HUTTON, JAMES

(b. Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom 3 June 1726; d. Edinburgh, 26 March 1797)

geology, agriculture, physical sciences, philosophy. For the original article on Hutton see DSB, vol. 6.

Since the publication of Eyles’s article, several of Hutton’s major works have been reissued, including his doctoral dissertation (Donovan and Prentiss, 1980), the Abstract(1785/1987) (which Eyles drew on extensively), his Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge (1794/1999), and some of Hutton’s correspondence (Jones et al., 1994, 1995). A collection of colored drawings illustrating Hutton’s geotheory has been located and published (Craig et al., 1978). These were due to John Clerk of Eldin, Jr., or his father John Clerk of Eldin, also an artist friend of Hutton, who accompanied him on some of his geological excursions. They include a section by John Clerk Jr. showing Hutton’s idea of the likely structure of the large mass of granite in the Isle of Arran (Scotland), with a subterranean magma chamber and the strata adjacent to the granite upheaved by the igneous mass. Also, there are pictures of granitic veins penetrating the country rock at Glen Tilt, Perthshire, which supported Hutton’s theory. Dean’s republication of volume 3 of Hutton’s Theory of the Earth(1899/1997) provides access to his accounts of his fieldwork in the latter part of his career.

The secondary literature has emphasized the cyclic aspects of Hutton’s theory, his matter theory and its relationship to his geological theory, his economic interests, his agricultural interests and ideas on natural selection, his philosophical/methodological notions, and his religious views. Hutton has been the subject of an excellent intellectual biography (Dean, 1992). Drake (1981) has suggested that Hutton’s geotheory was significantly influenced by Robert Hooke, without acknowledgement.

Cyclic Theory and Unconformities; Geological Time . Hutton’s dissertation on the circulation of the blood (1749) contained the following passage:

Being about to treat of blood and bodily fluids, I shall, as far as possible, ignore solid materials in order to avoid digressions from the main subject-matter, although there exists so close a connection between those related items … that it is not easy to determine which of them has prior existence, both advancing in step, one refashioning the other and one modifying the other; and thus they display the glorious cycle of life and a very beautiful instance of perpetual moving—an instance in which matter moves without a material cause, in which it seeks its own special aims on the fertile earth, and in which it reconstitutes its daily diminutions by means of the very cause of its destruction; and before yielding its life-producing movement to the fatal necessity of material machines, it produces new offshoots, which will complete its role in the microcosmic grove. (Donovan and Prentiss, 1980, p. 30)

This early work suggests that Hutton was already thinking (teleologically) about cyclic processes, both in humans and in terrestrial cycles that sustain the Earth’s fertility. The hint of interest in agriculture and the machine analogy may also be remarked. Davies (1969) emphasized the importance of the steam engine (seen by Hutton when in Birmingham with James Watt in 1774, with all the movements generated by the action of a fire—almost as a perpetual motion machine!) as an analogical source for Hutton’s geotheory.

A remarkable feature of Hutton’s theory was that it was initially developed as a model or hypothesis, largely relying on the evidence of hand-specimens, and it was only after he had presented his ideas in 1785 that he embarked on a series of geological excursions specifically to find evidence that might support his theory. In particular, his journeys took him to the Isle of Arran near Glasgow (1787), where he saw the granite mountain, Goat Fell, with the surrounding sediments forming an eroded domed structure, and also a structural phenomenon at Lochranza that was later called an unconformity by Robert Jameson (one of Hutton’s opponents in Edinburgh). But a clearer example of an unconformity was observed and figured by the River Jed near Jedburgh, in the Scottish Border country, on Hutton’s return journey to Edinburgh. The river cutting showed horizontal layers of Old Red Sandstone, overlying vertical gritty sandstone—called “schistus” by Hutton (see Figure 1).

The events leading to the formation of such a structure could be construed according to Hutton’s theory as follows: deposition of sediments in the ocean; their compaction and consolidation, aided by subterranean heat, to form “schistus”; elevation and folding of strata by expansive subterranean forces; erosion of the now almost vertical strata of “schistus” to an approximately level surface; subsidence followed by deposition and consolidation of the sandstone strata now called Old Red Sandstone. The upward and downward movements were not fully explained, but the production of the sediments would have occurred by the erosion and weathering of neighboring higher ground. The contact between the vertical schistus and the horizontal Old Red Sandstone was the plane of unconformity and represented a large time-gap and break in the sedimentation. Given the slow processes of weathering, erosion, etc., the rocks obviously represented a huge amount of time, in human terms. Hutton’s overall theory may be summarized diagrammatically, as shown in Figure 2.

