{"collection":"earth","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/earth/toe/index.htm","path":"earth/toe/index.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/earth/toe/index.htm","text":"James Hutton (1726-1797) is considered the father of modern geology.\nAlthough less well known than\nDarwin, Hutton's theory\nis one of the cornerstones of the modern rationalist view of the world.\nHutton was one of the first scientists to propose that the Earth\nis extremely old, much older than the few thousand years that\na literal reading of Genesis would indicate.\nThis caused a furour much like Darwin's Origin of Species when it was first\nreleased.\nLeonardo Da Vinci had privately speculated about this two centuries\nearlier in his notebooks,\nnoting the presence of marine fossils on the top of mountains,\nand estimating the huge amount of time it would take\nto carve out river valleys.\nBut Hutton was the first to reject the 'Neptunian' theory of his day\nwhich saw a universal deluge (presumably, the Noachian flood)\nas the source of geological formation.\nInstead he proposed a 'Vulcanian' theory, in which processes of\nheat from the earth's interior had built up continents and mountains\nover a long period of time.\nIn later times this became couched in terms of 'Catastrophism' versus\n'Gradualism,' with the gradualists eventually winning out.\nThis is why conventional geologists reject ideas such as\nAtlantis, Lemuria,\nor pole shifts out of hand, working from first principles.\nHowever, 21st century geologists have become less prickly about\nthe occasional catastrophic event, such as the Oregon Scablands, which\nwere formed when a glacial dam broke at the end of the ice ages.\nThe two texts provided here are his 1788 paper\nTheory of the Earth, read before the Royal Society\nof Edinburgh, and the two extant volumes of his 1795 book of the same name\nin which he not only elaborated his views but defended them against\nthe bitter criticism that had been leveled against him in the interim.\nAlthough his books, filled with long quotes in French,\nmake difficult reading, Hutton deserves\nto be better known as one of the makers of the modern view of the Earth.","title":"Theory of the Earth Index","type":"page"}