FAMOUS GEOLOGISTS/Hutton 205 Hutton’s Legacy We can see, therefore, that, for all Hutton’s success in looking into the ‘abyss of time’ and his successful predictions of granitic veins and unconformities, his theory had significant lacunae, and the physical explanation of expansion and uplift was not really integrated into his Theory of the Earth and attracted little or no following Expansion was the Achilles Heel of his theory, and the problem remained unsettled for generations In the end, expansion and elevation were simply assumed by Huttonian cyclists People eventually accepted Hutton’s cyclic theory, even though they could make little sense of the physical basis he envisaged But acceptance took time, and geological theory was racked with controversy until well into the 1820s The Professor of Natural History, Robert Jameson (1774–1854), gained control of geology teaching at Edinburgh, and even Hutton’s specimens, for many years So Huttonian theory tended to be eclipsed in Scotland for decades, despite the best efforts of Playfair and Hall, who, after Hutton’s death, conducted experiments that sought to simulate the consolidation of sediments, aided by heat, and to show that limestone heated in a sealed gun barrel could be converted into something like marble without loss of carbon dioxide In addition to having excellent ideas about weathering and erosion, the deposition and consolidation of sediments, rates of geological change, the immense age of the Earth, and arguments in favour of geological cycles supported by evidence of unconformities, Hutton clearly appreciated the fact that many valleys have been carved by the rivers that now flow in them Through second-hand knowledge of the Alps, he suggested that glaciers might have been much larger in the past than at present and could have deposited large blocks considerable distances from where the rock types are found in situ Thus it seems that he envisaged a former colder climate than at present (due to the mountains being higher and carrying more snow) and appreciated the enormous erosive powers of glaciers In 1802, Playfair published his Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, which set out Hutton’s doctrines in improved literary form Hutton had referred to the ideas of the Swiss geologist Horace Be´ ne´ dict de Saussure (1740–1799) about the transport of glacial debris by glaciers extended from the Alps to the Jura Mountains, and these ideas were given greater prominence by Playfair, who also wrote about the patterns of river drainage systems But neither Hutton nor Playfair had the idea of an Ice Age That came later, principally through the advocacy of Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) (see Famous Geologists: Agassiz) Another Scottish geologist, the influential Charles Lyell (1797–1875) (see Famous Geologists: Lyell), accepted many of Hutton’s ideas and made them almost paradigmatic, handing them on to another Scot, Archibald Geikie (1835–1924), who coined the methodological maxim: ‘the present is the key to the past’ But that principle was already well established by Hutton He used his knowledge of what he could see going on around him – on his farms and during his travels – to develop a theory about how the Earth operated as a system and how it might have been in the remote past But Hutton’s cycles were not identical There could be local variations from one phase to the next The Earth had a history, while operating in a law-like manner, so as to be in a steady-state when viewed on a grand scale We can also credit Hutton with advancing the concept known today as ‘deep time’ – and for doing so by geological reasoning See Also Famous Geologists: Agassiz; Lyell History of Geology Up To 1780 History of Geology From 1780 To 1835 Igneous Rocks: Granite Unconformities Weathering Further Reading Baxter S (2003) Revolutions in the Earth: James Hutton and the True Age of the World London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson Dean DR (1992) James Hutton and the History of Geology Ithaca: Cornell University Press Donovan A (1978) James Hutton, Joseph Black and the chemical theory of heat Ambix 25: 176 190 Gerstner PA (1968) James Hutton’s theory of the Earth and his theory of matter Isis 59: 26 31 Gerstner PA (1971) The reaction to James Hutton’s use of heat as a geological agent British Journal for the History of Science 5: 353 362 Hutton J (1788) Theory of the Earth; or an investigation of the laws observable in the composition, dissolution, and restoration of land upon the globe Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1: 209 304 Hutton J (1795) Theory of the Earth, with Proofs and Illus trations London: Edinburgh: William Creech; London: Cadell, Junior, and Davies (republished in facsimile 1972) Hutton J (1899) Theory of the Earth .Vol III Edited by Sir Archibald Geikie, p 235 London: Geological Society Hutton J (1997) James Hutton in the Field and in the Study edited by Dennis R Dean: 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) New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, Delmar