The world is so complex, and the skills needed to apprehend it so varied, that even the greatest of intellects often needs a partner to supply an absent skill. As many of history's great lovers secured deputies to match physical appearance with the beauty of their poetry (the tragedy of Cyrano, among others), some scientists have needed a Boswell to present brilliant ideas in comprehensible form. James Hutton, whose Theory of the Earth (1795) marks the conventional discovery of deep time in British geological thought, might have occupied but a footnote to history if his unreadable treatise had not been epitomized by his friend, and brilliant prose stylist, John Playfair, in Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802).
In a familiar literary passage, Playfair described a great geological discovery that Hutton had showed him in 1788-not a thing so much as an interpretation. Hutton had recognized what we now call an unconformity as the most dramatic field evidence for time's vastness. Playfair described a phenomenon that Hutton would later depict in one of the few illustrations of his treatise, valued and reproduced ever since as a turning point in human knowledge. (It is, for example, the frontispiece both to this chapter-Figure 3. land to John McPhee's Basin and Range):
On us who saw these phenomena for the first time, the impression made will not easily be forgotten ... We often said to ourselves, What clearer evidence could we have had of the different formation of these rocks, and of the long interval which separated their formation, had we actually seen them emerging from the bosom of the deep ... Revolutions still more remote appeared in the distance of this extraordinary perspective. The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time.
An unconformity is a fossil surface of erosion, a gap in time separating two episodes in the formation of rocks. Unconformities are direct evidence that the history of our earth includes several cycles of deposition and uplift.
I still use Hutton's drawing in my introductory courses to illustrate a principle that continues to stun me with its elegance after twenty annual repetitions-the complex panorama of history that can be inferred from the simple geometry of horizontal above vertical, once you understand the basic rules for deposition of strata. I can list a dozen distinct events that must have occurred to produce this geometry, with Hutton's unconformity as the key
Since large expanses of water-laid strata must be deposited flat (or nearly so), the underlying vertical sequence arose at right angles to its current orientation. These strata were then broken, uplifted, and tilted to vertical in forming land above the ocean's surface. The land eroded, producing the uneven horizontal surface of the unconformity itself. Eventually, the seas rose again (or the land foundered) and waves further planed the old surface, producing a "pudding stone" of pebbles made from the vertical strata. Under the sea again, horizontal strata formed as products of the second cycle. Another period of uplift then raised these rocks above the sea once more, this time not breaking or tilting the strata. (Hutton reminds us that we must infer a second episode of uplift by drawing a meeting of phaeton and solitary horseman above the horizontal set of originally marine strata.) Thus, we see in this simple geometry of horizontal above vertical two great cycles of sedimentation with two episodes of uplift, the first tumultuous, the second more gentle.
Students have no trouble grasping this extended inference, and they do appreciate the point. Harder to convey is the revolutionary concept embedded in this inferred history, for Hutton's work helped to incorporate it among the commonplaces of modern thought. The revolution lies in a comparison with previous geological theories that included no mechanism for uplift and viewed the history of our planet as a short tale of uninterrupted erosion, as the mountains of an original topography foundered into the sea. This debate did not pit biblical idolatry against scientific thinking, as so often misportrayed, for as I noted in the last chapter, Steno's mechanical view shared with other seventeenth-century geologies the theme of continuous erosion as the organizing principle of history.
The pivot of debate was, instead and again, time's arrow and time's cycle. Hutton, I will argue, did not draw his fundamental inferences from more astute observations in the field, but by imposing upon the earth, a priori the most pure and rigid concept of time's cycle ever presented in geology-so rigid, in fact, that it required Playfair's recasting to gain acceptability. Playfair aided Hutton's victory by soft-pedaling the uncompromising and ultimately antihistorical view of his late and dear friend.
In any case, this picture, and the unconformity that it represents, gains its cardinal significance as the primary item of direct evidence for time's cycle and an ancient earth. One can present abundant theory (as Hutton did) for the role of heat in uplifting strata, but unconformities are palpable proof that the earth does not decline but once into ruin; instead, by following decay with uplift, time cycles the products of erosion in a series that shows, in Hutton's most famous words, "no vestige of a beginning,--no prospect of an end" (1788, 304).
James Hutton had the good fortune to live in one of those rare conjunctions of time and place which, in a world not overpopulated with genius, bring a critical mass together for common purposes.
I would trade all the advantages of humanity to be a fly on the wall when Franklin and Jefferson discussed liberty, Lenin and Trotsky revolution, Newton and Halley the shape of the universe, or when Darwin entertained Huxley and Lyell at Down. Hutton was wealthy enough to be a full-time intellectual when Edinburgh was the thinking capital of Europe, and when David Hume, Adam Smith, and James Watt graced its supper clubs. Hutton belonged to that extinct species of eighteenth-century thinker, the polymath who took all knowledge for his province and moved with erudition between philosophy and science (a distinction that Hutton's contemporaries did not recognize). Most of Hutton's general treatises remain unpublished, and we have little idea of the extent of his vision. But he devoted most attention to developing a theory of the earth as a physical object existing for a purpose. He therefore becomes, under modem taxonomies, a geologist-and by modern mythologies, the father of geology.
Hutton has achieved this paternity because an English tradition' has claimed him as the primary discoverer of deep time-and all geologists know in their bones that nothing else from our profession has ever mattered so much.
For a historian, Hutton's rambling style provides the virtue of redundancy. You can always tell what he regarded as important because he says it over and over again. Few themes so pervade the thousand pages of his Theory of the Earth as his wonder and conviction about time's vastness. This subject even extracted some beautifully crafted and memorable lines from a man renowned (unfairly, I think) as the all-time worst writer among great thinkers. Consider the two most famous statements:
Time, which measures every thing in our idea, and is often deficient to our schemes, is to nature endless and as nothing. (1788,215)
1. 1 speak of language, not nationality. I know that
Scotland isn't England, and don't wish to write British for a common
English-language tradition of interpretation.
And the ringing, final line of the 1788 treatise:
The role of deep time within the mechanics of Hutton's theory has been
discussed ably and often, and I shall give only the briefest outline here:
By recognizing the igneous character of many rocks previously viewed as
sediments (products of decay), Hutton incorporated a concept of repair into
geological history. If uplift can restore an eroded topography, then
geological processes set no limit upon time. Decay by waves and rivers can
be reversed, and land restored to its original height by forces of
elevation. Uplift may follow erosion in an unlimited cycle of making and
breaking.
