James Hutton @ 300: Celebrating The Father of Modern Geology

An exhibition of original publications from the late 1700s, geological maps and postcards from the Mitchell Library's collections. 

 James Hutton was born in Edinburgh on 3rd June 1726. His father died when James was a child and his mother Sarah Balfour ensured that James was well educated, first at the High School of Edinburgh and then at the age of 14 he went to the University of Edinburgh as a ‘student of humanity’.

James Hutton’s early curiosity in geology was awakened by his farming activities coupled undoubtedly with his fascination for chemistry. 

As a young farmer John Playfair (Hutton's default biographer) tells us, Hutton noticed that: “a vast proportion of the present rocks are composed of materials afforded by the destruction of bodies, animal, vegetable and mineral, of more ancient formation”.

It is apparent from John Playfair’s biography that Hutton’s ideas began to come together to form a Theory of the Earth in 1760. 

An important aspect of the theory is that these processes took place over an indefinite space of time: “…so that with respect to human observation, this world has neither a beginning nor an end”

Though the process is immeasurably slow in human terms, the surface of the earth has undergone transformation of gigantic proportions over a gigantic timescale – and continues to do so.  Thus, he famously concluded when he published his theory in full (1788):

“The result therefore of our present inquiry is that we find no vestige of a beginning – no prospect of an end”.

After several years of intermittent illness Hutton died on Saturday 26th March 1797 aged 70.

Words here and in the exhibit edited from the website dedicated to Hutton's tercentenary james-Hutton.org by the Edinburgh Geological Society