Raising Greatness: James Hutton’s Deep View of Time, 1795

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1032

I think that I’d like to start a series here on significant works in the history of ideas that were originally highly problematic or not accessible due to writing style or place of publication or misplaced appearance or, well, simply bad timing.   The storyline would be one of these great works whose significance suffered as a result of one or more of these issues, and then which was raised above its suffered complications to a place of higher (or more popular) esteem, allowing it to get to a place where the work could generate the new set of ideas that it was intended to help create in the first place. The first of these stories belongs to James Hutton and his revolutionary idea of deep time. 

Seeing more deeply into scientific time than anyone else in history, seeing the entirety of Earth’s history explained  in the sloping  red sandstone at Siccar Point (above the vertical greywacke), James Hutton worked through his theory of the earth in two stout volumes (The Theory of the Earth, with Proofs and Illustrations... in 1795), wrapping up geological evidence with a dogged, comma-ridden and usually-unwieldy prose. He had in fact written a much more elegant paper presenting the main thrust of his theory in outline in 1785¹, though this paper received a much more limited distribution.  In the long term it really didn’t matter, though, how pretty his writing was–but in the short term, it did.  He made the case for the vastness of time in an elegant way, even without the prospect of being able to know the age of the rocks he was looking at.  The processes of sedimentation, transportation and weathering of solids,  vertical elevation of the Earth's surface in response to natural causes, and so on, were just not known to him; no matter, as Hutton trusted his theoretical inspiration to tell him that the 6,000-year old earth history clock on the wall was telling a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a tenth (and on) of the larger, truer story of the age of the earth.  He knew that there were many orders of magnitude of age involved in the telling of the story–he just didn’t know how many. 

He ended his great work bowing to the enormity of the sight of time:

"Here are three distinct successive periods of existence, and each of these is, in our measurement of time, a thing of infinite duration. ...
The result, therefore, of this physical inquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end."
               
Hutton’s work is inestimably important, Archibald Geike (the great 19th century geologist) commenting that it is impossible to praise the work too highly.  But then there was the problem of the density and just flat-out difficulty in reading Hutton’s writing, which restricted the book’s message to a dedicated academic class. Hutton did find his champion in James Playfair, who would strengthen Hutton’s work with new data and who would also help along the troubled Huttonian prose.  Playfair’s work is in of itself² an important contribution to the history of geology and also of course evolution. His Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802), popularized and made the Huttonian work far more acceptable to a larger audience, and as the DNB says “presenting Hutton's momentous theory in a clear and palatable form (which Hutton himself had failed to do), and in adding materially to the geological knowledge of the time”.

It was Playfair’s treatment of Hutton that found its way into the mix of genius of Charles Lyell, whose own Principles of Geology³ found its way onto the Beagle and which were voraciously studied by Charles Darwin⁴ and then put to further use.
           
Notes

1. “Theory of the Earth; or an investigation of the laws observable in the composition, dissolution, and restoration of land upon the Globe”, presented in two parts, in Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. 1, Part 2, pp. 209-304.  An earlier, related pamphlet was written and privately published for a very restricted and private distribution in 1785:   Abstract of a dissertation read in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, upon the seventh of March, and fourth of April, MDCCLXXXV, Concerning the System of the Earth, Its Duration, and Stability. Edinburgh. 30pp.   

Eventually the book would wind up in a final form as An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge and of the Progress of Reason, from Sense to Science and Philosophy in 2,138 pages, causing Playfair to remark that “The great size of the book, and the obscurity which may justly be objected to many parts of it, have probably prevented it from being received as it deserves”.
   
This paper privately printed 1785 paper stated:
"The solid parts of the present land appear in general, to have been composed of the productions of the sea, and of other materials similar to those now found upon the shores. Hence we find reason to conclude:
1st, That the land on which we rest is not simple and original, but that it is a composition, and had been formed by the operation of second causes.
2nd, That before the present land was made, there had subsisted a world composed of sea and land, in which were tides and currents, with such operations at the bottom of the sea as now take place. And,
Lastly, That while the present land was forming at the bottom of the ocean, the former land maintained plants and animals; at least the sea was than inhabited by animals, in a similar manner as it is at present.
Hence we are led to conclude, that the greater part of our land, if not the whole had been produced by operations natural to this globe; but that in order to make this land a permanent body, resisting the operations of the waters, two things had been required;
1st, The consolidation of masses formed by collections of loose or incoherent materials;
2ndly, The elevation of those consolidated masses from the bottom of the sea, the place where they were collected, to the stations in which they now remain above the level of the ocean."

2. Returning again to Geike, who  remarked (1905): “How different would geological literature be to-day if men had tried to think and write like Playfair!"

3.  The Principles was an enormously influential book, and went through six editions in the first 11 years of its printing (1830-1840), seeing 12 editions during the author’s lifetime (the last edition corrected and added to by Lyell appearing just after the author’s death in 1875). 

4.  Darwin had volume 1 when he shipped off, receiving volume 2 en route.  A quick look online reveals that there is no mention of Playfair or Hutton in either the Voyages or Origin.; Lyell is noted 14 times in the Voyages and 30 times in the 6th edition of the Origin.

Comments

[Rick Hamrick]

It is wonderfully fitting that the story of how we came to learn of Earth's history is one which illustrates the point that giants are really just men, standing on the shoulders of scholars standing on the shoulders of creative thinkers standing on the shoulders of men who...well, you get the idea.

You not only get the idea, you tell us about its history.

Thanks, John.