Hutton describes the earth as a machine-a device of a particular kind.
Some machines wear out as their parts fall into irreversible disrepair. But
Hutton's world machine worked in a particular way that prevented any aging.
Something had to initiate the system (an issue beyond the bounds of
science, in Hutton's view), but once kicked into action, the machine could
never stop of its own accord, because each stage in its cycle directly
caused the next. As Playfair wrote: "The Author of nature has not given
laws to the universe, which like the institutions of men, carry in
themselves the elements of their own destruction. He has not permitted, in
his works, any symptom of infancy or of old age, any sign by which we may
estimate either their future or their past duration" (1802, 119).
Hutton's self-renewing world machine works on an endlessly repeating,
three-stage cycle. First, the earth's topography decays as rivers and waves
disaggregate rocks, forming soils on the continents and washing the
products of erosion into the oceans. Second, the comminuted bits of old
continents are deposited as horizontal strata in the ocean basins. As the
strata build up, their own weight generates sufficient heat and pressure to
mobilize the lower layers. Third, the heat of melting sediments and
intruding magmas causes
matter to expand "with amazing force" (1788, 266), producing extensive
uplift and generating new continents at the sites of old oceans (while the
eroded areas of old continents become new oceans).
Each stage automatically entails the next. The weight of accumulating
sediments generates enough heat to consolidate, and then to uplift, the
strata; the steep topography of uplift must then, perforce, erode as waves
and rivers do their work. Time's cycle rules the world machine of erosion,
deposition, consolidation, and uplift; continents and oceans change places
in a slow choreography that can never end, or even age, so long as higher
powers maintain the current order of nature's laws. Deep time becomes a
simple deduction from the operation of the world machine.
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If the succession of worlds is established
in the system of nature,
it is in vain to look for anything higher in the origin of the earth.
The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no
vestige of a beginning,-no prospect of an end.
(304)
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Charles Lyell's self-serving rewrite of geology's history (see Chapter 4) demanded a certain type of hero, and Hutton best fitted the requirements. Simple chauvinism decreed a British character, and Hutton prevailed (even though nearly half his Theory of the Earth presents long, untranslated quotations from French sources). Hutton was never considered a major figure by continental geologists. I don't think that he even had much influence upon the great flowering and professionalization of British geology following the founding of the Geological Society of London in 1807. For this first generation devoted its attention to the very kind of historical inquiry that Hutton eschewed (see the last section of this chapter). Hutton's paramountcy fulfilled a later need.
Lyell's construction of history portrayed the emergence of scientific geology as the victory of uniformitarianism over the previous torpor of fruitless speculation based on untestable catastrophes and other fanciful proposals that explained the past by causes no longer affecting the earth. Lyell's vision demanded a hero as empiricist--a man willing to do his patient dog work in the field, and to build
proper theories as inductions from observed phenomena. Hutton was pressed into service in one of the most flagrant mischaracterizations ever perpetrated by the heroic tradition in the history of science. Hutton came to embody the mystique of fieldwork against forces of reaction.
In this standard myth, Hutton discovered deep time because he formulated the cardinal principle of empirical geology and used it to draw two central conclusions from his fieldwork. We arc told that Hutton devised the principle of uniformitarianism, loosely translated in textbook catechism as "the present is the key to the past." Using this guide, Hutton then observed, first, that granite must be an intrusive rock, not a sediment (therefore a reflection of uplifting powers, not a product of decay); and, second, that unconformities provide direct evidence for multiple cycles of uplift and erosion. Hutton used these two crucial observations as the basis for inducing a cyclical theory of the world machine from field evidence.
The Huttonian legend did not begin right away. Lyell praised him highly enough, but more as a man who tried to extend Newton's program from space to time, than as a great empiricist (1830, 1, 61-63). In a private letter (in K. M. Lyell, 1881, 11, 48), Lyell commented that Hutton's system showed no great advance beyond Hooke or Steno.
The elevation of Hutton achieved its canonical form in the same work that classified Burnet among the villains and presented the empiricist myth in its most influential form-Sir Archibald Gelkie's The Founders of Geology (1897). Geikic's Hutton is a paragon of objectivity, a cardboard ideal. "In the whole of Hutton's doctrine, he vigorously guarded himself against the admission of any principle which could not be founded on observation. He made no assumptions. Every step in his deductions was based upon actual fact, and the facts were so arranged as to yield naturally and inevitably the conclusions which he drew from them" (1905 ed., 314-315). Bowing to the primal mystique of geology, Geikie identified the source of these rigorous observations in fieldwork: "He went far afield in
search of facts ... He made journeys into different parts of Scotland ... He extended his excursions likewise into England and Wales. For about 30 years, he never ceased to study the natural history of the globe" (1905, 288). Geikie then labeled the theory of his fellow Scotsman as "a coherent system by which the earth became, as it were, her own interpreter" (1905, 305).
Geikie's mythical Hutton has been firmly entrenched in geological textbooks ever since. Our students are still introduced to him as the first real empiricist in geology and, as such, the founder of our science: "The first to break formally with religion-shrouded tradition was James Hutton," proclaims the CRM textbook Geology Today (1973). Leet and Judson (1971, 2), for many years the best selling of all texts, stated baldly: "Modern geology was born in 1785 when James Hutton . . . formulated the principle that the same physical processes that are operating in the present also operated in the past." Using a scatological metaphor from the labors of Hercules, Marvin (1973, 35) wrote: "He made it his task to clear the geological Augean Stables of the encrusted catastrophist doctrine of over one thousand years."
Following Geikie's lead, the texts then identify Hutton's great insight with his fieldwork. Bradley (1928, 364) wrote: "Throughout Hutton's 'Theory' the inductive method of reasoning alone is used. He made the earth tell its own story." Seyfert and Sirkin, in another leading introductory text (1973, 6), attribute all Hutton's successes to his fieldwork, all his failures to his writing: "Even though Hutton's ideas were backed by careful field observations, his paper was written in such a difficult style that it was not widely read."
