Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
have already happened; things which have left, in the particular
constitutions of bodies, proper traces of the manner of their pro-
duction; and things which may be examined with all the accuracy,
or reasoned upon with all the light, that science can afford.
He recognised the great antiquity of the Earth and the cyclical nature
of geological processes and said how to find such evidence of deep
time:
we are led to conclude, that, if this part of the earth which we now
inhabit had been produced, in the course of time, from the materials
of a former earth, we should in the examination of our land, find
data from which to reason, with regard to the nature of that world.
He came up with no actual figure for the length of time that the Earth
had existed but said that by examining the rate of erosion of the rocks
at the surface and the deposition of the products in the oceans 'we
might discover the actual duration of a former earth'. That duration
was 'an indefinite space of time'.
Hutton expanded the abstract and it appeared in paper form in
1788 in the first volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh. Here was a new theory of the Earth that was quite different
fromthose that had been propounded before. The Earthwas of indefinite
age, was ancient and its dynamic nature was cyclical. He concluded:
For having, in the natural history of this earth, seen a succession of
worlds, we may from this conclude that there is a system in nature;
in like manner as, from seeing revolutions of the planets, it is
concluded, that there is a system by which they are intended to
continue those revolutions. But if the succession of worlds is estab-
lished in the systemof nature, it is vain to look for anything higher in
the origin of the earth. The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is,
that we find no vestige of a beginning, - no prospect of an end.
Hutton's work was of huge significance as it allowed enlightened men
of science and learning to shake off religious chronologies and dogma.
