James Hutton: The Founder of Modern Geology James Hutton: The Founder of Modern Geology Curriculum Collections James Hutton: The Founder of Modern Geology A portrait of James Hutton (1726–1797) by Sir Henry Raeborn. Portrait by Sir Henry Raeburn, courtesy of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. James Hutton (1726–1797), a Scottish farmer and naturalist, is known as the founder of modern geology. He was a great observer of the world around him. More importantly, he made carefully reasoned geological arguments. Hutton came to believe that the Earth was perpetually being formed; for example, molten material is forced up into mountains, eroded, and then eroded sediments are washed away. He recognized that the history of the Earth could be determined by understanding how processes such as erosion and sedimentation work in the present day. His ideas and approach to studying the Earth established geology as a proper science.

In the late eighteenth century, when Hutton was carefully examining the rocks, it was generally believed that Earth had come into creation only around six thousand years earlier (on October 22, 4004 B.C., to be precise, according to the seventeenth century scholarly analysis of the Bible by Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland), and that fossils were the remains of animals that had perished during the Biblical flood. As for the structure of the Earth, “natural philosophers” agreed that much bedrock consisted of long, parallel layers which occurred at various angles, and that sediments deposited by water were compressed to form stone. Hutton perceived that this sedimentation takes place so slowly that even the oldest rocks are made up of, in his words, “materials furnished from the ruins of former continents.” The reverse process occurs when rock exposed to the atmosphere erodes and decays. He called this coupling of destruction and renewal the “great geological cycle,” and realized that it had been completed innumerable times . Hutton came to his chosen field by quite a roundabout route.

Born in Edinburgh in 1726, he studied medicine and chemistry at the Universities of Edinburgh, Paris, and Leiden, in the Netherlands, and then spent fourteen years running two small family farms. It was farming that gave rise to Hutton’s obsession with how the land could hold its own against the destructive forces of wind and weather he saw at work around him. Hutton began to devote his scientific knowledge, his philosophical turn of mind, and his extraordinary powers of observation to a subject that had only recently acquired a name: geology. Dacite columns that formed tens of thousands of years ago when a lava flow cooled rapidly against a glacier. Photo by Jackie Beckett, © American Museum of Natural History.

Around 1768 he moved to Edinburgh, where a visitor a few years later described his study as “so full of fossils and chemical apparatus that there is hardly room to sit down.” In a paper presented in 1788 before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a newly-founded scientific organization, Hutton described a universe very different from the Biblical cosmos: one formed by a continuous cycle in which rocks and soil are washed into the sea, compacted into bedrock, forced up to the surface by volcanic processes, and eventually worn away into sediment once again. “The result, therefore, of this physical enquiry,” Hutton concluded, “is that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.” Relying on the same methods as do modern field geologists, Hutton cited as evidence a cliff at nearby Siccar Point, where the juxtaposition of vertical layers of gray shale and overlying horizontal layers of red sandstone could only be explained by the action of stupendous forces over vast periods of time.

There Hutton realized that the sediments now represented by the gray shale had, after deposition, been uplifted, tilted, eroded away, and then covered by an ocean, from which the red sandstone was then deposited. The boundary between the two rock types at Siccar Point is now called the Hutton Unconformity. The fundamental force, theorized Hutton, was subterranean heat, as evidenced by the existence of hot springs and volcanoes. From his detailed observations of rock formations in Scotland and elsewhere in the British Isles, Hutton shrewdly inferred that high pressures and temperatures deep within the Earth would cause the chemical reactions that created formations of basalt, granite, and mineral veins. He also proposed that internal heat causes the crust to warm and expand, resulting in the upheavals that form mountains. The same process causes rock stratifications to tilt, fold and deform, as exemplified by the Siccar Point rocks. View of Siccar Point, Scotland. Photo by Craig Chesek, © American Museum of Natural History Another of Hutton’s key concepts was the Theory of Uniformitarianism.

This was the belief that geological forces at work in the present day—barely noticeable to the human eye, yet immense in their impact—are the same as those that operated in the past. This means that the rates at which processes such as erosion or sedimentation occur today are similar to past rates, making it possible to estimate the times it took to deposit a sandstone, for example, of a given thickness. It became evident from such analysis that enormous lengths of time were required to account for the thicknesses of exposed rock layers. Uniformitarianism is one of the fundamental principles of earth science. Hutton’s theories amounted to a frontal attack on a popular contemporary school of thought called catastrophism: the belief that only natural catastrophes, such as the Great Flood, could account for the form and nature of a 6,000-year-old Earth. The great age of Earth was the first revolutionary concept to emerge from the new science of geology. The effect that this portrait of an ancient, dynamic planet had on the thinkers who followed in the next century was profound. Charles Darwin, for example, was well acquainted with Hutton’s ideas, which provided a framework for the eons required by the biological evolution he observed in the fossil record.

English geologist Sir Charles Lyell, who was born the year Hutton died and whose influential book Principles of Geology won wide acceptance for the Theory of Uniformitarianism, wrote, “The imagination was first fatigued and overpowered by endeavouring to conceive the immensity of time required for the annihilation of whole continents by so insensible a process.” The “ideas of sublimity” awakened by this “plan of such infinite extent,” as Lyell referred to it, inspired not only Hutton’s contemporaries, but generations of geologists to come. This is an excerpt from EARTH: INSIDE AND OUT, edited by Edmond A. Mathez, a publication of the New Press. © 2000 American Museum of Natural History. More About This Resource... This online article, from Earth: Inside and Out, reports on the life and influence of James Hutton, considered the founder of modern geology. It covers: The existing thinking about Earth's creation. How Hutton's scientific training and his work as a farmer came together in his pursuit of geology. His important contributions to the new science of geology. The influence Hutton's work had on future generations of scientists.

Teacher Tip Supplement a study of geology with an activity drawn from this profile of the founder of modern geology. Ask students what, if anything, they know about James Hutton and the beginnings of geology. Send students to this online article, or print copies of the essay for them to read. Have them write a one-page reaction to the article, focusing on what they learned about James Hutton's contributions. Topic History of geology--Bergman History of Geology Born: 20 March 1735, Katrineberg, Sweden. Died: 8 July 1784, Medevi, Sweden. Table of Contents Note: The term "ur" refers to a watch or clock in Scandinavian languages. It also means primitive, primordial or primeval. It still appears today as a prefix, such as "urberg" (meaning Precambrian) on Swedish geological maps. Historical assessment Werner freely acknowledged Bergman's work and lavished praise on the cool-blooded, sharp-minded, great Bergman. Bergman is also thought to have had considerable influence on the somewhat later work of James Hutton.