Later (1788) Hutton and two friends, John Playfair and Sir James Hall, sailed along the Berwickshire coast, looking for a contact similar to that at Jedburgh. Hutton knew that such rocks were in the vicinity, as his nearby upland farm was located on schistus while his lower farm was situated on Old Red Sandstone. The contact was found at a locality called Siccar Point, now famous in the annals of geology. Playfair (1805, p. 73) described his feelings on the occasion thus:

Revolutions still more remote appeared in the distance of this extraordinary perspective. The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time; and while we listened with earnestness and admiration to the philosopher … unfolding to us the order and series of these wonderful events, we became sensible how much farther reason may sometimes go than imagination can venture to follow.

Thus theory and observations yielded a reasoned argument for the Earth’s antiquity. Evidence of two cycles of sedimentation could be seen directly. But there could or would have been untold earlier cycles. Time was needed for unconformities.

Chemical and Physical Aspects . But the source of terrestrial heat was mysterious. Hutton knew that plants required the Sun. Its light and warmth are called forms of radiant energy in the early twenty-first century. Hutton, however, talked about “solar substance.” Thus solar energy was regarded as a weightless “substance,” perhaps analogous to “caloric.” This “solar substance” might take various forms: “sensible” (or “specific”) heat, such as people feel when they touch a hot object; “latent” heat or the principle of fluidity, as discussed by Hutton’s friend Joseph Black; phlogiston; or electricity. Gerstner (1968) has suggested how, in his post–Siccar Point work, Hutton tried in his Dissertations on Different Subjects in Natural Philosophy(1792) to account for episodes of subsidence and consolidation of strata, and then expansion.

Hutton accepted Newtonian theory, particles being mutually attracted according to the inverse square law. But there could also be expansive forces, as exhibited in steam engines. So he imagined that if particles were pushed very close together, repulsive forces (a form of “solar substance”), acting according to some higher law than the square law, could begin to prevail, causing melting, expansion, and elevation of strata. There could be heat without fire. So Hutton sought to explain cycles of compression/heating, and expansion/elevation. His matter theory also supposedly allowed for the intrusion of subterranean matter, either as liquid or vapor. It is historically interesting that he tried to develop a physical theory to support his geological theory; but it led nowhere.

Hutton and Agriculture . Hutton spent a considerable time studying modern farming practices, and successfully improved his two farms in Berwickshire. Jones (1985) has pointed out how his experiences as a farmer would have shown the constant erosion of land and transport of sediments to the sea. Decayed plants helped renew the soil. Thus Hutton’s agricultural experience formed a background to his cyclic geotheory. Eyles mentioned that Hutton’s unpublished Principles of Agriculture contained ideas that foreshadowed Darwinian natural selection. Pearson (2003) has pointed out that such ideas also occurred in chapter 3 of the little-read 2,138-page, three-volume Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge. The following quotation illustrates:

if an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, >> those which depart most from the best adapted constitution, will be most liable to perish, while,… those organised bodies, which most approach to the best constitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying …; their race. (2:501)

Hutton went on to talk about artificial selection (of dogs), the influence of the environment; and to all intents and purposes he entertained speciation. His words might well have been written by Darwin (which raises the question of whether Darwin picked up such ideas when he was studying in Edinburgh). Of course, Hutton’s geotheory would have allowed ample time for Darwinian evolution.

Hutton’s Philosophy and Method in Science . It is well known that Immanuel Kant developed a form of philosophical idealism, whereby the mind is regarded as an active agent in the acquisition of knowledge. It necessarily sees things in (Euclidean) space and (Newtonian) time and constructs and filters sensory information in terms of certain categories of the understanding. He proposed such ideas in response to problems raised by David Hume’s empiricism (e.g., the problem of induction).

It is striking that Hutton’s Principles of Knowledge(1794) developed a response to Hume somewhat analogous to Kant's, though almost certainly independently of him. For Hutton, like Kant, space and time are mere conceptions of the mind. Hume had offered an implausible account of human understanding of causal connections: It depended on habit. For example, one sees a billiard ball move whenever struck by another one, and one comes to suppose that it will always happen thus. Human understanding of causes and effects is, for Hume, simply a probabilistic extrapolation from empirically known instances. But Hutton wrote, in a Kantian manner:

[T]he knowledge of cause and effect, or the relation of things existing in succession, is discerned in the mind, where, without any form of an argument, a judgment is formed, or a new species of knowledge is produced, in an operation called reason. (1794, 2:188)

Observation per se does not discover cause. Ideas of necessary causal connection are the product of reasoning. Hutton, then, saw a radical difference between humans and “brutes” as regards wisdom. Insofar as an animal can reason, it does so without general principles. Also, only humans, not animals, can have moral principles inculcated.

