1785: Earth cycles - The book of science

Earth cycles
Hutton’s unconformity
Endless cycles
Commentary

Earth cycles

In his Theory of the Earth,
or an investigation of the laws observable
in the composition, dissolution, and restoration
of the land upon the globe,
James Hutton proposed that rock formations
that he observed in pits and cliffs
had been consolidated
“at the bottom of the sea”
and lifted up
“to the stations in which they now remain”
and that “while the present land was forming”
“the former land maintained plants and animals”
“in a similar manner as it is at present.”

Hutton’s unconformity

The men of the Scottish Enlightenment
were encouraged to search
for the material evidence of their theories.
Hutton’s theories were not constrained
by cultural perception or religious teaching.
At Inchbonny, Jedburg,
and an eroded outcrop at Siccor Point
clearly the greywacke
at the bottom of the cliff
tilts almost vertically
and is capped by a layer of conglomerate
and horizontal layers of Old Red Sandstone.

Endless cycles

The human mind generally fails to accept
the infinite material universe,
but must imagine its beginning and end.
Yet James Hutton concluded
“that we find no vestige of a beginning
—no prospect of an end.”

James Hutton is known as the father of geology. The first geologists, including James Hutton and James Hall, boosted by the empiricism of the Scottish Enlightenment, presented the first challenge to the orthodox religious teaching. Hutton read his Theory of the earth before the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1785. Hutton was the Plutonist (a catastrophic geologist) who proposed the principle of uniformitarianism to argue against Neptunism (also catastrophic geology). Carried to its logical conclusion, uniformitarianism overthrew all of catastophism, culminating in 1830 with the publication of Principles of geology by Charles Lyell.

In 1669, Nicolas Steno was the first person to declare that fossils didn’t grow in rocks, but he gave up his scientific pursuits to join the Catholic church and become a priest.