Everything about James Hutton totally explained
James Hutton (
3 June 1726 OS (14 June 1726 NS) Edinburgh —
26 March 1797) was a
Scottish geologist,
naturalist,
chemist and
experimental
farmer. He is considered the
father of modern
geology. His theories of geology and
geologic time, also called
deep time, came to be included in theories which were called
plutonism and
uniformitarianism.
Early life and career
James Hutton was born in
Edinburgh on
3 June 1726 as one of five children of a merchant who was Edinburgh City Treasurer, but died when James was still young. Hutton's mother had him educated at the
High School of Edinburgh where he was particularly interested in mathematics and chemistry, then when he was 14 he attended the
University of Edinburgh as a "student of humanity". He was apprenticed to a lawyer when he was 17, but took more interest in chemical experiments than legal work and at the age of 18 became a
physician's assistant as well as attending lectures in medicine at the University of Edinburgh. After three years he studied the subject in
Paris, then in 1749 took the degree of
Doctor of Medicine at
Leyden with a thesis on
blood circulation. Around 1747 he'd a son by a Miss Edington, and though he gave his child James Smeaton Hutton financial assistance, he'd little to do with the boy who went on to become a post-office clerk in
London.
After his degree Hutton returned to London, then in the summer of 1750 at the age of 24 went back to Edinburgh and resumed chemical experiments with close friend, James Davie. Their work on production of
sal ammoniac from
soot led to their partnership in a profitable chemical works, manufacturing the crystalline salt which was used for dyeing, metalworking and as smelling salts and previously was available only from natural sources and had to be imported from
Egypt. Hutton owned and rented out properties in Edinburgh, employing a factor to manage this business.
Farming and geology
Hutton inherited from his father the
Berwickshire farms of
Slighhouses, a lowland farm which had been in the family since 1713, and the hill farm of
Nether Monynut. In the early 1750s he moved to
Slighhouses and set about making improvements, introducing farming practices from other parts of Britain and experimenting with plant and animal husbandry. He recorded his ideas and innovations in an unpublished treatise on
The Elements of Agriculture.
This developed his interest in
meteorology and
geology,
Edinburgh and canal building
In 1768 Hutton returned to
Edinburgh, letting his farms to tenants but continuing to take an interest in farm improvements and research which included experiments carried out at
Slighhouses. He developed a red dye made from the roots of the
madder plant.
He had a house built in 1770 at St John’s Hill, Edinburgh, overlooking
Salisbury Crags. He was a particularly close friend of
Joseph Black, and the two of them together with Adam Smith founded the
Oyster Club for weekly meetings, with Hutton and Black finding a venue which turned out to have rather disreputable associations.
Between 1767 and 1774 Hutton had considerable close involvement with the construction of the
Forth and Clyde canal, making full use of his geological knowledge, both as a shareholder and as a member of the committee of management, and attended meetings including extended site inspections of all the works. In 1777 he published a pamphlet on
Considerations on the Nature, Quality and Distinctions of Coal and Culm which successfully helped to obtain relief from excise duty on carrying small coal.
Theory of rock formations
Hutton hit on a variety of ideas to explain the
rock formations he saw around him, but according to Playfair he "was in no haste to publish his theory; for he was one of those who are much more delighted with the contemplation of truth, than with the praise of having discovered it”. After some 25 years of work, his
Theory of the Earth; or an Investigation of the Laws observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe was read to meetings of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh in two parts, the first by his friend
Joseph Black on
7 March 1785, and the second by himself on
4 April 1785. Hutton subsequently read an abstract of his dissertation
Concerning the System of the Earth, its Duration and Stability to Society meeting on
4 July 1785,
He went on to find a similar penetration of
volcanic rock through
sedimentary rock near the centre of
Edinburgh, at
Salisbury Crags, He found other examples on the
Isle of Arran (
Hutton's Unconformity) and in
Galloway.
Jedburgh, in layers of
sedimentary rock. As shown in the illustrations here to the right, layers of grey
shale in the lower layers of the cliff face are tilted almost vertically, immediately above which are horizontal layers of
red sandstone. He found a similar formation at
Siccar Point on the
Berwickshire coast in 1788.
Hutton reasoned that there must have been several cycles, each involving
deposition on the
seabed, uplift with tilting and
erosion then undersea again for further layers to be deposited, and there could have been many cycles before over an extremely long history. In a 1788 paper he presented at the
Royal Society of Edinburgh, was quoted in the 1989 song “
No Control” by songwriter and
professor Greg Graffin.)
Hutton brought
James Hall and
John Playfair to see the strata in 1788. Playfair later commented about the experience, "the mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time."
Publication
Though Hutton circulated privately a printed version of the abstract of his Theory (
Concerning the System of the Earth, its Duration, and Stability) which he read at a meeting of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh on
4 July 1785, the theory as read at the
7 March 1785 and
4 April 1785 meetings didn't appear in print until 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 and appeared in
Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. I, Part II, pp.209-304, plates I and II, published 1788.
Following criticism, especially
Richard Kirwan's, who thought him
atheist and not logical, among other things, consisting of the 1788 version of his theory (with slight additions) along with a lot of material drawn from shorter papers Hutton already had to hand on various subjects such as the origin of granite. It included a review of alternative theories, such as those of
Thomas Burnet and
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon.
