Geology Reference
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quenchable desire to understand sequences of events in time: "Man is not
satisfied, like the brute, in seeing things which are; he seeks to know how
things have been, and what they are to be" (1788, 286). We might almost
think that Hutton is cranking up for a defense of history. But, whereas Burnet
uses this preamble to glorify the intrinsic fascination of narrative, Hutton
takes the opposite line dictated by his allegiance to time's cycle: we want to
understand what happened in time only so that we may infer the cycling,
timeless system of change, and thereby grasp the perfection of nature's
works. Continuing directly from the last quotation: "It is with pleasure that he
observes order and regularity in the works of nature, instead of being
disgusted with disorder and confusion; and he is made happy from the
appearance of wisdom and benevolence in the design, instead of being left to
suspect in the Author of nature, any of that imperfection which he finds in
himself."
Divorcing History from Its Own Best Data
The classical data of historical geology are fossils and strata. Obviously, we
cannot charge Hutton with inattention to principles that were codified after
his death. In particular, Hutton's contemporaries had not resolved the issue of
extinction and fossil sequences. Lamarck and others were still arguing that
species could not die, and Cuvier's proof of extinction, with its guarantee that
history might be calibrated by the distinctive life-spans of fossil groups,
followed Hutton's death by a decade or more. But basic stratigraphic
principles of superposition and correlation had been developed. Maps and
sections, however rudimentary, were being published—though not by
Hutton. A rude system of stratigraphic nomenclature had been developed to
order events in time—the "primary" cores of mountains, the hard
"secondary" strata deposited against them, and the still younger, loosely
consolidated "tertiary" deposits (the last name still surviving, in more
prestigious upper case, as a period of the Cenozoic Era).
Hutton used the data of fossils and strata as primary empirical supports for
his system, but he never invoked them as signs of
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