But the most forceful retelling of Hutton's myth transcends the one-liners of traditional texts. John McPhee, for worthy reasons of his own (a generally romantic view of nature, as I read him, and a commitment to preserve natural beauty in an age of unparalleled danger), has adopted Hutton to convey the mystique of fieldwork as both science and aesthetics. In Basin and Range (1980), McPhee explores the two great revolutions of geology--deep time and ceaseless motion (as embodied in plate tectonics). Since he followed
geologists in the field and lived the second revolution, he has rendered plate tectonics with acute perception (and beautiful prose). But as he relied upon standard histories for the first revolution, he has given the Huttonian myth its most literate retelling since Geikic's invention.
McPhee sets Hutton and his opponents as precursors of a modern tension in geology (a dichotomy with long tendrils, for it also evokes such basic contrasts as romantic and mechanical approaches, or holistic and analytic procedures)-the flashiness of complex laboratory equipment, often operated by people with strong mathematical skills but little knowledge of rocks, versus "old-fashioned" field observation. Abraham Gottlob Werner, Hutton's chief opponent in the debate about granite, becomes a prototype for the threat of soulless laboratories, with a boost from Geikie himself-
Some contemporary geologists discern in Werner the lineal antecedcnce of what has come to be known as black-box geologypeople in white coats spending summer days in basements watching million-dollar consoles that flash like northern lights-for Werner's "first sketch of a classification of rocks shows by its meagerness how slender at that time was his practical acquaintance with rocks in the field." The words are Sir Archibald Geikie's ... an accomplished geologist who seems to have dipped in ink the sharp end of his hammer. (94)
(I find this analogy particularly revealing because so inapt. Werner was a lecturer and mining engineer, not a lab man in an age that, in any case, boasted little in the way of fancy equipment. This false comparison can only record the desire of some geologists to equate what they don't like today with something scorned from the past.) Hutton, by contrast, fashions modern geology by observing nature patiently and directly. The cyclical theory of the world machine is slowly "discerned" (as McPhee writes) in the rocks:
Wherever he had been, he had found himself drawn to riverbeds and cutbanks, ditches and borrow pits, coastal outcrops and upland cliffs; and if he saw black shining cherts in the white
chalks of Norfolk, fossil clams in the Cheviot hills, he wondered why they were there. He had become preoccupied with the operations of the earth, and he was beginning to discern a gradual and repetitive process measured out in dynamic cycles. (95-96)
The traditional argument that Hutton induced his cyclical theory of the world machine from field observations, particularly on granite and unconformities, becomes even harder to understand when we recognize that Hutton's own record clearly belles his legend prima facie.
Simple chronology is evidence enough. Hutton presented his theory of the earth before the Royal Society of Edinburgh on March 7 and April 4, 1785, and published an abstract, describing the theory essentially in its final form, later that year. The first full version appeared in 1788, in volume 1 of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, followed in 1795 by the massive (and traditionally unreadable) two-volume Theory of the Earth with Proofs and Illustrations.
Hutton saw his first unconformity in 1787 at Loch Ranza, followed later that year by an example in the Tweed Basin, the subject for John Clerk of Eldin's drawing (Figure 3.1). In 1788, Hutton found his most famous unconformity at Siccar Point, took his friends to see it by boat, and inspired Playfair's awe at "the abyss of time."
When he presented his theory in 1785, Hutton had observed granite at only one uninformative location in the field. That summer, he visited several better sites, including the outcrop at Glen Tilt where he made the key observation (Figure 3.2) of granitic veins intruding the local schists as a thicket of fine fingers. (If granite were a sediment, it could not have forced its way into a thousand nooks and cracks of overlying schist. The granite, Hutton concluded, must have intruded in molten form from below. It must be
Thus, as G. L. Davies argued in his masterful dissection of the empiricist myth (1969), Hutton developed his theory in its final
form before he had ever seen an unconformity, and when he had observed granite in only one inconclusive outcrop.
We might still support a weaker version of the empiricist myth if Hutton himself had espoused the mystique of fieldwork, and had attempted later to hide the a priori character of his theory by fudging the derivative character of his crucial observations. At least the ideal would remain intact.
Even this version falls before Hutton's own candor. He presents his theory-with pride-as derived by reason from key premises that have no standing in modern science (see next section). He then discusses his observations as subsequent confirmations of these ideas. His statement about granite could not be clearer or more concise: "I just saw it, and no more, at Petershead and Aberdeen, but that was all the granite I had ever seen when I wrote my Theory of the Earth [1788 version]. I have, since that time, seen it in different places; because I went on purpose to examine it" (1795, 1, 214). As for unconformities, Hutton proclaims their derivative status in the chapter title for their discussion: "The theory confirmed from observations made on purpose to elucidate the subject" (1795, 1, 453).
In fact, Hutton's work suffered gravely in reputation when a strong empiricist tradition did arise within geology early in the nineteenth century. Hutton's near contemporaries ranked him among the antiquated system-builders of a speculative age. Cuvier granted Hutton but a paragraph in his preliminary discourse of 1812, listing him second among six recent system-builders. Cuvier presented these six men as superior to purely speculative predecessors in their devotion to natural causes, but still in the armchair tradition, and mutually incompatible because such an inadequate methodology cannot attain consensus.2
2. Cuvier's crisp epitome of Hutton's cyclic world machine
is worth repeating: "Les materiaux des montagnes sont sans cesse
dégradés et entrainés par les riviès, pour
aller an fond des mers se faire échauffer sous une énorme
pression, et former des couches clue la chalcur qui les durcit
relèvera un jour avec violence."
In 1817, Blackwood's Magazine echoed the new empirical
tradition and placed Hutton beyond the pale: "Had he studied nature, and
then theorized, his genius would in all probability, have illustrated many
difficult points; but it is obvious, from his own works, that he has
frequently reversed this order of proceeding." Davies's judgement (1969,
178) is harsh, but not, I think, exaggerated or misplaced: "Mistitled,
lacking in form, drowned in words, deficient in field evidence, and
shrouded in an overall obscurity ... many of those who knew of the theory
only through Hutton's expositions must have dismissed it as the worthless
and indigestible fantasy of a somewhat outdated arm-chair geologist."