Significantly, Hutton maintained that there had to be a first cause for everything, which he regarded as absolute, self-existing, efficient, and final. Knowledge of this was found by exercise of reason, not by the “superstitions” of religion. But while humans could recognize the existence of a first cause, they could not properly apprehend its nature:

[I]n the contemplation of this world, so beautiful is the order and arrangement of things, so plain and simple are the means, so deep and complicated the design, so secret every cause, and so certain the effect, we must conclude that nothing but a wisdom without defect had been employed, and that such wisdom is infinite or incomprehensible to man. (1794, 3: 645)

So, for Hutton, the universe was, as he put it, ordained in perfect wisdom. He was a teleologist and a deist.

These ideas were formally expressed in Hutton’s technical philosophy after his geological fieldwork ended, but they underpinned his geology, and probably derived in part from his agricultural experience. Erosion was continuous, spoiling the farmer’s circumstances. But the world—supposedly designed in wisdom—had its soils naturally replenished. Hutton’s geotheory explained how the design was maintained. This avoided what has been called the “denudation dilemma” (Davies, 1969, p. 160) or the “paradox of the soil” (Gould, 1987, p. 76). There was a wise adaptation of means to ends.

Although Hutton’s philosophy had quasi - Kantian features, in fact, it stood essentially within the British empiricism tradition of John Locke, George Berkeley, and Hume. He was not saying (à la Kant) that notions of space and time are intrinsic faculties of the mind—necessary conditions for experience. They were, rather, abstracted from experience. But having acquired the notion of time experientially, the geologist could look into the past and try to understand it. With a cyclic geotheory, there was a nice interplay of contemporary experiences (e.g., soil erosion) and past changes on the Earth. So Hutton had a philosophical warrant for what was later known as actualism or methodological uniformitarianism (“the present is the key to the past,” Geikie [1962, p. 299]).

There has, then, been discussion as to whether Hutton’s geology was a priori and teleological or had an empirical base. Was he a hypothetico-deductivist or an inductivist/empiricist? Which came first: the philosophy or the observations? The former alternative has been advocated particularly by Gould (1987, p. 76), who stated that “Hutton present[ed] his theory as the a priori solution to a problem in causation, not as an induction from the field evidence.” That is, philosophy and theory came first, and only then was the theory tested in the field. Dean (1992), however, has argued, against Gould, that there was a development of Hutton’s ideas over time, so that he did not simply invent his theory a priori in his early years and then spend the rest of his time seeking to test it by observation. The two interpretations have been examined by Leveson (1996), who concluded that Hutton’s inductivism was not without foundation but needed to be interpreted with caution. Hutton was, in fact, a hypothetico-deductivist. To which one might add that it did not matter pragmatically whether the theory came from Hutton’s epistemology, his deism, the Aristotelian notion of final causes, or acceptance of the world as manifesting divine wisdom, or whatever. The theory did lead to certain observational expectations, and these were mostly fulfilled.

Hutton’s Religious Views . ?engör (2001) has suggested that Hutton was an atheist, but that in the context of eighteenth-century Edinburgh he did not choose to reveal

this. It is certainly accepted that Hutton lost any conventional Christian faith early, having encountered deism while a student via the mathematics lecturer Colin Maclaurin. It is hard to agree with?engör’s suggestion, however, given the enormous effort involved in writing the Principles of Knowledge, according to which humankind could derive delight from contemplating the universe “so beautifully calculated.” And such limited wisdom as humans possess derives from a higher cause: “we do not exist independent of our author, who is the cause of us, and of the faculties in which we exist; and it is only in knowing this, that we know there is, in God, both intellect and truth” (1794, 3:198–199). Hutton evidently had a reasoned faith.

Founder of Modern Geology? . Hutton has often been regarded as the “founder of modern geology” (e.g., Dean, 1992, p. 1). But in his examination of the origins of geology as a historical science, Martin Rudwick (2005) suggests that Hutton’s work came at the end—perhaps the culmination—of the older tradition of theories of the Earth, or “geotheory,” to use Rudwick’s preferred term.

Rudwick sees the emergence of geology as involving “bursting the limits of time” (which Hutton surely did) and the study of the Earth as an object with a contingent history, which could be unraveled chiefly with the help of biostratigraphy. Hutton’s doctrine of unlimited repetitive cycles, lacking any direction, was not, for Rudwick, the stuff of the new geology at the turn of the nineteenth century, with Cuvier as the leading light. Certainly, Hutton was not a stratigrapher, and his cyclism gave less scope for historical contingencies than did Cuvier’s unidirectional geohistory. But in his Theory of the Earth (1795, 1:363) he wrote:

[N]ature, forming strata, is subject to vicissitudes; and … [there] is not always the same regular operation with respect to the materials, although always forming strata upon the same principles. Consequently, upon the same spot in the sea, different materials may be accumulated at different periods of time, and, conversely, the same or similar materials may be collected in different places at the same time.

