James Hutton

James Hutton ( born June 3, 1726 Edinburgh, † March 26, 1797 ) was a Scottish naturalist and geologist. He is considered one of the founders of modern geology, specifically the idea of the cycle of rocks and of uniformity ( with Karl Ernst Adolf von Hoff and Charles Lyell )

Career

Hutton was the only son of the businessman ( and former Treasurer of Edinburgh) William Hutton and the merchant's daughter Sarah Balfour. His father died in 1729, but the family left behind in affluent circumstances. Hutton attended the High School in Edinburgh and studied in 1740 at the University of Edinburgh humanities, including logic at John Stevenson and mathematics, physics and geography at Colin MacLaurin. After that, he was in 1743 briefly apprenticed to a lawyer, but what he did not appeal. During his studies, his interest in chemistry was awakened and he studied from 1744 to 1747 the closest practical subject, Medicine, Edinburgh. In 1747 he went to Paris for two years, where he studied anatomy and chemistry, among others, Guillaume- François Rouelle, who also delivered lectures on geology and mineralogy. 1749, he earned his MD degree in medicine in Leiden. From the end of 1749, he spent several months in London before returning to Edinburgh.

According to some sources, he practiced as a physician for several years (according to another source he did not at any time ) before he turned away from medicine and started with his friend John Davie, particularly as fertilizer to produce important substances ammonia ( by a process had the previously developed both in Edinburgh ), and working as a " scientifically interested Bauer" it. From his father he had a small farm in Slighshouses 40 miles southeast inherited Edinburgh, but he went before that 1752/53 apprenticed on a farm in agriculturally advanced England (near Yarmouth ), where he also visited other farms on longer trips, in England and 1754 in northern France, Holland and Belgium. On the Study of soil he came to the interest of geological phenomena and soon began " rather rocks than books" ( rather than stones books) to read (quoted Warren Carey ). The next fourteen years from 1754 to 1768, when he moved to Edinburgh, he spent as a farmer, where he drove scientific studies. In 1767 he was member of a commission for a sewer construction project between the rivers Forth and Clyde. In Edinburgh, he took part in the social life and intercourse with scholars such as Joseph Black, James Watt, John Playfair ( all three of his close friends were ) and Adam Smith. In 1774 he traveled to England and Wales, where he visited mines with James Watt and this probably also tied contacts with the Lunar Society in Birmingham - he was later with Erasmus Darwin and Matthew Boulton in correspondence. Hutton was very active in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, founded in 1783, and from 1788 a member of the Royal French Academy of Agriculture. His first little book about a geological subject was published in 1777 ( Considerations on the Nature, Quality, and Distinctions of Coal and Culm ). In the 1780s, he made several more times longer geological study trips to England, Scotland and the Isle of Man, but stopped end of the decade, as he was (he had bladder stones ) increasingly sickly. In 1795 he published at the urging of his friends, his major work Theory of the Earth. A book about farming ( Principles of Agriculture) was planned, but he died before.

He was never married, but had an illegitimate son from his student days, with whom he also kept contact. His last budget led his three sisters.

Founder of geological chronology

Hutton is considered the founder of geology as a science and, ultimately, geochronology. For he first named the gap between human and geological time scale, and that humanity and creation would have to be older than had been calculated from the Bible (see the year 5508 BC). The same geological processes that can be observed today would, worked well in the past ( actualism ). Therefore, direct conclusions from one day to the previous processes were possible. These processes blended to form a cycle of rocks in the alternation of erosion and sediment deposition, for example, in seas and volcanic uplift that lasted for ages - the first chapter of the first volume of his major work concludes with the words, we find no evidence of a beginning and end. This also corresponded to his deistic view of the world - God had established the world according to his plan, but reaches for it no longer directly a. The earth was like a well-planned machine or an organism which was equipped with self-preservation forces.

The path to this " new image of the Earth " was to investigate Scottish limestone layers, the Hutton recognized as incurred on the seabed deposits that solidified by pressure. There was a similar open up for sandstone and shale. On Siccar Point on the east coast of Scotland he found and his friend and disciple John Playfair a two-colored cliff, whose lower part dark he called " Schistus ". This shale layers of the Silurian were folded and almost vertically placed, while the above it Oldred red sandstone of the Devonian was horizontal. After Hutton's consideration of Schistus had been tilted after its formation, so that the later deposited thereon sand to him - as they say today - was discordant.

