Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
6
An infinite and cyclical Earth
and religious orthodoxy
In the 1990s, when the Geological Gallery at the AmericanMuseumof
Natural History in New York was being redesigned, a series of moulds
was made of classic geological sites and these were cast in fibreglass
and installed in the geology exhibition. While there one can gaze at a
piece of Scotland: Siccar Point on the Berwickshire coast, to be precise,
which is one of the sites in the world that historians of geology would
wish to visit to pay homage to the early geological fathers. Recently
I was in New York and made my way to the gallery. I have to confess
that I have never visited the real Siccar Point. Nevertheless its impact
on me was palpable - I had to sit down in the gallery, and I gazed at the
structure, identifying the almost upright beds overlain unconformably
by almost horizontal beds tilted at a low angle. I realised that perhaps
I was experiencing a similar sensation to that of the great gentleman
geologist James Hutton (1726-1797) when he first saw the actual site
over two hundred years earlier.
THE GENESIS OF A NEWTHEORY OF THE EARTH
Sitting in the parlour of his Edinburgh house at St John's Hill on the
afternoon of 7 March 1785, the regal-looking gentleman would have
been somewhat apprehensive. It was nearly teatime but I suspect he
would not have wanted to eat much; he had more pressing matters
on his mind. That evening an outline of his ideas on the Earth and
its geological history was to be delivered to the Royal Society of
Edinburgh.
James Hutton (Figure
6.1
) was born on 3 June 1726 in Edinburgh.
His father William was a merchant and one-time City Treasurer, but
he died, leaving a widow Sarah (n ยด e Balfour) and four children: James
and his three sisters. In 1743 James became a clerk in a local firm but
