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search of facts . . . He made journeys into different parts of Scotland . . . He
extended his excursions likewise into England and Wales. For about 30
years, he never ceased to study the natural history of the globe" (1905, 288).
Geikie then labeled the theory of his fellow Scotsman as "a coherent system
by which the earth became, as it were, her own interpreter" (1905, 305).
Geikie's mythical Hutton has been firmly entrenched in geological textbooks
ever since. Our students are still introduced to him as the first real empiricist
in geology and, as such, the founder of our science: "The first to break
formally with religion-shrouded tradition was James Hutton," proclaims the
CRM textbook Geology Today (1973). Leet and Judson (1971, 2), for many
years the best selling of all texts, stated baldly: "Modern geology was born in
1785 when James Hutton . . . formulated the principle that the same physical
processes that are operating in the present also operated in the past." Using a
scatological metaphor from the labors of Hercules, Marvin (1973, 35) wrote:
"He made it his task to clear the geological Augean Stables of the encrusted
catastrophist doctrine of over one thousand years."
Following Geikie's lead, the texts then identify Hutton's great insight with his
fieldwork. Bradley (1928, 364) wrote: "Throughout Hutton's 'Theory' the
inductive method of reasoning alone is used. He made the earth tell its own
story." Seyfert and Sirkin, in another leading introductory text (1973, 6),
attribute all Hutton's successes to his fieldwork, all his failures to his writing:
"Even though Hutton's ideas were backed by careful field observations, his
paper was written in such a difficult style that it was not widely read."
But the most forceful retelling of Hutton's myth transcends the one-liners of
traditional texts. John McPhee, for worthy reasons of his own (a generally
romantic view of nature, as I read him, and a commitment to preserve natural
beauty in an age of unparalleled danger), has adopted Hutton to convey the
mystique of fieldwork as both science and aesthetics. In Basin and Range
(1980), McPhee explores the two great revolutions of geology—deep time
and ceaseless motion (as embodied in plate tectonics). Since he followed
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