Although little known today, Physick Beskrifning was well known and widely distributed during the 18th century. It represents an important step in the emergence of geology as a science. Related websites St Huttons Hagiography - creation.com by John Reed One of the ironies of secular geology is that the same people who claim to accurately report historical events billions of years in the past have a hard time doing the same over a few decades or centuries. This is illustrated by the recurring myths surrounding one of the founding fathers of modern geology, James Hutton—myths that began shortly after his death. Aspiring geologists are taught that Hutton was a bold empiricist and rational thinker, who cast aside biblical superstition, conceived of uniformitarianism, ‘saw’ deep time in outcrops, and thus fathered the science of geology. His genius was unappreciated until Charles Lyell ‘rediscovered’ his work and finished the fight to cast off the shackles of Christianity. But this heroic saga falls far short of historical reality; so much so that cynical students of history might be tempted to label it propaganda.

Geologists got this story wrong for nearly two centuries, giving us yet another reason to question their credibility as the caretakers of a much more obscure past. Image Wikipedia.org Figure 1. James Hutton (1726–1797) was one of the leading lights of the Edinburgh Enlightenment, famous for his geological theory set forth in his book, Theory of the Earth (1795). For more than 150 years, students of geology have been taught that James Hutton (1726–1797) was the father of modern uniformitarian geology. We are told that he was a brave empiricist, a secular saint, struggling against the strictures of the dominant 18th century church which sought to repress his work because it threatened their Mosaic monopoly on history. But his indefatigable courage and indisputable field evidence, combined with his uncanny insight into the expanse of deep time, struck a blow against medieval superstition.

His message was hindered for a few decades due to an obtuse writing style, but as it was clarified by John Playfair (1748–1819) and Charles Lyell (1797–1875), it inspired a generation of British geologists to build the science of geology that we know today. ‘In such accounts Hutton sounds like nothing so much as a time-traveling twenty-first-century geologist, somehow dropped three centuries into the past to do heroic battle with bad guys armed with dogmatic theology.’ 1 It would make a great television special … even though it is a myth. And this myth continues to be perpetuated in textbooks and professional journals. It is presented with such confidence that there is no reason to doubt it. But the confidence is misplaced—it turns out that much of the saga is propaganda and polemic created by 19th century secularists who were eager to grind Christianity into the dust so that it would never threaten their emerging worldview. Even while popular level propagandists continue to perpetuate the myth (e.g.

Repcheck 2 ), modern historians of science are finally demythologizing Hutton, and their work, which was outlined by Gould, 3 has been ably summarized in Rudwick’s 2005 book, Bursting the Limits of Time. 4 That Hutton was an 18th century revolutionary and that he was a genius, there can be little doubt. He was one of the top-tier intellectuals of the Edinburgh Enlightenment. But the claims of his hagiographers, starting with his protégé, John Playfair, are often false in regard to his contributions to geology. In fact, as one begins to understand what Hutton really thought, it might be said that his ideas are so far outside the modern geological mainstream that one is hard-pressed to find points of commonality! This paper will examine the myths about James Hutton and several important lessons that can be gleaned from their persistence. Figure 2. Hutton was a contemporary of many famous thinkers in the 18th century, including philosophers (top, lighter gray), naturalists (middle, medium gray), and theologians (bottom, darker gray).

Hutton cannot be understood apart from this context—his thinking was influenced by many of them, especially by David Hume, a fellow Scot. First, however, let us examine what we do know about Hutton. He was born in Edinburgh in 1726, shortly before Isaac Newton died. He was the contemporary of John Wesley, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Adam Smith, Voltaire, Giovanni Arduino, the Comte de Buffon and Abraham Werner. He studied in Edinburgh, Paris and Leyden, receiving a degree in medicine in 1749, though he never practised. He lived briefly in London before deciding to take up agriculture at his family farm south of Edinburgh, having prepared himself by working with a Norfolk farmer for two years. He spent 1754–1767 working his own land, and was reported to be an innovative and hardworking gentleman farmer. During that time he also pursued his longtime interest in geology, and when he moved back to Edinburgh in 1767, he was recognized as a leading ‘mineralogist’ in Scotland.

His last thirty years were spent as a full-time intellectual (a ‘savant’ in Rudwick’s terminology), before he died there in 1797. His contribution to geology came first in a paper presented to the new Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1785 (published in their first transactions in 1788). It was titled Theory of the Earth, or an Investigation of the Laws Observable in the Composition, Dissolution and Restoration of Land upon the Globe. After taking time to publish several other books, Hutton expanded the paper into a multivolume book, Theory of the Earth, published in 1795, shortly before his death. Hutton was modified and defended by his student, John Playfair, 5 and lionized by Charles Lyell. 6 Even today we are taught about the origin of geology via the famous British trio, who appear as some sort of Copernicus–Galileo–Newton triumvirate in developing the new science. But the history of science has led to some rather interesting modifications of this tale. Rudwick and Gould have identified at least five myths about Hutton’s work.

These are interesting both from the perspective of our historical understanding and the ongoing clash of worldviews between Christianity and naturalism. Myth 1—Hutton was the father of uniformitarian geology We have been taught that Hutton originated the concepts that led to modern uniformitarian geology. He is the mythical ‘father’ of modern geology who opened the abyss of time, and laid down the principles of slow, constant processes acting over eons to shape the face of Earth. This is repeated even today by historians like Repcheck, who ranked Hutton with Copernicus, Galileo and Newton as one of the most influential scientists in history—the creator of an amazing scientific revolution: ‘James Hutton, a Scottish natural philosopher, boldly confronted this centuries-old wisdom. Writing in 1788, he formally presented proof that the earth was significantly older than 6,000 years. In fact, its age was incalculable—it could be hundreds of millions of years old, it could be billions. Hutton reached his conclusions about the age of the planet through his revolutionary theory of the earth’. 7 Hutton was not a pioneer—he was just one member of the elite intellectual herd.

However, the truth of the matter is somewhat different … actually it’s a lot different! Hutton is renowned for his uniformity of rate, and ‘proofs’ of a vast prehistory. While it is true that he held these positions, what is omitted is the cogent fact that most other naturalists in Europe did too, and that many published similar ideas long before Hutton! Hutton was not a pioneer—he was just one member of the elite intellectual herd. Arguments for an old earth had been made at least since Buffon’s 1749 edition of his Histoire naturelle, and a general assumption of uniform geologic rates was prevalent among most 18th century savants. ‘Many years later, after Hutton’s death, Playfair recalled how Hutton had expounded on the spot his interpretation of the long sequence of events that had produced what they saw before their eyes, and he recalled that “the mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time.” The idea of time as an abyss was borrowed from Buffon, but it encapsulates what Playfair’s generation (and others since) found most striking about Hutton’s system.