From Hutton and his student Playfair first estimates of the mean density of the earth have further provides that resulted in 4.5 and 4.9 g / cm ³ (true value 5.52 ). At the northern Scottish mountain Shehellien Hutton also determined the rock density from the deflection of the plumb line (see; However, other sources say his contemporaries Charles Hutton ). The density of the mountain was amazing accurately determined with 2.6 to 2.8 g / cm ³.

Theory of uniformitarianism and plutonism

1785 Hutton first held lectures on his theory at the Royal Society of Edinburgh (published in their papers in 1788 and circulated in a pamphlet of 1785, he and friends print privately left ). In 1795 he published his major work in two volumes Theory of the Earth ( draft published to other parts of the book only in 1899 as part III). In it, he stresses the importance of slow but steady geological processes that shape the surface of the earth. He also developed the concept of uniformitarianism: All geological phenomena can be explained by observable today changes that take place over long periods of time.

The hitherto prevailing view, however, was influenced by the visual inspection: the so stable acting mountains, canyons and volcanoes but also had to be caused by a sudden disaster, given their often enormous size. This Kataklysmentheorie was not final until 70 years later refuted by Charles Lyell.

Hutton represented views of plutonism, a sense that time was involved on the continent with the representatives of Neptunism in violent clashes. But since he also recognized the rock formation by marine deposition he takes in the former dispute in the opinion of his friend John Playfair an intermediate position. But he was criticized by the Neptunists his time and also hard by the church, because he gave the idea about the flood a rejection.

Host rocks of volcanic origin, he differed even plutonic rocks intrusive origin, such as the granites that crystallized from a magma melt after him. Again, as in his other works he drew his conclusions only after close observation possible on site - in this case of granites near Glent Tilt at Aberdeen in Perthshire 1785 ( Observations on Granite, Transactions Royal Society Edinburgh, Volume 3, 1794, p 77 -85 ). It was able to clearly see how the red granite in the overlying crystalline slate was broken into.

Hutton's writings were already in the 1780s made ​​their way to Germany and France and influenced the discussion there. His Theory of the Earth appeared in 1792 in German translation ( collections of Physics and Natural History, Volume 4, 1792). Of particular influence was the presentation of the theory of Hutton by his friend John Playfair ( Illustrations of the Huttonian theory of the earth, Edinburgh 1802), by, for example, Charles Lyell met Hutton theory. Only this book made Hutton's theory more widely known., With Playfair Huttons drove back deistic speculation in favor of the scientific facts. John Playfair wrote the biography of Hutton.

Hutton was also active in the study of Earth's atmosphere. With its climate studies he clarified the meteorological conditions for precipitation.

With fossils themselves Hutton addressed only in passing.

Honors

Hutton was created in honor of 2001/2002 on the St. John 's Hill in Edinburgh Hutton Memorial Garden, a small garden, which is designed with different types of rocks. At one of them, a memorial tablet.

Writings

• Considerations on the Nature, Quality, and Distinctions of Coal and Culm, Edinburgh 1777
• Abstract of a dissertation read in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Upon the 7th of March, and 4th of April 1785, Concerning the System of the Earth, Its Duration, and Stability, Edinburgh 1785 (Reprinted in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 63B (1950), 380-382, and GW White ( editor) Contributions to the History of Geology, Darien, Connecticut, Volume 5, 1970, pp. 1-30)
• Dissertations on Different Subjects in Natural Philosophy, Edinburgh, 1792
• An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge, and of the Progress of Reason, From Sense to Science and Philosophy, 3 vols, Edinburgh 1794
• A Dissertation Upon the Philosophy of Light, Heat, and Fire, Edinburgh, 1794
• Theory of the Earth: With Proofs and Illustrations, 2 vols, Edinburgh, 1795, facsimile reprint New York 1959, Volume 3 edited by Archibald Geikie, London 1899
• The Theory of Rain, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Volume 1, 1788, pp. 42-86
• Theory of the Earth; or on Investigation of the Laws Observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land Upon the Globe Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Volume 1, 1788, pp. 209-304, reprint in GW White ( Editor) Contributions to the History of Geology, Volume 5, 1970, pp. 31-131

The painter J. Clerk accompanied Hutton on field trips and manufactured to drawings that were planned for the latter part of the Theory of the Earth, but only in 1978 were rediscovered.