James Hutton
Sign in to saveScottish geologist, physician, chemical manufacturer, naturalist, and experimental agriculturalist; (1726-1797)
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James Hutton was an 18th-century Scottish scientist and thinker who worked across multiple fields including geology, medicine, chemistry, and farming. He matters primarily as a pioneering geologist whose ideas about how Earth's rocks and landscapes form over vast stretches of time laid important groundwork for modern geology.
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Person · Open Library
- Born
- 1726
- Died
- 1797
- Works
- 31
Top works
- Considerations on the nature, quality, and distinctions, of coal and culm
- Abstract of a dissertation ... concerning the system of the earth, its duration and stability
- James Hutton's theory of the earth: the lost drawings. Text by G.Y. Craig, D.B. McIntyre, and C.D. Waterston. Edited by G.Y. Craig
- Theory of the Earth, with Proofs and Illustrations. in Four Parts. by James Hutton, ... of 2; Volume 1
- Abstract of a dissertation read in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, upon the seventh of March, and fourth of April, M,DCC,LXXXV, concerning the system of the Earth, its duration, and stability.
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Article
James Hutton ( /ˈhʌtən/; 3 June O.S. 1726 – 26 March 1797) was a Scottish geologist, agriculturalist, chemical manufacturer, naturalist and physician. Often referred to as the "Father of Modern Geology," he played a key role in establishing geology as a modern science.
Hutton advanced the idea that the physical world's remote history can be inferred from evidence in present-day rocks. Through his study of features in the landscape and coastlines of his native Scottish Lowlands, such as Salisbury Crags or Siccar Point, he developed the theory that geological features could not be static but underwent continuing transformation over indefinitely long periods of time. From this he argued, in agreement with many other early geologists, that the Earth could not be young. He was one of the earliest proponents of what in the 1830s became known as uniformitarianism, the science which explains features of the Earth's crust as the outcome of continuing natural processes over the long geologic time scale. Hutton also put forward a thesis for a 'system of the habitable Earth' proposed as a deistic mechanism designed to keep the world eternally suitable for humans, an early attempt to formulate what today might be called one kind of anthropic principle.