‘Yet Hutton’s concept of time was in fact a commonplace among Enlightenment savants. Like Buffon with his “eternal road of time”, Hutton treated time as a dimension that necessarily stretched without limit into past and future’. 8 And it was not just Buffon (although he probably deserves a more prominent role in developing the idea). Laplace, Desmarest, Saussure, Souvier and even Werner were only a few of the many naturalists who advocated an old earth with an extended prehistory. Among the intellectual elite, it was the majority position at the time. Despite later propaganda, the (more or less) biblical position of Steno, Burnet, Woodward and Ray had already given way to a new secular alternative. Hutton—through an interesting twist of history—simply became the figurehead for the 19th century mythos. Charles Lyell’s self-serving rewrite of geological history … demanded a certain type of hero, and Hutton best fitted the requirements. Simple chauvinism decreed a British character, and Hutton prevailed.—Stephen Jay Gould ‘ … James Hutton’s geotheory has not suffered from historical neglect.

On the contrary, it has received so much uncritical adulation that its place in the sciences of the earth of the late eighteenth century has been seriously distorted. Anglophone geologists have treated Hutton as their iconic “founder” or “father”, with such pious veneration that his relation to his contemporaries has been obscured and misunderstood, despite a large body of fine research by modern historians. Hutton was no neglected or persecuted genius. Many of his ideas were commonplace among geotheorists, though he combined them in an unusual and original way.’ 9 Perhaps there is some truth to the idea that the winners write history. After winning the Napoleonic Wars, and after Lyell’s triumph over Cuvier, it may be that a British patron saint of geology was inevitable. ‘Charles Lyell’s self-serving rewrite of geological history … demanded a certain type of hero, and Hutton best fitted the requirements. Simple chauvinism decreed a British character, and Hutton prevailed’. 10 Rudwick makes it clear that Hutton was not original in his concept of an old age for Earth. But even more arresting is the fact that Hutton’s system had very little to do with time as we perceive it.

We see time in the Christian mode—a linear expanse with beginning and end, filled with contingent unique events. Hutton did not. Instead, he advocated an indefinite ahistorical past, a cycling mechanistic world where erosion wore the land down and heat pushed the land back up—all to maintain a perfect habitation for all of his deistic god’s creatures. ‘ … Hutton would be concerned not with quantifying a timescale but rather with the earth as a body existing indefinitely in stable equilibrium.’ 11 His greatest point of difference with contemporary geology was his rejection of the linear concept of time in favour of a cyclical view: ‘Hutton developed his theory by imposing upon the earth the most rigid and uncompromising version of time’s cycle ever developed by a geologist [emphasis in original].’ 12 ‘Hutton thus proposed a cyclic set of processes by which habitability could be ensured indefinitely. If there was indeed a wisely purposeful system to the earth—as he believed profoundly—some such cycle must be built into the earth’s structure and function’. 13 Therefore, he was totally unconcerned with Lyell’s vision of a linear prehistory of unique, unpredictable events.

His focus was on the cyclical repetition of uplift and erosion, operating like a Newtonian machine, without regard for time or origins. Hutton developed his theory by imposing upon the earth the most rigid and uncompromising version of time’s cycle ever developed by a geologist.—Stephen Jay Gould ‘We are now to take a very general view of nature, without descending into those particulars which so often occupy the speculations of naturalists, about the present state of things. We are not at present to enter into any discussion with regard to what are the primary and secondary mountains of the earth; we are not to consider what is the first, and what the last, in those things which now are seen.’ 14 In the early 1800s, geologists were striving with each other for personal prominence and to shape their new science. Cuvier, Agassiz, Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick—all shared a burning desire to be thought of as the midwife of geology, and have their frameworks cemented into place to guide its future development. Lyell won that fight, but he needed a historical figure to serve as a figurehead for his system.

Given the culture and politics of the time, it obviously could not be a Frenchman. Britain sat astride the world militarily and economically; it must also do so geologically. So it is little wonder that Lyell created the historical lineage of Hutton and Playfair, which would inevitably lead his reader up to its culminating genius—the ‘humble’ author of Principles of Geology. Myth 2—Hutton the empiricist Hutton and his uniformitarian predecessors and followers are usually depicted as empiricists. The new scientists courageously sought actual evidence in the field, as opposed to the theologians who stayed in their ivory towers and buried their noses in the Bible, or the rational philosophers who could not see beyond their deductive theories. Once again, to see the truth, we need to swing our perspective 180 degrees. ‘Hutton’s geotheory was, if anything, even more purely deductive in structure than either of Buffon’s.’ 15 The incorrect conclusion about Hutton’s empiricism rose from an erroneously modern view of him as a scientist. ‘But despite our retrospective framing of Hutton as if he was a man of our own time, it was not a modern scientific hypothesis’.

16 In reality it is more accurate to view him as a philosopher—a system builder—someone who wanted to derive a theory of everything. ‘Hutton’s essay in geotheory was in fact just one part of a much more ambitious intellectual project … . Hutton’s intellectual project was nothing less than to establish the grounds for rational human knowledge, following the tradition of earlier savants such as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.’ 17 That was evidenced in his written works. Between 1785, when he first presented his geologic paper, and 1795, when it was published as a completed book, he was busy writing books such as: Natural Philosophy (1792), Light, Heat, and Fire (1794), and Principles of Knowledge (1794). It is more reasonable to class Hutton with men like Hume, Kant, Spinoza and Hegel, rather than modern earth scientists. Furthermore, his system was an outgrowth of his deistic religious views. Given the preference of his intellectual heirs for atheism, they naturally rejected his heavy emphasis on teleology after suffering through William Paley’s apologetic published in 1802.

Ironically, Hutton’s arguments are reminiscent of many Intelligent Design advocates today. Deistic teleology was the heart of his theory: Earth was a divinely created machine, eternally cycling to maintain the perfect home for man: ‘In Hutton’s view, the capacities of human thought and rationality alone gave meaning to nature; so a wisely designed world would necessarily make provision for the permanent existence of the human race, and hence for maintaining the habitability of the earth … . More specifically, the crucial material link between human life and the earth itself was the soil.’ 18 So far from being a pioneering empiricist, Hutton was a deductive system builder in the deist tradition. He did not develop his ideas about deep time from field data, but from the necessity of an eternal world made for an eternally existing human race: ‘Far from inferring a vast timescale from observation, Hutton deduced it from first principles and then explained away the awkward fact that its effects were unobservable.’8 ‘Lyell’s vision demanded a hero as empiricist—a man willing to do his patient dog work in the field, and to build proper theories as inductions from observed phenomena.