Hutton, in short, never misrepresented his intent. He viewed the earth as
a body with a purpose. This purpose imposed requirements upon any rational
theory-"things which must necessarily be comprehended in the theory of the
earth, if we are to give stability to it as a world sustaining plants and
animals" (1795, 1, 281). Not only did Hutton deduce the necessity of a
restorative force (the basis of cyclicity); he also stated repeatedly that
his concept of a proper, purposeful universe would collapse if such a force
could not be discovered.
When we finally discard the empiricist myth that turned Hutton into his
opposite, we can properly seek the discovery of deep time in those a
priori concepts that Hutton viewed as the rational basis for his or
any theory of the earth. He did not find deep time or cyclicity in rocks.
We can understand the role of time's metaphors in Hutton's geology-the
"bottom line" of this chapter and book only when we direct our search
toward Hutton's systematic thinking rather than his field explorations.
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Hutton is nothing if not consistent in the cycling of repeated themes through his thousand pages of text. Among these reiterations, no
statement appears with more force or frequency than his insistence that any proper theory of the earth must explain its dual status as a mechanism maintained by physical processes, and as an object constructed for a definite purpose. The opening paragraph of his first treatise calls the earth "a machine of a peculiar construction by which it is adapted to a certain end" (1788, 209). In 1795, he continues to unite means (or mechanisms) with ends (or purposes): "The theory of the earth shall be considered as the philosophy or physical knowledge of this world, that is to say, a general view of the means by which the end or purpose is attained; nothing can be properly esteemed such a theory unless it lead, in some degree, to the forming of that general view of things" (1, 270).
By mechanism, Hutton understands the cycling world machine itself. For the purpose of this cycling, he advances an unswerving conviction that we might brand as crass hubris today, but that seemed self-evidently true in his age. The earth was constructed as a stable abode for life, in particular for human domination. Again uniting means and ends, Hutton speaks of "this mechanism of the globe, by which it is adapted to the purpose of being a habitable world" (1788, 211). Extending the argument to human life, he writes of "a world contrived in consummate wisdom for the growth and habitation of a great diversity of plants and animals; and a world peculiarly adapted to the purpose of man, who inhabits all its climates, who measures its extent, and determines its productions at his pleasure" (1788, 294-295).
No notion is more alien to modern science than Hutton's insistence-as a pivot of his entire system, not peripheral verbiage that physical objects have purposes shaped in human terms. Aristotle insisted that phenomena have at least four distinct kinds of causes-material for their substance, efficient for the pusher or builder, formal for the blueprint, and final for the purpose. A house, in the ancient parable, finds its material cause in stories or bricks, efficient in masons and carpenters, formal in architectural sketches
(which "make" nothing in any direct sense, but are surely a sine qua non of any particular design), and final in human desires, for the house would not be built unless someone wanted to live in it. We have, today, pretty much restricted our definition of cause to the pushers and shovers of efficient causation. We would still allow that houses can't be built without substances and plans, but we no longer refer to these material and formal aspects as causes. We have, however, explicitly abandoned the idea of final cause for inanimate objects-and this rejection ranks as, perhaps, the major change in scientific methodology between Hutton's time and ours. We cannot understand Hutton until we recover his concept of final cause as a centerpiece of explanation.
We still speak of final cause for objects built with evident goals by human consciousness. We also permit a vernacular meaning of purpose in describing the adaptations of organisms, though a marlin does not strive consciously for hydrodynamic efficiency. But we have rigidly abjured any idea of final cause for inanimate objects, and we judge nothing more amusing or antiquated than previous attributions of purpose made in human terms-the moon shines so that we do not stumble at night, or oranges grow in sections so that we may easily divide them. We smile at Aristotle when he proposes both an efficient and a final cause for earthquakes: "It thunders both because there must be a hissing and roaring as the [earth's internal] fire is extinguished, and also (as the Pythagoreans hold) to threaten the souls in Tartarus and make them fear" (Organon, Posterior Analytics, 94b, 1.34). Our laughter surely represents an inappropriate approach to history, but it does express the profundity of our change in attitude.
We cannot grasp the basis of Hutton's cyclical theory until we understand his commitment to final cause as a necessary ingredient of any explanation. In introducing his first treatise, Hutton says of the earth: "We perceive a fabric erected in wisdom, to obtain a purpose worthy of the power that is apparent in the production of
(1788, 209). He advocates as a general methodology, the simultaneous search for both efficient and final causes expressed in human terms:
Nothing can be admitted as a theory of the earth which does not, in a satisfactory manner, give the efficient causes for all these effects ... But this is not all. We live in a world where order every where prevails; and where final causes are as well known, at least, as those which are efficient. The muscles, for example, by which I move my fingers when I write are no more the efficient cause of that motion, than this motion is the final cause for which the muscles have been made. Thus, the circulation of the blood is the efficient cause of life; but, life is the final cause, not only for the circulation of the blood but for the revolution of the globe ... Therefore the explanation, which is given of the different phenomena of the earth, must be consistent with the actual constitution of this earth as a living world, that is, a world maintaining a system of living animals and plants. (1795, 11, 545-546)
Hutton presents his theory as the a priori solution to a problem in final causation, not as an induction from field evidence. We might choose to disregard Hutton's own insistent claim, and argue that no one could really base so much on what seems so nonsensical today. But the intellectual bankruptcy of such an attitude should be self-evident.
Hutton states explicitly, at the outset of his first treatise (1788, 214-215), and throughout all his writing, that his theory is an argument made a priori', and logically necessary to resolve a paradox in final cause. Why not take him at face value? We may call this problem the "paradox of the soil." Hutton had spent most of his early life, before retiring to intellectual circles in Edinburgh, as a committed and successful gentleman farmer, studying and using the latest methods of husbandry. He had thought long and hard about
soil, the substrate of agriculture, and all life. Soil must be rich and constant to fulfill the earth's final cause as an abode for life.
Soil, generated from eroding rocks, is a product of destructive forces: "For this great purpose of the world, the solid structure of this earth must be sacrificed; for, the fertility of our soil depends upon the loose and incoherent state of its materials" (1795, 11, 89). But if the destruction of land continue unabated, continents will eventually wash into the sea: "The heights of our land are thus levelled with the shores; our fertile plains are formed from the ruins of the mountains" (1788, 215). The process that sustains life will eventually destroy it: "The washing away of the matter of this earth into the sea would put a period to the existence of that system which forms the admirable constitution of this living world" (1795, 1, 550).
