during a watershed period of Scottish history. A jack-of-all-trades, Hutton tried being a lawyer, doctor, and farmer before finally finding his true calling as a scientist. Though he was the last of the great Edinburgh scholars to publish his seminal ideas, he commanded the respect of all the other participants in the Scottish Enlightenment. All who came in contact with him noted his animated personality, his energy, and his good cheer. People were simply drawn to him.“ Jack Repcheck

Charisma is an important characteristic for anyone who wants to build a network of contacts, as well as convince others of their ideas. If you are a charismatic person, other people are naturally drawn to you.

It seems that Hutton, even though he had his specific peculiarities, was a charismatic man that could inspire others. He used this trait in order to build lasting friendships with people like Joseph Black or John Playfair, which would prove crucial for spreading his ideas.

2) Love of learning

Hutton was a man who above all else was curious. He wanted to know how things worked and was always learning about new things, exploring and trying to find explanations for what he discovered. He was doing it not for the money, but for the knowledge itself. He was motivated intrinsically.

This is very important if you want to overcome different challenges on your journey. People who are primarily motivated by extrinsic factors like money, usually give up at the first sign of trouble or failure.

This type of intrinsic motivation is very important for drive and persistence. Hutton was very driven and persistent.

Hutton didn’t give up when he was met with ridicule. Instead, he just started working harder in order to find further evidence to support his claim.

3) Keen eye for detail

One thing that distinguished Hutton from others was his keen eye for detail. He noticed the little things that others missed.

This keen eye for detail manifested itself after 1754, when Hutton started to work on his own farm. This is where he used his power of observation to find out the different natural processes at work on his land.

“Ironically, erosion, evident in so many parts of Scotland and the essential starting point for Hutton’s theory, is not very obvious in the region around Slighhouses. It is a testament to Hutton’s skills of observation that he properly assessed its power not by watching storm waves decimate the North Sea coast but by watching his soil wash away.” Jack Repcheck

Hutton was always observing and looking for better explanations:

“Most of us look. The genius sees. Hutton noted when something wasn’t quite right, didn’t fit. Rather than dismiss such incongruities or explain them away, he investigated further. He asked questions. Why, for instance, was one layer of rocks, called Salisbury Crags, darker than others in the area? What were fish fossils doing on the summit of a mountain?” Eric Weiner

Hutton’s curiosity and keen eye for detail let him to see oddities, which then led him to pose questions. These questions were instrumental in furthering the direction of his research.

4) Eventually built a strong network of contacts

James Hutton lived in a period which has since been named the Scottish Enlightenment. He became a part of the inner circle and some of the major figures of that era like Joseph Black or John Playfair became his closest friends. So he managed to build a strong network of very smart, but also influential contacts.

5) Polymath (could bring in ideas and observations from different subjects and combine them)

One of the primary strengths of James Hutton was the fact that he was a polymath. He tried his hands at a variety of things and could bring in ideas and observations from different subjects (chemistry, farming, …etc.) and then combine them.

Hutton was a very practical man and could spend hours observing different phenomenon and thinking about them. He was also adept at first principles thinking by looking at something, going down to its first principles and then coming up with a new explanation or process.

For example he used his knowledge of chemistry to come up with a new process of making sal ammoniac, which is a mineral that is used in metalworking and was becoming more important as the industrial revolution was getting off the ground.

At the time, the only viable source of this mineral was Egypt. James Hutton and James Davie experimented with this mineral for a bit and came up with a new way to create it from coal soot.

Based on this process, Davie created a company to manufacture it and Hutton became a partner in it. Hutton had no involvement in the daily running of the company, but the fact of being a partner gave him a comfortable steady and automatic income.

Together with his family inheritance, this freed up Hutton from having to do a daily job and gave him a lot of spare time which he could use for more productive purposes.

So being a polymath and adept at first principles thinking, allowed him to create passive income, which then freed up his time. The free time then gave him the freedom to do whatever he wanted. This was instrumental in allowing Hutton to explore, experiment and come up with his theories.

Potential Obstacles

There were many potential obstacles that Hutton needed to overcome and which could have stopped him along the way.

One big problem showed itself up on the personal level. Hutton had problems with the fickle nature of women and often ended up heartbroken. This is how he described it in a letter to his friend:

“O, if the ladies were but capable of loving us men with half the affection that I have toward the cows and calfies that happen to be under my nurture and admonition, what a happy world we should have!“

For many guys, this is a huge problem that can often cause depression and lack of will. Hutton struggled with it, but at the end came to accept it and instead started focusing on his work.

This could also be tied to some of his weak points. Hutton was a bit of a loner and not good with words, so not very persuasive. This weakness in social skills was a key factor in his life.

Another potential obstacle manifested itself on the societal level. He was living in a society where the religious factor was still very strong and most people looked at the world through a religious lens.