Hutton was pressed into service in one of the most flagrant mischaracterizations ever perpetrated by the heroic tradition in the history of science … . In fact, Hutton’s work suffered gravely in reputation when a strong empiricist tradition did arise within geology early in the nineteenth century. Hutton’s near contemporaries ranked him among the antiquated system-builders of a speculative age.’ 19 Myth 3—Hutton the objective thinker Figure 3. Popular history places Hutton’s ‘revelation’ of deep time at the famous angular unconformity near Jedburgh Scotland. Above is the illustration by John Clerk (1787) and below is a recent photograph (2003—Keith Montgomery). However, we now know that Hutton’s timeframe was derived deductively from his model of Earth history. (Image Wikipedia.org) The 18th century was the ‘age of reason’ … at least in the minds of 18th century intellectuals. Ironically, the confidence in ‘reason’ came from a culture steeped in the remnants of the Reformation’s biblical worldview. People were confident of truth, confident in their ability to discern it, and confident that nature had secrets to yield.

All were easily justified by biblical principles, and the new secularists seem to have assumed that those presuppositions would still be true even when the Bible was abandoned. 20 They were stuck with one foot in the Christian worldview while trying to develop their secular naturalism. Confident in their ability to discern truth in nature, they were equally confident that they could do so without God. Deism proved to be no more than a convenient way station, and a majority of the savants of the time were deists (or covert atheists who in some cases couldn’t bear the social discomfort for being an open infidel or who could skillfully and deceptively use God-talk to make their heretical ideas more palatable to undiscerning churchmen). Hutton was just one more: ‘Hutton’s teleological perspective pervades his writing throughout. Even his opening words referred eloquently and unambiguously to the deistic metaphysics and theology that underlay all his ideas about the earth and gave them human meaning’.17 Hutton therefore was not an unbiased objective observer of nature; he was committed to a worldview that diverged from Christianity, and he built a system of thought within the constraints of that worldview.

‘His theology was openly and unmistakably deistic … his geotheory too is unintelligible except in the light of his deistic theology.’17 Thus, his geology was the result of speculative reasoning within the deistic framework. He did not reject the biblical account of Genesis from field observation; he rejected it before he ever went into the field. Even in his fieldwork, he did not discover any new innovative theories; instead, he deduced things that the geologists of neither his time nor ours accept: ‘In that original paper, the empirical material that Hutton discussed in detail was limited to the one crucial part of his argument that was not generally agreed. What most startled other savants (and ought to startle modern geologists too) was not his assumption of an indefinitely vast timescale for the earth, but his claim that stratified rocks—those that others called Secondaries as well as the Primaries—had all been more or less completely melted and fused while buried on the ocean floor.’15 But even more startling to the Western mind was his view of history … or should I say, the lack of it.

The secret of understanding his view of Earth’s past lies in his deistic concept of an eternal world, driving a cyclic view of the past, not the traditional linear view. Thus his earth had to necessarily follow an unending series of uniform cycles to maintain its place as a perfect habitation for man: ‘The second decisive feature for which Hutton searched specifically was evidence for the cyclicity that his system demanded.’ 21 His oft quoted conclusion: ‘If the succession of worlds is established in the system of nature, it is in vain to look for anything higher in the origin of the earth. The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,—no prospect of an end.’ 22 only makes sense once we understand that he is arguing for an endless recycling of the face of the earth (the succession of worlds) in a natural order of indeterminate history (the system of nature). Most people do not read this quote carefully. They see an allusion to deep time, pat Hutton metaphorically on the back, and move on. But if you read it carefully from the modern standpoint of linear contingent time, it seems confusing.

Only when we change our perspective to ahistorical cyclicity, does it begin to make sense. When our perspective matches Hutton’s, it is both well written and quite lucid. Rudwick 23 notes that his ‘ … sequence of “worlds” would go far to establish the cyclicity of the whole system.’ So Hutton followed his ‘system’ or worldview in deducing the necessity for abandoning the Genesis narrative. And the Bible was not the only thing Hutton abandoned: ‘However, he did not infer a vast scale of time by extrapolating from a very slow observable rate of erosion.

On the contrary, he flatly denied the validity of anything like de Luc’s natural measures of time; he claimed that no clear evidence of the rate of erosion of the continents could be detected, even within the whole of recorded human history back to the ancient Greeks: “It is vain to attempt to measure a quantity which escapes our notice, and which [human] history cannot ascertain; and we might just as well attempt to measure the distance of the stars without a parallax, as to calculate the destruction of the solid land without a measure corresponding to the whole.”’8 It was quotes like this that forced Playfair and Lyell to speak of Hutton’s difficult writing style and divert people from letting Hutton be Hutton. Myth 4—Hutton the martyr to science Image Wikipedia.org Charles Lyell. It seems to be a recurring myth that any scientist who proposes a theory opposed to the Bible automatically assumes the role of a martyr—another victim of the Spanish Inquisition roasting over a slow flame until he recants. Not only is this ridiculous analogy wrong in its understanding of the Spanish Inquisition, 24 it is nothing more than an offensive ploy to silence Christian criticism. Hutton is no exception.

Contrary to myth-mongers from Geikie to Repcheck, Hutton did not single-handedly take on the monolithic medieval church and bravely defy it by preaching against the Ussher timescale and Noah’s Flood. The church’s influence, both Catholic and Protestant, over the universities had declined precipitously by 1700 in a Europe weary of religious wars. The Puritan flame, which burned so brightly in England in the 1600s, was extinguished by the late 1690s. 25 Although there were powerful revivals in the 1700s, they never seemed to touch the intellectual elite. Thus, there was no great and powerful biblical church for Hutton to face. His rejection of Genesis as reliable history was simply the intellectual mainstream of the time. The church’s ability to force Buffon to make no more than a pro forma nod to the Bible after the publication of his first edition of his natural history 26 was a sign of its waning influence, not its power.

Furthermore, the participation of many clerics in the Enlightenment project illustrates that the real situation is quite different from that portrayed by anti-Christian scare-mongers of later decades who wanted a gullible public to see the Inquisition behind every church door. The true facts are these: there is absolutely no valid historical record that Hutton was ever persecuted by any church, or that he was ever even concerned about such action. He did not suffer socially from his beliefs or theories and the rebuttals of his work were all based primarily on logical and scientific errors—written by fellow savants, not by cloistered monks. ‘In the cultural climate of the late Enlightenment, anywhere in Europe, savants were much more likely to be criticized by their peers for ill-founded speculation than they were to be pilloried by ecclesiastical authorities for impugning the reliability of Moses.’ 27 And such opposition was merely the normal intellectual give and take of the day. Hutton had no great enemy. He faced nothing like the debate between Cuvier and Lyell. Instead, he rubbed elbows with Edinburgh’s upper crust and his 1785 presentation did not alter that standing in the least.