Efficient causes on a benevolent earth cannot undermine the final causes of stability for human life. Yet the soil undoubtedly arises by destruction. Hutton therefore argues that a restorative force must exist to rebuild the continents. Moreover, if the source of uplift can be rendered as a consequence of prior destruction, then our earth embodies the simplest and most harmonious of possible systems-not two independent forces of breaking and making locked in delicate balance, but a single cycle automatically sustaining a steady state of benevolence. If erosion not only makes soil but also deposits strata for continents of the next cycle, the paradox of the soil can be resolved with elegance: "But, if the origin of this earth is founded in the sea, the matter which is washed away from our land is only proceeding in the order of the system; and thus no change would be made in the general system of this world, although this particular earth, which we possess at present, should in the course of nature disappear" (1795, 1, 550).
Hutton could not have stated more clearly that he deduced the necessary existence of uplifting forces as a required solution to the paradox of the soil-a dilemma in final cause. Deep time, inherent in the resulting cyclicity, belongs to the logical structure of his a
Priori argument. In my favorite passage, Hutton tells us why final cause requires restoration and cyclicity:
This is the view in which we are now to examine the globe: to see if there be, in the constitution of this world, a reproductive operation by which a ruined constitution may be again repaired, and a duration or stability thus procured to the machine, considered as a world sustaining plants and animals.If no such reproductive power, or reforming operation, after due enquiry, is to be found in the constitution of this world, we should have reason to conclude, that the system of this earth has either been intentionally made imperfect, or has not been the work of infinite power and wisdom. (1788, 216)
The a priori character of cyclicity and deep time inheres just as strongly in Hutton's attitude toward mechanisms, or efficient causes. The earth requires a restorative force to fulfill its purpose as an abode for life, but how does uplift occur? I discussed the mechanics of Hutton's cycle earlier in this chapter, but what led him to a theory of this kind, or to a notion of self-sustaining cycling at all, since he didn't just see cycles in the field?
The sources of Hutton's world machine are complex, but one influence stands out in his writing. The light of Newton's triumph continued to shine brightly, and the union of other disciplines with the majesty of his vision remained a dream of science at its best. Hutton yearned to read time as Newton had reconstructed space. If the apparent messiness of complex history could be ordered as a stately cycle of strictly repeating events, then the making and unmaking of continents might become as lawlike as the revolution of planets.
Hutton's world machine is Newton's cosmos read as repeating order through time. The discovery of a restorative force, Hutton argues, fixes the analogy and guarantees time without limit to the earth under its current management of natural law: "When he finds that there are means wisely provided for the renovation of this necessarily decaying part, as well as that of every other, he then,
with pleasure, contemplates this manifestation of design, and thus connects the mineral system of this earth with that by which the heavenly bodies are made to move perpetually in their orbits" (1795, 1, 276). Hutton also invokes a cosmic analogy as a guarantee of deep time in the sentence just preceding his famous closing dictum, "no vestige of a beginning,-no prospect of an end": "For having, in the natural history of this earth, seen a succession of worlds, we may from this conclude that there is a system in nature; in like manner as, from seeing revolutions of the planets, it is concluded, that there is a system by which they arc intended to continue those revolutions" (1788, 304). Similarly, Playfair connects deep time with planetary motion:
The geological system of Dr Hutton resembles, in many respects, that which appears to preside over the heavenly motions ... In both, a provision is made for duration of unlimited extent, and the lapse of time has no effect to wear out or destroy a machine, constructed with so much wisdom. Where the movements are all so perfect, their beginning and end must be alike invisible. (1802, 440)
In summary, I have traced the a priori character of cyclicity and deep time in Hutton's thought by analyzing his views on the nature of final and efficient causes for the earth. For final cause, he resolved the paradox of the soil by insisting that uplift must restore topography eroded to permit life and agriculture. For efficient cause, he devised a world machine that arranged all historical complexity as a cycle of repeating events as regular as the revolution of planets in Newton's system. In both cases, deep time is the essential ingredient of unbounded cycles, established by logical necessity prior to confirmation in the field. In other words-and I may now summarize the entire chapter in a phrase-time's cycle forms the core of Hutton's vision for a rational theory of the earth. Hutton developed his theory by imposing upon the earth the most rigid and uncompromising version of time's cycle ever developed by a geologist.
We may appreciate Hutton's audacity, and his success in breaking the bonds of time by a strategy that exalted one central metaphor and excluded the other. Hutton's theory of the earth is time's cycle triumphant; but can his total rejection of time's arrow pass without rueful consequence?
If moments have no distinction, then they have no interest.
I propose this aphorism as a description of Hutton's paradox, or the problematical situation that pure versions of time's cycle impose upon history. We saw in Chapter 2 how Burnet insisted, so acutely, that any strict reading of time's cycle would rob him of his subject. I wish to argue that Hutton's approach implied such an attitude toward history, and that he at least had the gumption and consistency to follow his argument to its logical end, and thereby to deny history itself. Such a claim will appear, particularly to most geologists, as absurd. After all, Hutton discovered deep time, didn't he? How could the architect of a proper matrix for history then turn upon his own implication and deny it? Yet Hutton proceeded just this way-and we have lost the resulting paradox, both because we know Hutton from Playfair's different translation (a less rigid version that permitted history), and because we have not understood the centrality and power of time's cycle in Hutton's argument.
The paradox is both logical and psychological. As a bare minimum, history demands a sequence of distinctive events (other issues like directionality and rates of transition arc subjects of endless debate and fascination, but not sine quibus non). Under the metaphor of tune's cycle in its pure form, nothing can be distinctive because everything comes round again-and no event, by itself, can tell us where we are, for nothing anchors us to any particular point in time, but only (at most) to a particular stage of a repeating cycle.
The psychological argument is a simple matter of interest: why be concerned with the apparently distinctive details of any geological event if it possesses no individuality, but represents one of a potentially endless class? We discuss with relish the idlosvncrasies of Bill the cat, but who ever talks about Joe the silica tetrahedron?
