Windsor’s Scottish Heritage – People – Scottish Philosophers: James Hutton
Introduction
History & Immigration
Culture
People
Multimedia
Resources
Print this Page
Scottish Writers
William Dunbar
Robert Burns
Sir Walter Scott
Robert Louis Stevenson
James Matthew (J.M.) Barrie
Hugh Macdiarmid
Scottish Philosophers
John Duns Scotus
John Knox
Francis Hutcheson
David Hume
Adam Smith
James Hutton
Scottish Innovators
John Napier
Joseph Black
James Watt
Charles Macintosh
Rev. Patrick Bell
Thomas Graham
Kirkpatrick Macmillan
Alexander Bain
Sir James Young Simpson
Sir William Thomson
James Clerk Maxwell
Alexander Crum Brown
Sir Alexander Fleming
John Logie Baird
Dolly
Scottish Artists
Allan Ramsay
Alexander Nasmyth
Charles Rennie Mackintosh & Margaret MacDonald
James Guthrie
Eduardo Paolozzi
Other Famous Scots
Robert the Bruce
Andrew Carnegie
Sean Connery
Flora MacDonald
Rob Roy MacGregor
William Wallace
Scottish Canadian Politicians
George Brown
Kim Campbell
Tommy Douglas
William McDougall
Sir John A. MacDonald
A. A. MacDonald
Alexander Mackenzie
William Lyon Mackenzie
William Lyon Mackenzie King
Agnes MacPhail
Cairine Mackay Wilson
John Sandfield Macdonald
John Strachan
Famous Scottish Canadians
Alexander Graham Bell
Shirley Douglas
Alexander Keith
Sir Alexander Mackenzie
James McGill
James Naismith
Lord Selkirk
Donald Sutherland
Kiefer Sutherland
Scots of Windsor’s Past
Askin Family
Bartlet Family
Bartlet, MacDonald & Gow
Andrew Braid
David Dunbar Buick
Alexander Cameron
Donald Cameron
James Dougall
Alexander Duff
Oscar Fleming
Fletcher Family
John Kenneth Galbraith
Gow Family
Alexander Grant
Lambie Family
George Mair
MacDonald Family
MacDonell Family
Lt. George McDougall
John McEwan
McGregor Family
Angus Mackintosh
John McLeod
Archibald McNee
Angus Munro
Rev. Robert Peden
Rankin Family
Robert Sutherland
Patillo Family
Wallace Family
and Others
Scots of Windsor Today
June & John Dey
Elliot MacFarlane
Hart Family
McLennan Family
Alistair MacLeod
Bob Murray
Urquhart Family
Robert Bamberry
The Essex-Scottish Regiment
Scottish Military Tradition
Early History
World War II
Pipes & Drums
Text Size:
S |
M |
L
People > Scottish Philosophers > James Hutton
Notable Scots: Philosophers & Academics
James Hutton (1726-1797):
Geologist, Physician, Naturalist, Chemist and Experimental Farmer
“Here is a compound system of things, forming together one whole living world.”
~ James Hutton, Theory of the Earth, 1785
James Hutton
Hutton, born in Edinburgh and raised as an academic urbanite, might not have become the father of modern geology if it hadn’t been
for the farm he inherited. After finishing his studies at the University of Edinburgh, Hutton apprenticed to a lawyer, but chemistry
quickly snatched away his attention. A year into his apprenticeship, he quit to become a physician’s assistant, a career he thought
more closely allied with chemistry. He stayed in that work for three years, then went to Paris to formally study medicine.
Hutton returned to Edinburgh in 1750 after taking a Doctor of Medicine degree from Leyden. His prospects of opening a medical
practice that left him time to pursue chemistry were slim, so he resumed chemical experimentation with his close friend, James Davie.
The two worked on producing sal ammoniac from soot, and their partnership led to a very profitable chemical works. The works
manufactured a crystalline salt, previously available only from natural sources and imported from Egypt, used in dyes and
metalwork.
Jame Hutton
In the early 1750s, Hutton, with a comfortable income flowing from the works, moved from the city to the Berwickshire farms he had
inherited from his father, Slighthouses and Nether Monynut. He introduced improved farming practices from other parts of Britain, and
experimented with plant and animal husbandry. He employed a crop rotation of wheat and turnips following six months of fallow and
barley undersown with grass and clover. He developed an emotional attachment to his black-polled cattle, writing, “if the ladies were
but capable of loving us men with half the attention that I have towards the cow and calvies that happen to be under my nurture and
admonition what a happy world we should have”. The system of agriculture he proposed, which aimed to maintain fertile soil with mixed
farming, crop rotation, and fertilizers, was collected in 1,100 hand-unpublished pages titled Elements of Agriculture, a treatise
composed over the course of his four decades of farming.
Engraving by Hutton
Farm, combined with a love of chemistry, awakened in Hutton an interest in geology. His two farms were on contrasting terrains, so
he was able to study their soil and rocks as he cut, cleared, and drained them. His theories on rock formation began to come together
sometime around 1760; in 1764 he set out on a Highland tour with friend George Maxwell Clerk to test his theories on a more varied
topography. At the River Tilt, in the Cairngorn Mountains, Hutton found a piece of granite penetrating the surrounding rock in such
a way that indicated the granite had been molten at the time of its intrusion (it was believed at the time that granite was ancient).
When he returned to his farm, he continued studying its layers of soil and rock.
Black and Hutton
When the challenge of farm work exhausted, Hutton returned to Edinburgh in 1768, where he mingled with men of the Scottish
Enlightenment. He became good buddies with Joseph Black and
Adam Smith; the three founded The Oyster Club together, a venue for intelligent conversation
and free debate in the midst of food, drink, and good company.
In 1785, Black presented the first part of Hutton’s Theory of the Earth to the Royal Society of Edinburgh for him. Theory was the
product of twenty-five years of observation – it claimed that the earth was millions of years old, an idea centered on his
observation that the surface of the earth was in a state of constant regeneration. Hutton proposed that land was formed by layers of
consolidated masses, collected on the sea bed, pushed upwards by volcanic activity generated from the hot core of the earth. The idea
of “geological time”, or “deep time”, was contrary to the popular belief in Biblical time, and his theory of rock formation was set
in direct opposition to the idea that land came from the crystallization of minerals in the early ocean.
Hutton Memorial Cairn
Hutton’s empirical data has withstood the tests of modern science. His theory of internal heat and its power to elevate was proven
in the 1960s and provided the basis for one of the most important geophysical discoveries of the twentieth century: plate tectonics.
His disciplined methodology, testing and refuting conjectures through verifiable predictions with accurate observation and supportive
field evidence, was invaluable for the development of geology as a modern science. And his idea of “deep time” rendered Darwin’s
theories plausible. Hutton launched a revolution in natural science, literally changing the way man looked at the world.
[ top of page ] [ site map ]
The opinions and interpretations in this publication are those of the author and
do not necessarily reflect those of the Government of Canada.
Copyright © 2009 Windsor Mosaic Website. All rights reserved