If anything, the church was not an issue in Hutton’s work nor, sadly, in his life. Myth 5—Playfair merely clarified Hutton’s hard-to-understand writings Geology students are taught that Hutton’s brilliant ideas were not accepted for several decades because he couldn’t write. Repcheck plays a variation on this theme by claiming that he wrote poorly because of his declining health. According to popular tradition, his book was virtually incomprehensible. Only when it was ‘interpreted’ some years later by his protégé, John Playfair, did his brilliance shine through. While Hutton was not the easiest writer to understand because of long complex sentences and Playfair’s rendition of Hutton was clearer, something else was more significant about Playfair’s recasting of Hutton. Regarding Hutton, Gould remarked, ‘I have never found Hutton nearly so obtuse or infelicitous as tradition dictates.’ 28 And Rudwick noted the real reason for this myth: The hoary legend of Hutton’s unreadable prose has served various ideological purposes during the past two centuries.

Soon after Hutton’s death, Playfair, Illustrations (1802), used it as a reason for bowdlerizing the work by detaching it from its teleological framework and suppressing its teleology. —M.J.S. Rudwick ‘The hoary legend of Hutton’s unreadable prose has served various ideological purposes during the past two centuries. Soon after Hutton’s death, Playfair, Illustrations (1802), used it as a reason for bowdlerizing the work by detaching it from its teleological framework and suppressing its teleology. He has been followed by countless other scientific commentators ever since.’18 So rather than being the faithful translator of his mentor’s work, Playfair had an ax to grind for a purer form of naturalism, and took scissors and paste to Hutton’s work to eliminate the ahistorical eternalism and deistic teleology. Ironically, Hutton, the man who inspired generations of geologists to slice and dice Genesis, was himself a victim of the same game!

Playfair diverged from Hutton’s own theory, attempting to restore linear history to the concept: ‘Yet in another sense, I find a universe of difference between Hutton and Playfair—a distinction that has been missed because Hutton has not been understood as a theorist of time’s cycle who denied history. These are the parts of Hutton’s work that seem most unacceptable and archaic in the light of geology’s later traditions. And these are the aspects of Hutton’s thought that Playfair either soft-pedals or presents in altered light. Playfair subtly “modernized” his friend, and helped to set the basis of Hutton’s legend by toning down his hostility to history … . Playfair’s historical descriptions seem so simple, so innocent, so obvious. How could they mark a major departure? Yet you may read a thousand pages of Hutton’s Theory and never find a phrase written in this mode. In short, Playfair won greater acceptability for Hutton by portraying his field evidence in the traditional, historical style that Hutton himself had consistently shunned. Even Hutton’s Boswell could not follow his friend’s rigorously ahistorical tastes’.

29 Hutton was not clarified by his successors; he was folded, mutilated and spindled! His theories were twisted and molded to fit those of his supposed disciples, and not allowed to stand on their own. Discussion Geologists are fond of thinking that Hutton, Playfair and Lyell form a historical progression similar to that of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton. Yet the reality is quite different. Why then did the myth persist so successfully down to the present? The best explanation is the simplest—that worldview commitments create blind spots, and that everyone clings to things that justify their beliefs. Atheists accuse Christians of clinging to their biblical myths, and yet they remain blind to their own love of myths. Truth is clearly a commodity in much scarcer supply than we like to think. History now shows us that James Hutton was not an innovative geologist who invented uniformitarianism and deep time. His use of both of those concepts was secondary to his deistic eternal ‘succession of worlds’ and was nothing unusual for his generation. He certainly was familiar with the works of Continental savants such as Buffon, Desmarest, de Luc and Werner, and would have found ample examples of both concepts in their work.

So why did Hutton emerge as the ‘father’ of modern geology? One clue might be found in the cultural context of the early 1800s, when Playfair and Lyell began pushing him as the paragon of geological thought. In the late 18th century, the pre-eminent naturalists were French. But during the 19th , they were predominantly English, and the new science of geology bore a heavy English flavour. The names we remember today are Buckland, Sedgwick, Murchison and Lyell. There are several likely explanations for this transformation. One is the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. National boundaries had proven unstable, and national pride became the mask covering national fears of another chaotic episode. Europe recoiled from war and France was no longer the cultural light of the continent—it was the source of an atheistic plague that had decimated the peace and prosperity of the civilized world. Nationalistic pride loosened the bonds of the ‘Republic of Letters’ and created nationalistic competition even in the sciences. Britain led the fight against Bonaparte. Wellington was the hero of Waterloo.

Their victory over France set them at the apex of military and political power, and the British Empire remained in that position until World War I. The British Navy ruled the world, from the Channel to the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean. If Britain’s military might ruled the world of politics, then why should not Britain’s intellectuals rule the world of letters? A microcosm of that cultural conflict was the fight between Cuvier and Lyell for the new geology. Though both dismissed biblical geology, they fought for pre-eminence in a new secular science. Lyell’s victory—though intellectually premature from our present point of view—heralded the British dominance of geology. A British science required a British founder, and Hutton was the best British candidate. In that sense, the mythological Hutton can be seen as a product of Lyell’s cultural imperialism. But the mythology of James Hutton raises a much more interesting question about geology itself. If a true understanding of James Hutton was lost before he was cold in his grave, how can we possibly have confidence in the pronouncements of the same geologists that distorted his story when they leap back millions of years into an unobserved past?

If they cannot get the late 1700s right, why should we believe what they say about the Devonian? Worldview commitments blinded them for two centuries to the historical truth about James Hutton; is it not reasonable to suppose that those same commitments could blind them to the historical reality of Genesis? Related Articles James Watt | Famous Scientists Famous Scientists James Watt Lived 1736 – 1819. James Watt was the father of the industrial revolution. His crucial role in transforming our world from one based on agriculture to one based on engineering and technology is recognized in the unit of power: the watt. James Watt was born in 1736 in Greenock, Scotland, UK. He was an inventor, engineer and scientist. Quick Guide to James Watt’s Inventions and Discoveries James Watt: • radically improved the steam engine, starting the industrial revolution. • continued to produce a stream of new ideas and inventions, which eventually resulted in an engine that needed 80% less fuel than earlier engines. • invented high pressure steam engines capable of even higher efficiencies, but the technology of the time was not capable of operating them safely. • introduced the word horsepower to describe an engine’s power output.

