Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
it" (1788, 209). He advocates as a general methodology, the simultaneous
search for both efficient and final causes expressed in human terms:
Nothing can be admitted as a theory of the earth which does not, in a
satisfactory manner, give the efficient causes for all these effects . . . But this
is not all. We live in a world where order every where prevails; and where
final causes are as well known, at least, as those which are efficient. The
muscles, for example, by which I move my fingers when I write are no more
the efficient cause of that motion, than this motion is the final cause for
which the muscles have been made. Thus, the circulation of the blood is the
efficient cause of life; but, life is the final cause, not only for the circulation
of the blood but for the revolution of the globe . . . Therefore the explanation,
which is given of the different phenomena of the earth, must be consistent
with the actual constitution of this earth as a living world, that is, a world
maintaining a system of living animals and plants. (1795, II, 545-546)
Hutton presents his theory as the
a priori
solution to a problem in final
causation, not as an induction from field evidence. We might choose to
disregard Hutton's own insistent claim, and argue that no one could really
base so much on what seems so nonsensical today. But the intellectual
bankruptcy of such an attitude should be self-evident.
Hutton states explicitly, at the outset of his first treatise (1788, 214-215), and
throughout all his writing, that his theory is an argument made
a priori,
and
logically necessary to resolve a paradox in final cause. Why not take him at
face value? We may call this problem the "paradox of the soil." Hutton had
spent most of his early life, before retiring to intellectual circles in
Edinburgh, as a committed and successful gentleman farmer, studying and
using the latest methods of husbandry. He had thought long and hard about
Search WWH ::
Custom Search