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Life and Times of James Hutton*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2012
Extract
The debt which Scotland, and the world with it, owes to the genius of James Hutton cannot easily be measured. His Theory of the Earth, published in two octavo volumes in 1795, has long been universally recognised as one of the great classics of science. Not only did it open up new worlds to research and speculation, but the principles it established revolutionised in course of time the whole trend of scientific thought. When we think, however, of Hutton's amazing achievement—amazing in its originality and its grandeur of conception—it is well to remember not only the profound and far-reaching influence which he exerted, but also the long years of patient observation and sustained reflection which went to the building of his immortal Theory. We should remember not only the Hutton of established and enduring fame, but also the alert and questing spirit who sought so long and so courageously for a key to the mysteries of the earth on which he lived, who dared to look backward into an illimitable past and forward into an incalculable future, and who, on the evidence wrested from the solid rocks, reached the startling and heretical conclusion—as, indeed, in his day it was—that in the operations of nature we find “no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end”.
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- Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1949
Footnotes
*
An Address delivered before the Geological Society of Glasgow on 13th March 1947.
References
page 352 note * The Lowlands of Scotland were by this time almost destitute of trees. It may be recalled that Johnson in his Journey to the Western Isles (1773; published 1775) writes: “From the banks of the Tweed to St Andrews I had never seen a single tree which I did not believe had grown up far within the present century.” Speaking of the Lowlands again he says: “I believe few regions have been denuded like this, where many centuries must have passed in waste without the least thought of future supplies.”
page 352 note † E.g. rotation of crops, enclosure of fields, etc.
page 352 note ‡ E.g. new types of plough, introduction of winnowing fans, threshing mills to replace the flail, etc.
page 352 note § Hay, turnips, and potatoes in addition to the traditional oats and bere. Turnips seem to have been introduced about 1716 and potatoes about 1726, but for many years were grown only locally and on a small scale in gardens.
page 352 note ║ See “James Hutton and the Manufacture of Sal Ammoniac“, by A. and N. L. Clow, Nature, CLIX, 1947, 425.
page 354 note * The first part of the paper was read by Black in the absence, through indisposition, of Hutton himself.
page 354 note † An Abstract of the paper in pamphlet form was published in 1785; see Note by Mr V. A. Eyles, p. 377 of this part.