James Hutton quotes
James Hutton was a Scottish geologist who is often called the "father of modern geology." His groundbreaking work established the concept of deep geological time and the theory of uniformitarianism. He transformed the way scientists understand Earth's history. Here are 10 of his quotes:
If an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart most from the best adapted constitution, will be most liable to perish, while, on the other hand, those organised bodies, which most approach to the best constitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race.
James Hutton
In a letter to Sir John Hall, he says that he was become very fond of studying the surface of the earth, and was looking with anxious curiosity into every pit, or ditch, or bed of a river that fell in his way; "and that if he did not always avoid the fate of Thales, his misfortune was certainly not owing to the same cause." This letter is from Yarmouth; it has no date, but it is plain from circumstances that it must have been written in 1753.
James Hutton
From the date... when he was yet a very young man, and making excursions on foot through the different counties of England, till that which we are now arrived at, a period of about thirty years, he had never ceased to study the natural history of the globe, with a view of ascertaining the changes that have taken place on its surface, and of discovering the causes by which they have been produced.
James Hutton
The object of Dr Hutton was not, like that of most other theorists, to explain the first origin of things. He was too well skilled in the rules of sound philosophy for such an attempt; and he accordingly confined his speculations to those changes which terrestrial bodies have undergone since the establishment of the present order, in as far as distinct marks of such changes are now to be discovered.
James Hutton
The third general fact on which this theory is founded, is, that the stratified rocks, instead of being either horizontal, or nearly so, as they no doubt were originally, are now found possessing all degrees of elevation, and some of them even perpendicular to the horizon; to which we must add, that those strata which were once at the bottom of the sea are now raised up, many of them several thousand feet above its surface. ...This force, which has burst in pieces the solid pavement on which the ocean rests, and has raised up rocks from the bottom of the sea, into mountains... exceeds any which we see actually exerted, but seems to come nearer to the cause of the volcano or the earthquake than to any other, of which the effects are directly observed. The immense disturbance, therefore, of the strata, is in this theory ascribed to heat acting with an expansive power, and elevating those rocks which it had before consolidated.
James Hutton
The world... might have had still a long time to wait for the appearance of his dissertation, had it not been for the interest he took in the foundation of the Royal Society of Edinburgh... At one of the early meetings of this Society he communicated a concise account of his Theory of the Earth., which appeared in the first volume of the Transactions. This essay was afterwards expanded...
James Hutton