The clearest evidence of Hutton's adherence to a rigid version of time's cycle lies in his explicit denials of history and his avoidance of all metaphors involving sequence and direction. Hutton tells us that the earth's cycles lead nowhere; he does not permit Burnet's resolution of cycles advancing as they turn-the model of a large disc rolling down a railroad track. The last cycle was no different from nature's current course, for it witnessed "an earth equally perfect with the present, and an earth equally productive of growing plants and living animals" (1788, 297). Change is a continuous backing and forthing, never a permanent alteration in any direction: "At all times there is a terraqueous globe, for the use of plants and animals-, at all times there is upon the surface of the earth dry land and moving water, although the particular shape and situation of those things fluctuate, and are not permanent as are the laws of nature" (1795, 1, 378-379).3
Most revealing are Hutton's methodological statements about the role of those quintessential data of history-sequences of events in time. He does not view them, in any sense, as components of narrative interesting in themselves, but only as data to use in establishing general theories of timeless systems. Again, making his favorite Newtonian analogy, Hutton writes:
In order to understand the system of the heavens, it is necessary to connect together periods of measured time, and the distinguished places of revolving bodies. It is thus that system may be observed, or wisdom, in the proper adapting of powers to an intention. In like manner, we cannot understand the system of
3. Note Hutton's choice of words-"fluctuate," with its
implication of motion back and forth about a constant average, not
"change," which might imply an element of directionality.
We saw in Chapter 2 how Burnet expressed his intricate melding of arrows
and cycles with a corresponding mix of metaphors appropriate for both.
Hutton's metaphors, by contrast, are striking in their exclusivity. He
invokes all the standard-bearers of balance and repetition in our culture,
and no symbols whatever for direction or progress. We have already explored
his primary comparison-a cycling earth with revolving planets of Newton's
cosmos. Hutton's ahistoric world is a dynamic balance of opposing forces,
not a passive stability, and his metaphors record the dynamic steady state
of his cycling system. Thus, planets stay in their orbits because a linear
force that would propel them ever farther away balances a gravitational
force that would pull them into the sun (1788, 212), just as the stability
of time's cycle balances destruction and renovation. Planetary motions also
establish a set of shorter cycles forming abundant material for metaphor:
days, seasons, and all the repetitions described by Hutton under a general
rubric of the earth's fundamental "economy," or balance: "With such wisdom
has nature ordered things in the economy of this world, that the
destruction of one continent is not brought about without the renovation of
the earth in the production of another" (1788, 294).
Most revealing are Hutton's uses of the human body in metaphor,
for our lives, unlike revolving planets, offer abundant material
for eitber arrow or cycle metaphors. Yet Hutton avoids
the obvious directional themes-growth, learning, development on
the one hand; decline, aging, and death on the other-so avidly
embraced by Burnet and other exponents of time's arrow. Instead,
he invokes only those aspects of life that maintain our bodies,
or our populations over generations, in steady state. The
circulation of our blood resembles the hydrologic cycle that
erodes continents (Hutton's own doctoral dissertation as a
medical student at Leiden, had treated the circulation of
blood): "All the surface of this earth is formed according to a
regular system of heights and hollows, hills
and valleys, rivulets and rivers, and these rivers return the waters of
the atmosphere into the general mass, in like manner as the blood,
returning to the heart, is conducted in the veins" (1795, 11, 533). But the
earth's renovation of its eroded topography recalls the processes of
growth, feeding, and healing that restore an animal's body: 'We are thus
led to see a circulation in the matter of this globe, as a system of
beautiful economy in the works of nature. This earth, like the body of an
animal, is wasted at the same time that it is repaired. It has a state of
growth and augmentation; it has another state, which is that of diminution
and decay" (1795, 11, 562).
Finally, these cycles of erosion and renovation proceed hand in hand,
just as human births balance deaths to maintain a stability of population
through the ages. Consider, as a summary of Hutton's metaphors, this
commingling of his two favorite sources, planets and bodies:
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the globe, without seeing that progress of
things which is
brought about in time. (1788, 296)
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Why refuse to see, in this constitution of
things, that wisdom of contrivance, that beautiful provision, which is so
evident, whether we look up into the great expanse of boundless space,
where luminous bodies without number are placed, and where, in all
probability, still more numerous bodies are perpetually moving and
illuminated for some great end; or whether we turn our prospect towards
ourselves, and see the exquisite mechanism and active powers of things,
growing from a state apparently of non-existence, decaying from their
state of natural perfection, and renovating their existence in a
succession of similar beings to which we see no end. (1795, 11,
468-469)
I have traced Hutton's direct and metaphorical statements disavowing any interest in history; I shall document shortly his peculiar treatment of history's primary data in geology (fossils and strata).
But what, beyond the obvious mechanics of cycling in his world machine, made Hutton so singularly uninterested in narrative?
Many great arguments in the history of human thought have a kind of relentless, intrinsic logic that grants them a universality transcending time or subject. In such cases, we can, with due respect to differences of age and culture, make comparisons that illuminate the generality of an argument by its very congruence through such different circumstances. Hutton's primary reason for denying history falls within an argument of this scope.
A quiet intellectual struggle has pervaded evolutionary biology ever since Darwin developed the theory of natural selection-a tension between optimal design and history. Some strict Darwinians have located the beauty of natural selection in its ability to produce optimal forms as adaptations-and they may wax lyrical about the aerodynamic perfection of a bird's wing, or the ideal camouflage of a butterfly mimicking a dead leaf. Others have viewed such panselectionism as a subtle perversion of the subject itself. Evolution is the conviction that organisms developed their current forms by an extended history of continual transformation, and that ties of genealogy bind all living things into one nexus. Panselectionism is a denial of history, for perfection covers the tracks of time. A perfect wing may have evolved to its current state, but it may have been created just as we find it. We simply cannot tell, if perfection be our only evidence. As Darwin himself understood so well, the primary proofs of evolution are oddities and imperfections that must record pathways of historical descent-the panda's thumb and the flamingo's smile (Gould, 1983, 1985) of my book titles (chosen to illustrate this paramount principle of history).