We now generally use watts to measure power, although engine power is still often rated in horsepower. • was the first person to propose that water was made of hydrogen combined with oxygen. • independently discovered the scientific concept of latent heat. • invented the world’s first copying machine – similar in function to a photocopier – to make copies of correspondence, pages of books, and pictures. Advertisements Early Years James Watt came from a successful family. His grandfather taught mathematics, and his father was a carpenter, who built ships. His mother was well-educated, and intelligent. She taught him to read, while his father taught him arithmetic and writing. He excelled at math, science and engineering at high school, but his language skills were less impressive. As a boy, James Watt’s health was often poor, and much of his learning took place at home, where he could watch the fishing boats coming into the port of Greenock and the big sailing ships bringing in tobacco from the Americas. One day, thanks to his inventive mind, ships like these would be powered by engines. At eighteen, following the death of his mother, and a ship sinking that placed a financial burden on his family, James gave up his plans to go to university.

Instead, he trained in London as a scientific instrument maker, specializing in mathematical and nautical instruments. Within two months, his skills were higher than others who had been in training for two years. His exceptional hand skills had previously been commented on by workers in his father’s shipyard in Greenock. After a year in London, he found work at Glasgow University, repairing instruments for the astronomy department. Glasgow University Making Friends, Building Knowledge, and Developing New Skills at Glasgow University Watt’s instrument work was so good that the university’s professors wanted to keep him working there permanently, so they invited him to set up a workshop in the university. The professors soon realized the young man in the workshop had a brain equal to their own. They began calling on him to discuss their work. Students of mathematics and physics found that Watt had learned more about their subjects than they had. He also overcame his earlier poor language skills, teaching himself German and Italian in order to read more scientific literature. James Watt in his workshop At Glasgow University, James Watt became friends with Adam Smith, who founded the academic discipline of Economics and wrote The Wealth of Nations.

He also became friends with the chemist Joseph Black, who discovered magnesium and, independently of Watt, invented the concept of latent heat. In 1759, four years after his arrival in Glasgow, the 23 year-old James Watt became interested in steam engines. This happened when another of his new friends at the university, Professor John Robinson discussed with Watt the possibility of a steam-driven car. Although their ideas for the car were impractical, a seed had been sown in Watt’s fertile mind. Professor Robinson didn’t stand still either. He was the first person to publish an inverse-square law for electric forces, and he invented the siren. The Coming of Steam In 1763, aged 27, Watt came into contact with a working steam engine, the Newcomen engine. Professor John Anderson, who used the engine as a demonstration in his physics classes, needed it repaired. Watt did the repair, but was astonished at how little work the engine was able to do. At that time, Newcomen engines had been used in Britain for 50 years, and no-one had found a way to improve them.

They worked on the principle that the piston in the cylinder would be driven in one direction by a jet of steam causing air in the cylinder to expand, then cold water would be injected in place of the steam to cool the air in the cylinder, creating a partial vacuum which pulled the piston back in the other direction, ready for the cycle to begin again with the injection of hot steam. Watt decided that he could make a better engine. He thought about little else, and experimented in his workshop with water and steam in metal vessels. After two years of experimenting and thinking, Watt had his Eureka moment. With his scientific understanding of the behavior of water and the principle of latent heat, he realized that the problem with the Newcomen steam engine was as follows: heat was being used by the engine to generate steam, but when the steam had done its work the cylinder was cooled down with water. Heating and cooling the same cylinder for every piston stroke was very costly in terms of energy needed to do it. In Watt’s own words, slightly modernized: The idea came into my mind that as steam was a gas it would rush into a vacuum, and if I linked the engine’s cylinder to a vessel at low pressure, the steam would rush into it.

The steam would condense there and it wouldn’t cool the engine-cylinder. I then saw that I must get rid of the condensed steam from the cylinder. James Watt’s Steam Engine Watt redesigned the engine. His idea was that air pressure would push the piston into a partial vacuum generated when steam condenses into liquid water. The steam turned into water in Watt’s condenser, which was surrounded by cold water. The process was helped by a vacuum pump connected to the condenser which took the hot water made by the condensing steam and conveyed it back, still hot, to the boiler ready to be turned back into steam. While keeping the condenser cold, Watt had also realized the importance of keeping the piston/working cylinder hot: he surrounded these with a hot steam jacket. By the end of 1765, a 29 year-old Watt had built his first small-scale steam engine, featuring a separate condensing chamber, and a steam jacket. The start of industrial revolution was getting closer, but had not yet begun. In 1769, aged 33, Watt patented his new engine. A Boulton & Watt engine in Birmingham, England, built during Watt’s lifetime in 1817.

Image by Chris Allen. From Small-Scale Engines to Industrial Superpower Watt owned one of the most important patents in human history. He sold it to John Roebuck, whose factory went bankrupt. Matthew Boulton of Birmingham bought the patent rights to Watt’s steam engine. In 1775, Watt celebrated his 39th birthday and began a highly successful 25 year partnership with Boulton. The partnership was a perfect combination of Watt’s scientific and engineering ingenuity and Boulton’s factory and commercial skills. Eleven years after Watt built his first small-scale steam engine, his engines began to be installed to pump water out of mines. The annual fee the mine owners paid for the machines was one-third of the value of the fuel savings the machines made. News of the new super-efficient engines spread fast, and with the coming of Watt’s steam engines, the industrial revolution began. Watt and Boulton’s success did have a few hiccups along the way. In 1791, they had to arm their workers against a four day riot in which scientists and intellectuals were a specific target .

As the years passed, Boulton & Watt engines found their way into ever more applications, and the United Kingdom was gripped by the industrial revolution. Boulton and Watt began exporting their new technology all over the world. The new industries began releasing larger amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than previous human actions had. This trend continues today. James Watt in later life The End, But Not Before Another Crucial New Engine Design! In 1800, aged 64, and very wealthy, Watt retired. His patent had expired, and he and Matthew Boulton passed their partnership to their sons, James Watt Junior, and Matthew Robinson Boulton, who continued it successfully. “James Watt was equally distinguished as a natural philosopher and chemist; his inventions demonstrate his profound knowledge of those sciences, and that peculiar characteristic of genius – the union of them for practical application.” Humphry Davy, 1778 to 1829 Watt continued with research work in his retirement. He patented his copying machine, the double-action engine, the rotary engine, and the steam pressure indicator. The rotary engine was crucial, because it enabled engines to drive wheels rather than the simpler up-down pumping motion of earlier machines.