This state of affairs was one of the main hurdles for anyone trying to push through a radical reinterpretation of the world. Luckily, the times were changing and Hutton also lived at a time, when the religious establishment was losing its power and people were slowly adopting a more scientific outlook on life.

The X-Factor

If you want to win a war of ideas, there are two factors that you need to take into consideration. There are two processes at play: the process of coming up with the idea, and the process of spreading it.

Hutton was a man who who did not seek glory or ambition, but instead was in it for the joy of discovery. As his friend John Playfair described it:

“He was one of those who are much more delighted with the contemplation of truth, than with the praise of having discovered it.”

Hutton was good at coming up with ideas, but bad at explaining them. If you want to convince people that you are right, you need to be able to explain your idea and convince others of its rightness. Then you need to promote it. This is where Hutton failed.

As Eric Weiner noted in his “Geography of Genius”, marketing is fundamental for success:

“Talent alone was not enough. You also need marketing. Beethoven wouldn’t be known as a genius if he wasn’t good at marketing. Mozart had a built-in marketing machine with his father. The notion of the lone genius is a folktale, a story we like to tell ourselves. If you don’t have the possibility to sell yourself, to be known, you won’t be a genius. You cannot just sit under a chestnut tree and write or paint or whatever. I know five painters who are real geniuses, but no one has discovered them. You can be as good as Rembrandt, but if no one discovers you, you will only be a genius in theory.“

You might have the perfect solution, but if you don’t know how to market it, then you won’t get too much success.

Hutton’s ideas did not gain much traction during his lifetime. He made speeches and wrote a book to explain them, but the arguments were not very clear and the book was very long and written in a very obscure and hard to read way.

This stands in stark contrast to the ideas of Hutton’s main competitor in the scientific explanation of the world, Abraham Gottlob Werner.

During Hutton’s life and later, Werner’s ideas were very popular. This is because, as opposed to Hutton, Werner was a good marketer. He explained his ideas well and had the ability to inflict passion about his explanation in the people who were listening to his speeches. In that way, he trained thousands of students who were dedicated to his ideas and who helped spread them.

When Hutton died, it seemed that his theory on how the world works would soon die a very quick death after him, and that Werner’s ideas would dominate.

However there was one residual thing that ended up tipping the scales in Hutton’s favor in later stages. While Hutton was bad in spreading his ideas to a wider audience, one of his advantages was that he had built a quite good network of influential thinkers, who became his friends.

One of these was John Playfair.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Tipping Point” described three types of people who are instrumental in an idea spreading and gaining popularity: mavens, connectors and salespeople.

Mavens are the guys who have the ideas, connectors are the guys who have the wide social network and connections, while salespeople are the ones who sell the idea.

James Hutton was the maven. He came up with the idea of how the Earth was formed and of deep time. He associated with other mavens of the Scottish Enlightenment, some of which knew others and through these connectors he managed to meet many influential people. So he had the maven and connector part down.

He just didn’t have the salespeople to market his ideas, since he couldn’t do it himself. However luck would have it, that one of the influential people that he had met, John Playfair, would turn into a salesperson of Hutton’s ideas after Hutton died.

The thing is that while Hutton did not have the necessary skills to promote his idea well, he did build up all the right circumstances and set them in place in order for serendipity and luck to play its part.

If you manage to reach the connectors, there is a greater chance that a marketer will find you. In Hutton’s case, one of his connections turned into a marketer.

After Hutton’s death, John Playfair saw that the idea of his friend was quickly dying. Playfair decided to revive it and turned into an evangelist for his dead friend’s theory.

He saw that the book that Hutton left was very hard to read, so he decided to write an easy to read book to explain Hutton’s ideas. The result was a book called “Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth”, which came out in 1802.

This was the first shot in the battle to popularize Hutton’s ideas. At Playfair’s funeral, one of his nephews summarized how powerful this book was:

“With what success “Illustrations” was attended we may judge from the fame and credit which have been attained by the theory, which, but for its commentary, seemed likely to be known only through the erroneous statement of its opponents.“

This book was also the instrument through which Charles Lyell, one of the most prominent geologists of the 19th century, learned about Hutton’s ideas. After reading the book, he became a convert to deep time and the idea that the Earth is still being shaped by the same natural forces that shaped it in prehistory. And through Lyell these ideas got to Charles Darwin, who then used them as a basis for his theory of evolution.

Going back to the comparison between Hutton and Werner, Werner was a popularizer who had a gift for enthralling many different people towards his view, while Hutton was more personal and instead only had a limited number of very good friends who however became dedicated to his ideas.

Luckily these good friends were very influential and later would play an instrumental role in spreading his ideas and enthralling others for them. Playfair was able to step into the role of a popularizer when he wrote his illustrated book on Hutton’s theory, but the the biggest and most influential popularizer was Lyell, a man who learned of the idea from reading Playfair’s book.