This principle of imperfection is a general argument for history, not a tool of evolutionary biologists alone. AN historical scientists use it, as Burnet did in likening a ruined earth to the destruction of Solomon's temple as comparable evidence for history in nonoptimal structures; as linguists must in detecting history when current usage does not match etymology (consider the bucolic basis of "broadcasting," sowing seed, or an "egregious" object as outside the flock, ex grege).
In reverse, then, perfection becomes an argument against history--a denial, at least, of its importance, sometimes of its very existence. The historical antecedents of any optimal state become irrelevant either because the system now stands in perfect, timeless balance or, in the stronger version, because different stages never existed, and wisdom made perfection from the start.
In this sense, Hutton's strongest argument against history flows necessarily from his passionate conviction about the perfection of his world machine-, no other theme so pervades his works, or so underlies his insistent comparison of earthly time with celestial machinery. How can a historical narrative of change be relevant to a perfectly working machine fulfilling its ordained purpose from its inception?
The basic components of narrative are, to Hutton, the very definitions of imperfection: the punctuation of time by peculiar and random large-scale events; and, particularly, a lack of cyclicity defined as any kind of directional change--for if things improve in time, then the world machine was not made perfect, and if they decline, then the earth is not perfect now. In comparing himself with Burnet and other exponents of geological history as decline from an original perfection, Hutton defends optimality as the greatest virtue of his world machine: "In discovering the nature and constitution of this earth ... there is no occasion for having recourse to any unnatural supposition of evil, to any destructive accident in nature, or to the agency of any preternatural cause, in explaining that which actually appears" (1788, 285).
It would be irrational, Hutton argues, to defend the optimal constancy of ecological balance between plants and animals (a proven fact in Hutton's view), and then to argue that their earthly substrate is wasting away to destruction: "To acknowledge the perfection of those systems of plants and animals perpetuating their species, and to suppose the system of this earth on which they must depend, to be imperfect, and in time to perish, would be to reason inconsistently or absurdly" (1795, 1, 285).
In a striking example of their differences, Hutton echoes Burnet's words (see page 42) in stating that people have a deep and un-
quenchable desire to understand sequences of events in time: "Man is not satisfied, like the brute, in seeing things which are; he seeks to know how things have been, and what they are to be" (1788, 286). We might almost think that Hutton is cranking up for a defense of history. But, whereas Burnet uses this preamble to glorify the intrinsic fascination of narrative, Hutton takes the opposite line dictated by his allegiance to time's cycle: we want to understand what happened in time only so that we may infer the cycling, timeless system of change, and thereby grasp the perfection of nature's works. Continuing directly from the last quotation: "It is with pleasure that he observes order and regularity in the works of nature, instead of being disgusted with disorder and confusion; and he is made happy from the appearance of wisdom and benevolence in the design, instead of being left to suspect in the Author of nature, any of that imperfection which he finds in himself
The classical data of historical geology are fossils and strata. Obviously, we cannot charge Hutton with inattention to principles that were codified after his death. In particular, Hutton's contemporaries had not resolved the issue of extinction and fossil sequences. Lamarck and others were still arguing that species could not die, and Cuvier's proof of extinction, with its guarantee that history might be calibrated by the distinctive life-spans of fossil groups, followed Hutton's death by a decade or more. But basic stratigraphic principles of superposition and correlation had been developed. Maps and sections, however rudimentary, were being published-though not by Hutton. A rude system of stratigraphic nomenclature had been developed to order events in time--the "primary" cores of mountains, the hard "secondary" strata deposited against them, and the still younger, loosely consolidated "tertiary" deposits (the last name still surviving, in more prestigious upper case, as a period of the Cenozoic Era).
Hutton used the data of fossils and strata as primary empirical supports for his system, but he never invoked them as signs of
history. Since we cannot attribute this failure entirely to ignorance of principles unknown in his day, Hutton's curiously limited use of these data does reflect his resolutely ahistorical perspective.
Hutton on fossils
Although paleontological data provided crucial information toward validating several parts of the world machine, we find in Hutton's writing not a shred of a suggestion that fossils might record a vector of historical change, or even distinctness of moments in time. Fossils, to Hutton, are immanent properties of time's cycle.
The encasing of marine fossils in continental strata Illustrates two essential parts of the world machine: first , their incorporation into hard strata proves that piles of sediment can be consolidated to rock by heat and pressure; second, their present status as parts of elevated continents demonstrates that consolidated sediments are then uplifted by restorative forces. "In all the regions of the globe, immense masses are found, which, though at present in the most solid state, appear to have been formed by the collection of the calcareous exuviae of marine animals" (1788, 219).
But how can we know that these marine sediments formed from eroded materials of continents in a former cycle? Here, Hutton invokes petrified wood and other plant fossils (1788, 290-292) as direct proof for vanished continents. In other words, both examples use fossils only as ecological signs in judging sources and places for deposition of sediments, not as historical evidence for distinctive changes in time. Hutton denies that any change at all has accompanied life's passage through time's cycle:
In order to be convinced of that truth, we have but to examine the strata of our earth, in which we find the remains of animals. In this examination, we not only discover every genus of animal which at present exists in the sea, but probably every species, and perhaps some species with which at present we arc not ac- quainted. There are, indeed, varieties in those species, compared with the present animals which we examine, but no greater varicties than may perhaps be found among the same species in the different quarters of the globe. (1788, 290)
The last sentence of this quotation is particularly revealing. Hutton argues that if we find, within fossil species, varieties unknown among living forms, these varieties are probably not distinctively ancient, but merely as yet undiscovered among living creatures. This choice between competing hypotheses, made by preference and without evidence, shows that alternatives to Hutton's belief in constancy were debated in his time-and that his denial of history is an active preference, not a simple citation of contemporary consensus.