James Watt died in 1819, aged 83. His mental power had not declined. His mind was razor sharp to the end. Advertisements Author of this page: The Doc © All rights reserved. Please use the following MLA compliant citation: "James Watt." Famous Scientists. famousscientists.org. 14 Jul. 2014. Web.%MINIFYHTML2fc2df538b1dc0637f047cc392eb25608%< Hutton’s Rock Cycle Hutton pictured a cycle in which rocks were eroded into small particles and carried eventually to the sea. There they would gradually be buried ever more deeply under more eroded material. The heat of the earth would then fuse the small particles back into solid rock and later lift the rock back to the surface. Then the cycle would begin again. James Hutton’s geological cycle. Hutton concluded that: Earth’s interior has a very high temperature. Earth’s heat provides the energy to create new rocks. Erosion of land by water and air creates materials such as silt, soil and small rock particles which are carried into the sea, where layers of these materials are deposited over long time scales.

As the layers gather, the earliest layers become buried ever more deeply in the earth, where they are turned into stone by the earth’s heat. Stone is eventually uplifted to form new land. The new land is eroded over a long period of time, beginning the cycle again. The cycle Hutton envisaged could only take place over an immense number of years. This is, he pointed out, because the processes of erosion, sedimentation and uplift take place exceedingly slowly. “The volcano was not created to scare superstitious minds and plunge them into fits of piety and devotion. It should be seen as the vent of a furnace.” James Hutton 1788 In June 1788 he took his friend John Playfair, a mathematics professor, to look at rock layers showing evidence of the earth’s great antiquity. Playfair said: ” …the mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time” John Playfair Hutton’s Uniformitarianism – Not an Overnight Success In fact Playfair did more than Hutton to popularize Hutton’s ideas, which were either ignored or attacked when people realized what he had proposed.

Hutton’s ideas were unpopular with the church because they challenged the biblical timescale of the world. In fact, Hutton supported the view that God had created the earth, but he disagreed with literal interpretations of the Bible that were at odds with scientific evidence. Hutton’s ideas were also unpopular with scientists, many of whom supported Abraham Werner’s theory of Neptunism which said, incorrectly, that the rocks in Earth’s crust had been formed by crystallization of minerals on the seabed. Hutton’s theory, which opposed Neptunism, was named Plutonism. Hutton’s Uniformitarianism – In Time it was Accepted In 1802, five years after Hutton’s death, Playfair published Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, a book which finally gathered significant support for Hutton’s ideas.

Between 1830 and 1833 Charles Lyell – who was born in the year Hutton died – published Principles of Geology in three volumes, which won over the majority of scientists to Hutton’s uniformitarian idea: the idea that the same natural processes we see operating today are the ones that have always operated, and over an immense amount of time it is these that have shaped our world. There was still some scientific opposition to the idea of an incredibly ancient Earth : physicists said that the earth’s interior could not continue to be hot if the earth was billions of years old. They were wrong, because they did not know our planet’s interior is heated by the long-term decay of radioactive elements: these were yet to be discovered. Evolution by Natural Selection In 1794 Hutton stated the principle of natural selection.

Many years spent studying farms and running his own farm may have given him a clearer insight than most intellectuals into the principles of selection: ” …if an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart most from the best adapted constitution, will be the most liable to perish, while, on the other hand, those organised bodies, which most approach to the best constitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race.” James Hutton James Hutton, Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge Volume 2, 1794 Some Personal Details and the End Hutton never married. In 1747, aged 21, he fathered a son, James Smeaton Hutton. Although Hutton financially supported his son and his son’s mother, whose surname was Edington, they saw very little of one another.

In fact, when Hutton left Edinburgh in 1747 to study in Paris and Leiden and then work in London, it is possible he did this as a way of putting some distance between himself, Miss Edington and his son. James Hutton died in Edinburgh on March 26, 1797, aged 70, after suffering poor health and pain for a number of years caused by bladder stones. He was buried in Edinburgh’s Greyfriars Churchyard. He had made no will and his estate passed to his surviving sister. On her death she left a large farm Hutton had owned to his grandchildren. Advertisements Author of this page: The Doc Cite this Page Please use the following MLA compliant citation: "James Hutton." Famous Scientists. famousscientists.org. 22 Jan. 2016. Web.%MINIFYHTML2fc2df538b1dc0637f047cc392eb256013%< Further Reading James Hutton, The Founder of Modern Geology Elsevier Publishing Co. Ltd., 1967 Donald B.

McIntrye, Alan McKirdy James Hutton, The Founder of Modern Geology The Stationary Office Limited, Edinburgh, 1997 G. Y. Craig, J. H. Hull James Hutton – Present and Future The Geological Society, London, 1999 Stephen Baxter Robert Hooke and the foundation of geology : a comparison of Steno and Hooke and the Hooke imprint on the Huttonian theory ; and, The tectonic evolution of the Oregon continental margin : rotation of segment boundaries and possible spacetime relationships in the Central High Cascades mirage mirage mirage Robert Hooke and the foundation of geology : a comparison of Steno and Hooke and the Hooke imprint on the Huttonian theory ; and, The tectonic evolution of the Oregon continental margin : rotation of segment boundaries and possible spacetime relationships in the Central High Cascades DSpace/Manakin Repository → View Item JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Robert Hooke and the foundation of geology : a comparison of Steno and Hooke and the Hooke imprint on the Huttonian theory ; and, The tectonic evolution of the Oregon continental margin : rotation of segment boundaries and possible spacetime relationships in the Central High Cascades Drake, Ellen T. Date: 1981-03-04 Abstract: Based on the principle that the history of a discipline is important to the discipline itself, this thesis devotes two chapters to ROBERT HOOKE AND THE FOUNDATION OF GEOLOGY and two chapters to modern geology, viz. THE TECTONIC EVOLUTION OF THE OREGON CONTINENTAL MARGIN. The first part of this abstract covers the historical section of the thesis and the second part the scientific section. Robert Hooke was much more than the originator of Hooke's Law or an inventor who invented or perfected meteorological instruments and who pioneered equipment design for sounding the depths of the ocean and collecting ocean water samples at various depths. He supplied Isaac Newton with the concept of centripetal force which allowed Newton to formulate his Laws of Gravitation; he was the first to demonstrate the pressure and volume relationships of gases which were called Boyle's Law.