This implies that things would not necessarily be the same from one geocycle to the next; therefore, even if one defines geology to be a historical science, requiring the examination of different contingent states of affairs through time, Hutton’s geology would be compatible with that definition. And his cyclic theory, for all its problems, gave investigators a basic understanding of the Earth that has survived to the present—alongside biostratigraphy and much else besides. It seems reasonable to regard Hutton as at least a founder of modern geology, his eighteenth-century metaphysical basis notwithstanding.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS BY HUTTON

James Hutton’s Theory of the Earth: The Lost Drawings, edited by Gordon Y. Craig, Donald B. McIntyre, and Charles D. Waterston. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1978.

James Hutton’s Medical Dissertation, edited by Arthur Donovan and Joseph Prentiss. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 70, part 6. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1980.

The 1785 Abstract of James Hutton’s Theory of the Earth, introduction by G. Y. Craig. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1987.

Dissertations on Different Subjects in Natural Philosophy. Edinburgh: A. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1792.

An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge and of the Progress of Reason, from Sense to Science and Philosophy, with a new Introduction by Jean Jones and Peter Jones. 3 vols. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999. Facsimile reprint of the 1794 edition of Strahan and Cadell.

Theory of the Earth: With Proofs and Illustrations. 3 vols. Edinburgh: Cadell, Davies, and Creech, 1795–1899.

James Hutton in the Field and in the Study: Being an Augmented Reprinting of Vol. III of Hutton's Theory of the Earth (I, II, 1795), as First Published by Sir Archibald Geikie (1899); A Bicentenary Tribute to the Father of Modern Geology, edited by Dennis R. Dean. Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1997.

OTHER SOURCES

Allchin, Douglas. “James Hutton and Phlogiston.” Annals of Science 51 (1994): 615–635.

Davies, Gordon L. “The Huttonian Earth-Machine 1785–1802.” In The Earth in Decay: A History of British Geomorphology, 1578–1878, by Gordon L. Davies. London: Macdonald Technical and Scientific, 1969.

Dean, Dennis R. James Hutton and the History of Geology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.

———. “Hutton Scholarship, 1992–1997.” In James Hutton— Present and Future, edited by Gordon Y. Craig and John H. Hull. London: The Geological Society, 1999.

Drake, Ellen Tan. “The Hooke Imprint on the Huttonian Theory.” American Journal of Science 281 (September 1981): 963–973.

Donovan, Arthur L. “James Hutton, Joseph Black, and the Chemical Theory of Heat.” Ambix 25 (1978): 176–180.

Geikie, Sir Archibald. The Founders of Geology. 2nd edition. New York: Dover Publications, 1962 (reprint of Macmillan, 1905).

Gerstner, Patsy A. “James Hutton’s Theory of the Earth and His Theory of Matter.” Isis 59 (1968): 26–31.

Gould, Stephen J. Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Jones, Jean. “James Hutton’s Agricultural Research and His Life as a Farmer.” Annals of Science 42 (1985): 574–601.

———, Eric Robinson, and Hugh S. Torrens. “The Correspondence between James Hutton (1726–1797) and James Watt (1736–1819) with Two Letters from Hutton to George Clerk-Maxwell (1715–1784).” Annals of Science 51 (1994): 637–653; 52 (1995): 357–382.

Jones, Peter. “An Outline of the Philosophy of James Hutton (1726–97).” In Philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by Vincent Hope. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1984.

Leveson, David J. “What Was Hutton’s Methodology?” Archives of Natural History 23 (1996): 61–77.

McIntyre, Donald B. “James Hutton’s Edinburgh: The Historical, Social, and Political Background.” Earth Sciences History 16 (1997): 100–157.

O’Rourke, Joseph. “A Comparison of James Hutton’s Principles of Knowledge and Theory of the Earth.” Isis 69 (1978): 5–20.

Pearson, Paul N. “In Retrospect: An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge and the Progress of Reason, from Sense to Science and Philosophy by James Hutton 1794.” Nature 425 (2003): 665.

Playfair, John. “Biographical Account of the Late Dr James Hutton, F. R. S. Edin.” Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 5, part 3 (1805): 39–99.

Rudwick, Martin J. S. Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

?engör, A. M. Celâl. Is the Present the Key to the Past or Is the Past the Key to the Present? James Hutton and Adam Smith versus Abraham Gottlob Werner and Karl Marx in Interpreting History. Geological Society of America Special Paper 355. Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America, 2001.

David Oldroyd