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Biography of James Hutton
From Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th Edition 1910-1911
HUTTON, JAMES
(1726-1797), Scottish geologist, was born in Edinburgh on the 3rd of June 1726.
Educated at the high school and university of his native city, he acquired while
a student a passionate love of scientific inquiry. He was apprenticed to a
lawyer, but his employer advised that a more congenial profession should be
chosen for him. The young apprentice chose medicine as being nearest akin to his
favourite pursuit of chemistry. He studied for three years at Edinburgh, and
completed his medical education in Paris, returning by the Low Countries, and
taking his degree of doctor of medicine at Leiden in 1749. Finding, however,
that there seemed hardly any opening for him, he abandoned the medical
profession, and, having inherited a small property in Berwickshire from his
father, resolved to devote himself to agriculture. He then went to Norfolk to
learn the practical work of farming, and subsequently travelled in Holland,
Belgium and the north of France. During these years he began to study the
surface of the earth, gradually shaping in his mind the problem to which he
afterwards devoted his energies. In the summer of 1754 he established himself on
his own farm in Berwickshire, where he resided for fourteen years, and where he
introduced the most improved forms of husbandry. As the farm was brought into
excellent order, and as its management, becoming more easy, grew less
interesting, he was induced to let it, and establish himself for the rest of his
life in Edinburgh. This took place about the year 1768. He was unmarried, and
from this period until his death in 1797 he lived with his three sisters.
Surrounded by congenial literary and scientific friends he devoted himself to
research.
At that time geology in any
proper sense of the term did not exist. Mineralogy, however, had made
considerable progress. But Hutton had conceived larger ideas than were
entertained by the mineralogists of his day. He desired to trace back the origin
of the various minerals and rocks, and thus to arrive at some clear
understanding of the history of the earth. For many years he continued to study
the subject. At last, in the spring of the year 1785, he communicated his views
to the recently established Royal Society of Edinburgh in a paper entitled
Theory of the Earth, or an Investigation of the Laws Observable in the
Composition, Dissolution and Restoration of Land upon the Globe. In this
remarkable work the doctrine is expounded that geology is not cosmogony, but
must confine itself to the study of the materials of the earth; that everywhere
evidence may be seen that the present rocks of the earth's surface have been in
great part formed out of the waste of older rocks; that these materials having
been laid down under the sea were there consolidated under great pressure, and
were subsequently disrupted and upheaved by the expansive power of subterranean
heat; that during these convulsions veins and masses of molten rock were
injected into the rents of the dislocated strata; that every portion of the
upraised land, as soon as exposed to the atmosphere, is subject to decay; and
that this decay must tend to advance until the whole of the land has been worn
away and laid down on the sea-floor, whence future upheavals will once more
raise the consolidated sediments into new land. In some of these broad and bold
generalizations Hutton was anticipated by the Italian geologists; but to him
belongs the credit of having first perceived their mutual relations, and
combined them in a luminous coherent theory based upon observation.
It was not merely the earth to
which Hutton directed his attention. He had long studied the changes of the
atmosphere. The same volume in which his Theory of the Earth
appeared contained also a Theory of Rain, which was read to the
Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1784. He contended that the amount of moisture
which the air can retain in solution increases with augmentation of temperature,
and, therefore, that on the mixture of two masses of air of different
temperatures a portion of the moisture must be condensed and appear in visible
form. He investigated the available data regarding rainfall and climate in
different regions of the globe, and came to the conclusion that the rainfall is
everywhere regulated by the humidity of the air on the one hand, and the causes
which promote mixtures of different aerial currents in the higher atmosphere on
the other.
The vigour and versatility of
his genius may be understood from the variety of works which, during his thirty
years' residence in Edinburgh, he gave to the world. In 1702 he published a
quarto volume entitled Dissertations on different Subjects in Natural
Philosophy, in which he discussed the nature of matter, fluidity,
cohesion, light, heat and electricity. Some of these subjects were further
illustrated by him in papers read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He did
not restrain himself within the domain of physics, but boldly marched into that
of metaphysics, publishing three quarto volumes with the title An
Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge, and of the Progress of Reason-from
Sense to Science and Philosophy. In this work he developed the idea that
the external world, as conceived by us, is the creation of our own minds
influenced by impressions from without, that there is no resemblance between our
picture of the outer world and the reality, yet that the impressions produced
upon our minds, being constant and consistent, become as much realities to us as
if they precisely resembled things actually existing, and, therefore, that our
moral conduct must remain the same as if our ideas perfectly corresponded to the
causes producing them. His closing years were devoted to the extension and
republication of his Theory of the Earth, of which two volumes
appeared in 1795. A third volume, necessary to complete the work, was left by
him in manuscript, and is referred to by his biographer John Playfair. A portion
of the MS. of this volume, which had been given to the Geological Society of
London by Leonard Horner, was published by the Society in 1899, under the
editorship of Sir A. Geikie. The rest of the manuscript appears to be lost. Soon
afterwards Hutton set to work to collect and systematize his numerous writings
on husbandry, which he proposed to publish under the title of Elements of
Agriculture. He had nearly completed this labour when an incurable
disease brought his active career to a close on the 26th of March 1797.
It is by his Theory of
the Earth that Hutton will be remembered with reverence while geology
continues to be cultivated. The author's style, however, being somewhat heavy
and obscure, the book did not attract during his lifetime so much attention as
it deserved. Happily for science Hutton numbered among his friends John Playfair
(q.v.), professor of mathematics in the university of Edinburgh, whose
enthusiasm for the spread of Hutton's doctrine was combined with a rare gift of
graceful and luminous exposition. Five years after Hutton's death he published a
volume, Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, in
which he gave an admirable summary of that theory, with numerous additional
illustrations and arguments. This work is justly regarded as one of the
classical contributions to geological literature. To its influence much of the
sound progress of British geology must be ascribed. In the year 1805 a
biographical account of Hutton, written by Playfair, was published in vol. v. of
the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. (A. Ge.)
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