Ee EE Si ee a © "ither press >>> FEATURES Profile: James Hutton Father of Geology, Grandfather of Environmentalism The patriarch James Hutton Sven Bellamy Features Editor Roughly 220 years ago, a Scottish researcher named James Hutton published a work called Theory of the Earth, or an Investigation of the Laws Observable in the Composition, Dissolution and Restoration of Land upon the Globe. That title is a real mouthful to say in one breath, and most references to Hutton’s work simply refer to Theory of the Earth. The significance of this work was not fully respect- ed until after Hutton’s death when Theory of the Earth was re-written and released under the title ///ustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth by John Playfair. Playfair was a professor of mathematics in Edinburgh and a friend of James Hutton. Playfair was enthusias- tic about Theory of the Earth, but Hutton was not an articulate writer and although brilliant in thought, expressed most of his ideas in heavy, and often obscure terms. Playfair was much more suited to con- cise writing and his version of Hutton’s work helped to spread the ideas contained within Theory of the Earth. Later in the 1830s, Charles Lyell, a British Geologist and one of Charles Darwin’s strongest supporters, revisited Hutton’s ideas concerning the rock cycle, bringing this theory into popularity. However, Hutton’s contributions to Earth Sciences today have been fur- ther expanded upon by modern scientists like James Lovelock, who while working for NASA in the 1960s, began to formulate his ideas about the earth’s bios- phere—The Gaia Theory. James Hutton, in the 1780s, would have been referred to as a minerologist, as the science of geolo- gy was in its infant stages. He actually started out in quite a different occupation. Hutton was born in Edinburgh in 1726. As a student he acquired a passion for scientific discovery. His first apprenticeship was to a lawyer who suggested that a more congenial line of work would be more appropriate to his sensitive personality. Hutton then chose to pur- sue medicine, studying for three years in Edinburgh before finishing his medical studies in Paris. After writ- ing home that he was unable to find work, he aban- doned his medical pursuits. Inheriting a small farm in Berwickshire from his father, Hutton studied farming in Norfolk, then later in Holland, Belgium, and France. It was during these years of travelling that he began to study the earth. In 1754 he settled on his Berwickshire farm, where he lived for fourteen years, experimenting with new methods of raising crops and livestock. His small farm was very successful by the standards of his time, but becoming bored with farm life, Hutton returned to Edinburgh in 1768. He moved in with his three sisters, living with them until his death in 1797. Edinburgh of the 1760s had an intellectual society that was open to new theories and speculations. It was home to some of the most brilliant minds in the history, such as: the poet Robert Burns, chemist Joseph Black, engineer James Watt, and economist Adam Smith. Previous to Hutton, the theories about the history of the earth had been based on biblical translations. The earth had been created in 4004 B.C., fossils were seen as mineral aberrations, and any minerologist worth his salt could find signs of the great flood everywhere. Hutton, during his journeys of earlier years, had wit- nessed evidence of wind and rain effects on rocks and shorelines. He also found evidence of marine fossils in mountain rocks. He studied ancient maps and com- pared them to the coastlines of his time, but could not find evidence of change. This led him to conclude that not only did the surface of the earth undergo change, but the change took place over an unimaginably long time. A second important insight came from two of his con- temporaries, Joseph Black, and James Watt. Black was a pioneer researcher on heat, and Watt was a steam engineer. From the research of these two men, Hutton reasoned that the earth must in effect be a giant heat engine, the evidence being the existence of vol- canoes and the enormous amount of energy that drives molten rock through fissures in the surface of the earth. Unfortunately for Hutton, as the French Revolution raged in France, England became more conservative and a theory so anti-clerical as Hutton’s was not received very warmly outside of intellectual circles. Hutton spent the rest of his life gathering evidence for his theory and writing Theory of the Earth, which was meant to convince his critics. His work was never com- pletely finished by his own hand and part of it was lost until the late 1800s, finally being published in 1899. This last publication contained accurate explanations of how humidity in the air along with temperature was responsible for creating rain. James Hutton was one of the first scientists to allude to the earth as being a super organism and how each component of the biosphere acts on and helps to shape every other component. His work demonstrates an early explanation of how rocks, wind, water, air, and forces deep in the earth, work together in continual cycles creating and destroying landmasses. Given his tremendous contributions to earth science and an early understanding of how earth systems work, he was not only the Father of Geology, but also the Grandfather of Environmentalism.