His geological contributions had a profound influence on the development of geology, but they have been largely ignored by modern historians and geologists. The 17th-century Dane Nicolaus Steno has been honored by geologists as a founder of geology and the 18th-century Scotsman James Hutton is widely recognized as the father of modern geology. In a comparison of Steno's geological contributions with those of Hooke, the latter emerges as having made a more extensive and profound contribution. Furthermore, Hooke's system of the earth as presented in his Cutlerian Lectures, published posthumously as Discourse of Earthquakes in 1705, is almost identical to the theory James Hutton announced to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1785. This similarity is not a coincidence. That Hutton was thoroughly aware of Hooke's writings is shown not only by the extent to which the intelligentsia of the 18th century cited, quoted and adopted Hooke's ideas, but also by Hutton's own text in both his Abstract of 1785 and his Theory of the Earth in 1788.

In the few places where Hutton disagreed with Hooke, Hutton's style became polemical. He seemed to argue against specific points originated by Hooke, which then act as a Hookian signature on the Huttonian Theory. Hooke's influence in the development of geological thought and especially on the foundation of the pre-continental-drift paradigm was a significant one. Robert Hooke, therefore, like Steno, deserves recognition by geologists as a founder of their science. The tectonic evolution of the Oregon continental margin centers around the process of subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate. Models have been advanced to explain the complex tectonic history of this area. The imbricate thrust model seems to test well at the Oregon margin. This model, however, is complicated by the additional processes of segmentation and rotation. This synthesized scenario of the Cenozoic tectonic evolution of the Oregon margin considers the subduction process, including volcanism in the Cascades, as a near-extinction system. This area presently could be experiencing a period of transition from compressional underthrusting to strike-slip motions resulting from extensional forces as the Juan de Fuca plate is coupled with the North America plate.

A model involving the rotation of segment boundaries is proposed which may shed some light on time-space and petrologic relationships in the Cascades. The positions of these segment boundaries are supported by bathymetric data on the continental shelf and by the deformation of marine terraces along the Oregon and Washington coasts. Plane vector triangle solutions calculated by Riddihough (1977) for point interactions between the Juan de Fuca plate and the America plate show that the direction of convergence has not been constant over the last 8.5 m.y. The data suggest that the subducted slab had rotated at least 9° in a clockwise direction during the last 1.5 m.y. The model suggests that the arrival of a segment boundary in coincidence with conditions favorable for eruptions may have built the high Central Cascade peaks during the Pleistocene.

The Darwinian Revolution I Background to Darwin Background to Darwin Natural Theology In the West, Galileo's view that in the study of nature, biblical studies must defer to scientific studies This generally was not considered to be an inherent conflict Natural Theology - the belief that a greater understanding of God could be reached by studying creation - developed in the 1600s Two widely read books in 1691 promoted the idea that a harmonies relationship between Genesis and geology could be found John Ray - Wisdom of God in the Creation Thomas Burnett - Sacred History of the Earth Growth in knowledge in botany, natural history, and geology in the 1700s shaped but did not change this basic idea William Paley - Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearance of Nature (1802) advanced the "design requires a designer" argument furthered by the Earl of Bridgewater in 1830s with the Bridgewater Treatises Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), Swedish botanist Organizes all known living things into a system he regarded as "god's plan" Created the binomial system still in use

 today that gave each species a genus (family) and species name Seemed to confirm the fixed nature of each species, though Linnaeus later speculated about the possibilities of change Linnaeus's ideas would also seem to fit well with the traditional idea of a Great Chain of Being An understanding of life that dated to the Middle Ages All life, from the meekest to the divine, were joined the links between them were infinitely small, and there were no gaps In this understanding, all life forms were uniquely created to fill their spot and did not go extinct Creation and change in other cultures Many cultures posit a specific creation in their theologies However, the religions that originate in India, with their cyclical view of time, coupled with a belief in reincarnation, do not Instead, these cultures view the world as as enormously or infinitely old, and essentially unchanging The Mesoamerican world view, which includes the Maya and Aztecs, is similar Lacks emphasis on reincarnation, but views time as moving in enormous cycles Some of the cycles of Mayan chronology are billions of years in length Introducing the idea of change Count de Buffon (1707-88), French naturalist, superintendent of the Royal gardens Held that species changed across time Did not

 believe in progressive evolution, but rather that the devolved from earlier more robust forms There was support for the idea of degeneration in traditional theology However, provided no mechanism to explain these changes Jean-Baptists Lamarck (1744-1829) Proposes inheritances of acquired characteristics as a mechanism for biological change Individuals modify themselves to adapt to their environment, and passes these changes on their descendents While late empirically discredited, remained important to those who saw a plan in natural and human development - endorsed by Stalin, for example Charles's Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) proposed similar ideas Fossils, Geology, and the age of the Earth Fossils Fossils challenged the idea that species never went extinct, and that our world is essentially what it was at creation Well known far into early history Greeks speculated about the problem of marine fossils found high in the mountains East Asian traditional medicine made much use of "dragon bones" By 1800, generally thought of as accidents of geology or evidence of some violent upheaval After 1800, the discovery and identification of large, extinct species, such as the Megatherium , severely challenged the idea of no

 extinctions Further, the apparent sequence of fossils in the rocks, with reptiles in lower, presumably older rocks ad mammals in higher, younger rocks, was problematical as well In the Christian West, the Earth was generally seen as young Most adhered to a chronology based on the Bible, which was read to put the age of the earth at about six millennia Using the Bible and available sources the Bishop of Usher (The Annals of the World, 1658) had calculated the date as (in modern notation) 4004 BC By the 1700s, some natural historians and theologians argued for a somewhat older Earth, but most were still talking in terms of thousands of years Catastrophism Finding a way to link together fossils and the growing evidence for a much older Earth with biblical accounts led to catastrophism Baron Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) was a primary proponent of this idea Held that the surface of the Earth was formed quickly through a series of catastrophic evens, such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and the Flood Admitted to extinction, but saw the apparent sequence in the rock as a progression towards the creation of Man Uniformitarianism Emerged in the late

 18th and early 19th century Held that the surface of the Earth had formed gradually because of slow, steady processes These forces proceeded uniformly, not catastrophically, over very long periods of time James Hutton (1727-97), Theory of the Earth (1795) Earth surface formed by two forces working gradually across time A leveling force, gravity, and an uplifting force, the heat of the Earth's core As these forces act slowly today, the acted slowly in the past, an would require an Earth of an enormous age Charles Lyell (1797-1875), Principles of Geology (1830-33) Generally recognized as the founder of modern geology Expanded and systematized Hutton's ideas So influential that geologists gave little credit to the importance of the occasional catastrophic event until the last generation Highly influential on Darwin, who carried a copy of Lyell on the voyage of the Beagle allowed for very long periods of time for development of biological forms also influenced his thinking in terms of the power and importance of slow, steady change

Question: James Hutton is generally regarded as the founder of which scientific discipline?
Answer: GEOLOGY