HUTTON, JAMES (b. Edinburgh, Scotland, 3 June 1726; d. Edinburgh, 26 March 1797), geology, agriculture, physical sciences, philosophy.

    part of the original crust of the earth, but were formed by a “second cause” and had originally been deposited at the bottom of the ocean. This reasoning, he stated, implies that while the present land was forming there must have existed a former land on which organic life existed, that this former land had been subjected to processes of erosion similar to those operating today, and that the sea was then inhabited by marine animals. He then concluded that because the greater part of the present land had been produced in this way, two further processes had been necessary to convert it into a permanent body resistant to the operations of water: the consolidation of the loose incoherent matter at the sea bottom, and the elevation of the consolidated matter to the position it now occupies.

Hutton then considered two possible methods of consolidation. The first, deposition from solution, he rejected because the materials of which ordinary sediments are composed are, with few exceptions, insoluble in water. He adopted the alternative, fusion of the sediments by the great heat which he believed to exist beneath the lower regions of the earth's crust. Heat, he claimed, was capable of fusing all the substances found in different types of sediment.

He also concluded that the extreme heat that fused the sediments must be capable of “producing an expansive force, sufficient for elevating the land from the bottom of the ocean to the place it now occupies.” He supported this conclusion by stating that the strata formerly deposited in regular succession at the bottom of the ocean are now often found broken, folded, and contorted, a condition to be expected as a result of the violently expansive action of subterraneous heat.

Hutton then discussed the direct evidence of the action of heat, which he had found in the rocks themselves. He mentioned mineral veins containing matter foreign to the strata they traverse, the widespread occurrence of volcanoes, and the occurrence of what he called “subterraneous lavas.” (The examples quoted here, and in the fuller version of the theory, indicate clearly that he was referring to what are now known as igneous intrusions.)

Hutton next claimed that his theory could be extended to all parts of the world, a generalization that was by then justified because similar rocks occur in other countries. He also claimed that the theory, based on rational deductions from observed facts, was not “visionary.”

Finally, Hutton discussed one of the principal objects of his inquiry, the length of time the earth had existed as a habitable world, that is, in effect, the question of geological time. He rejected as humanly impracticable the possibility of estimating geological time by measuring the rate at which erosion is wearing down the land. Hence he concluded

... That it had required an indefinite space of time to have produced the land which now appears; ... That an equal space had been employed upon the construction of that former land from whence the materials of the present came; ... That there is presently laying at the bottom of the ocean the foundation of a future land, which is to appear after an indefinite space of time. ... so that, with respect to human observation, this world has neither a beginning nor an end [pp. 27-28].

Hutton was not prepared to be more definite than the facts allowed.

It was also in the Abstract that Hutton disclosed for the first time his philosophic belief that there exists in nature evidence of wisdom and design. He believed that the natural processes operating on and within the earth's crust had been so contrived as to provide for the indefinite continuance of the earth as a habitable world, providing means for the continuing existence of living beings, and that his theory provided support for this conclusion. The final paragraph of the Abstract includes the following statement: “Thus, either in supposing Nature wise and good, an argument is formed in confirmation of the theory, or, in supposing the theory to be just, an argument may be established for wisdom and benevolence to be perceived in nature.” Hutton's theory ran counter to the belief then widely held that the present world was created by a divine being, fully populated by animal and plant life, at a time that could be measured by human records.

Hutton makes few references in the Abstract to the evidence on which he bases his theory. This is discussed in detail in his 1788 paper. Here, in discussing geological time, the conclusion he draws from fossils is of particular interest. He states:

Time ... is to nature endless and as nothing.... The Mosaic history places this beginning of man at no great distance; and there has not been found, in natural history, any document by which a high antiquity might be attributed to the human race. But this is not the case with regard to the inferior species of animals.... We find in natural history monuments [that is, fossils] which prove that those animals had long existed; and we thus procure a measure for the computation of a period of time extremely remote, though far from being precisely ascertained [pp. 215, 217].

From 1785 onward Hutton continued to collect new information to support his theory, which he published later in a two-volume work, Theory of the Earth: With Proofs and Illustrations; in Four Parts