The whole was entitled
An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge and of the Progress of Reason, from Sense to Science and Philosophy when the third volume was completed in 1794. Its 2,138 pages prompted Playfair to remark that “The great size of the book, and the obscurity which may justly be objected to many parts of it, have probably prevented it from being received as it deserves.”
Opposing theories
His new theories placed him into opposition with the then-popular
Neptunist theories of
Abraham Gottlob Werner, that all rocks had precipitated out of a single enormous flood. Hutton proposed that the
interior of the Earth was hot, and that this heat was the engine which drove the creation of new rock: land was eroded by air and water and deposited as layers in the sea; heat then consolidated the
sediment into stone, and uplifted it into new lands. This theory was dubbed "Plutonist" in contrast to the flood-oriented theory.
As well as combatting the Neptunists, he also opened up the concept of
deep time for scientific purposes, in opposition to
Catastrophism. Rather than accepting that the earth was no more than a few thousand years old, he maintained that the
Earth must be much older, with a history extending indefinitely into the distant past.
His main line of argument was that the tremendous displacements and changes he was seeing didn't happen in a short period of time by means of catastrophe, but that processes still happening on the Earth in the present day had caused them. As these processes were very gradual, the Earth needed to be ancient, in order to allow time for the changes. Before long, scientific inquiries provoked by his claims had pushed back the age of the earth into the millions of years – still too short when compared with what is known in the 21st century, but a distinct improvement.
Acceptance of geological theories
The prose of
Principles of Knowledge was so obscure, in fact, that it also impeded the acceptance of Hutton's geological theories. Restatements of his geological ideas (though not his thoughts on evolution) by
John Playfair in 1802 and then
Charles Lyell in the 1830s removed this hindrance. If anything, Hutton's ideas were eventually accepted too well. At least some of the initial resistance to modern scientific ideas like
plate tectonics and asteroid strikes causing mass extinctions can be attributed to too-strict adherence to
uniformitarianism.
Other contributions
Meteorology
It wasn't merely the earth to which Hutton directed his attention. He had long studied the changes of the
atmosphere. The same volume in which his
Theory of the Earth appeared contained also a
Theory of Rain. He contended that the amount of moisture which the air can retain in
solution increases with temperature, and, therefore, that on the mixture of two masses of air of different temperatures a portion of the moisture must be condensed and appear in visible form. He investigated the available data regarding
rainfall and
climate in different regions of the globe, and came to the conclusion that the rainfall is regulated by the
humidity of the air on the one hand, and mixing of different
air currents in the higher atmosphere on the other.
Evolution
Hutton also advocated uniformitarianism for living creatures too –
evolution, in
a sense – and even suggested
natural selection as a possible mechanism affecting them:
» "...if an organised body isn't 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." –
Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge, volume 2.
Hutton gave the example that where dogs survived through "swiftness of foot and quickness of sight... the most defective in respect of those necessary qualities, would be the most subject to perish, and that those who employed them in greatest perfection... would be those who would remain, to preserve themselves, and to continue the race". Equally, if an acute
sense of smell was "more necessary to the sustenance of the animal... the same principle [would] change the qualities of the animal, and.. produce a race of well scented hounds, instead of those who catch their prey by swiftness". The same "principle of variation" would influence "every species of plant, whether growing in a forest or a meadow".
He came to his ideas as the result of experiments in
plant and
animal breeding, some of which he outlined in an unpublished manuscript, the
Elements of Agriculture. He distinguished between
heritable variation as the result of breeding, and
non-heritable variations caused by environmental differences such as soil and climate.
Hutton saw his "principle of variation" as explaining the development of varieties, but rejected the idea of evolution originating species as a "romantic fantasy". As a
deist, to him this mechanism allowed species to form varieties better adapted to particular conditions and was evidence of benevolent design in nature. Hutton's ideas on geology were clarified in
Charles Lyell's books, which
Charles Darwin read with enthusiasm during his
voyage on the Beagle, and it remained to Darwin to independently develop the idea of
natural selection to explain
The Origin of Species and bring it to the forefront of public consciousness at the same time as providing the voluminous evidence necessary to win over the scientific community to the theory.
Works
- 1785. Abstract of a Dissertation Read in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Upon the Seventh of March, and Fourth of April, MDCCLXXXV, Concerning the System of the Earth, Its Duration, and Stability. Edinburgh. 30pp.
- 1788. The Theory of Rain. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. 1, Part 2, pp. 41-86.
- 1788. Theory of the Earth; or an Investigation of the Laws observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. 1, Part 2, pp. 209-304.
- 1792. Dissertations on different subjects in natural philosophy. Edinburgh ; London : A. Strahan, and T. Cadell.
- 1794. Observations on granite. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. 3, pp. 77-81.
- 1794. A dissertation upon the philosophy of light, heat, and fire. Edinburgh : Cadell, Junior, Davies.
- 1794. An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge and of the Progress of Reason, from Sense to Science and Philosophy. Edinburgh : A. Strahan, and T. Cadell.
- 1795. Theory of the Earth; with Proofs and Illustrations. Edinburgh: William Creech. 2 vols.
- 1797. Elements of Agriculture. Unpublished Manuscript.
- 1899. Theory of the Earth; with Proofs and Illustrations, vol III, Edited by Sir Archibald Geikie. Geological Society, Burlington: House, London.
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