In the one passage where Hutton dares not deny distinctive difference in time, he manages to bypass the subject completely, using another aspect of the tale to support time's cycle. Hutton does not argue that human life has pervaded time, but admits the scriptural tradition of recent origin. He simply acknowledges our late appearance in a sentence, then immediately moves on to extolling other fossils as indicators of deep time:
The Mosaic history places this beginning of man at no great distance; and there has not been found, in natural history, any document by which a high antiquity might be attributed to the human race. But this is not the case with regard to the inferior species of animals, particularly those which inhabit the ocean and its shores. We find in natural history monuments which prove that those animals had long existed. (1788, 217)
Hutton on strata Reading Hutton's chapter on unconformities (1795, 1, ch. 6) must be an unnerving experience for any geologist (though few have ever dipped into the original text). Hutton does everything that any good field geologist would do: he maps, he traces beds, he studies sequences in superposition. He talks about primary and secondary strata as older and younger, using their difference in time (and their separation by an unconformity) as evidence of process. He presents his descriptions as historical sequences. Writing, for
example, about lower and upper units separated by an unconformity: "Here we further learn, that the indurated and erected strata, after being broken and washed by the moving waters [during formation of the unconformity], had again been sunk below the sea, and had served as a bottom or basis on which to form a new structure of strata" (1795, 1, 449).
Yet Hutton's interpretations are decidedly peculiar, when judged against long traditions of field study from his own day through ours. These historical data are never cited as narrative. Through the thousand pages of Hutton's treatise, we find not a single sentence that treats the different ages and properties of strata as interesting in themselves-as markers of distinction for particular times. Never even the most basic statement that at some particular time, some definite environment led to the deposition of this kind of rock in that specific place. We learn instead that recognizable, temporally ordered strata affirm a general theory of time's cycle and the world machine: "By thus admitting a primary and secondary in the formation of our land, the present theory will be confirmed in all its parts. For, nothing but those vicissitudes, in which the old is worn and destroyed, and new land formed to supply its place, can explain that order which is to be perceived in all the works of nature" (1795, 1, 471-472).
The earlier treatise of 1788 is even more explicit in rejecting narrative. Hutton states that our gut-level interest in "the oldest" is undermined by time's cycle, for we recognize that the bottom of a stratigraphic pile is sediment derived from older continents, and so forth to a beginning without vestige:
We are now to take a very general view of nature, without descending into those particulars which so often occupy the speculations of naturalists, about the present state of things. We arc not at present to enter into any discussion with regard to what are the primary and secondary mountains of the earth; we are not to consider what is the first, and what the last, in those things which now are seen.(1788, 288)
Hutton and the methods of history
One cannot criticize a person for ignoring what he had no reason to consider. If Hutton had been a physicist who never worked with the data of history, my comments would be out of place. But Hutton not only used such data; he also showed deep understanding of methods for historical inference.
In studying Darwin, I have tried to show (Gould, 1982, 1986a) that the development of a general methodology for historical inference forms the coordinating theme for all his books. I have arrange d his methods as a sequence of different strategies in the face of decreasing information. As I read Hutton, and became more impressed by his subtle understanding of historical inquiry, I found that he used all Darwin's methods. The finest illustration of Hutton's actively ahistorical focus lies in his masterful understanding of how history may be inferred, followed by explicit rejection of the subject for itself, and the marshaling of its data to establish a general theory that makes history uninteresting.
Consider two examples. In best cases, we know the process that produced past events and can observe its operation today. We extrapolate current rates through time to see if continued operation can Yield the full extent of past phenomena. This is uniformitarlanism in its pure form. The major stumbling block for this method lies in a popular perception that change so slow is no change at all; but deep time provides a matrix that converts the imperceptible to the mightily efficient. Hutton uses this argument to maintain that slow erosion by streams and waves will destroy the continents (as Darwin argued that natural selection of tiny changes extrapolates to major trends in evolution, or that worms, working slowly and unnoticed beneath our feet, will in time shape the topography of England):
The object which I have in view, is to show, first, that the natural operations of the earth, continued in a sufficient space of time, would be adequate to the effects which we observe; and secondly, that it is necessary, in the system of the world, that these wasting operations of the land should be extremely slow. In that case, those different opinions would be reconciled in one which would
explain, at the same time, the apparent permanency of this surface on which we dwell, and the great changes that appear to have been already made. (1795, 11, 467-468)
But we often have no direct data rooted in modern, observable processes. In such cases, we must gather a multiplicity of past results and try to order them as reasonable stages in the operation of a single historical process (as Darwin did in arguing that fringing reefs, barrier reefs, and atolls represent three stages in the subsidence of island platforms). Hutton uses this method to interpret sequences of deposition and distortion of strata by uplift and tilting:
All those strata of various materials, although originally uniform in their structure and appearance as a collection of stratified materials, have acquired appearances which are often difficult to reconcile with that of their original, and is only to be understood by an examination of a series in those objects, or that gradation which is sometimes to be perceived from the one extreme state to the other, that is from their natural to their most changed state. (1795, 11, 51)
Hutton's one expression of history: a small irony If history be narrative moving somewhere through unique stages, then we cannot find history in Hutton's world machine. Only once in his entire treatise do we get a whiff of change as directional progress. This concept appears nowhere in his science (or even in his own words), but only in the flowery and obligatory puff of introductory praise to the monarch who served as titular head and sponsor of the Royal Society of Edinburgh-ironically, since he was America's tormentor so negatively described by Mr. Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, none other than George 111, a monarch who has distinguished his reign by the utility of his institutions for improving the elegant arts, as well as by the splendor and success of his undertakings to extend the knowledge of Nature" (from Bucclcugh's introduction to volume 1 of the Transactions, where Hutton's 1788 treatise appeared).
I designated as Borges's dilemma the incomprehensibility that true eternity imposes upon our understanding (see page 48). Hutton had to resolve this logical conundrum, since he believed so strongly that Newtonian science required a pure vision of time's cycle for the mechanics of earthly processes, and that no event could therefore gain distinction in history. Hutton avoided Borges's dilemma with a brilliant argument that doubled as incisive methodology about what science can and cannot do. He held that time's cycle governs the earth only while it operates under the regime of natural laws now in force. These laws prescribe the cycle of the world machine and therefore provide no insight about beginnings and ends. Logic demands both beginnings and ends, but ultimate origins lie outside the realm of science. Some higher power established the current regime of natural laws at an unknowable time in the distant past, and will terminate this reign at an undetermined moment in the future-but science cannot deal with such ultimates.
Thus, Hutton chose his most famous words with consummate care, though posterity has often misread him as an exponent of infinite time. We see "no vestige of a beginning"--but the earth had an inception now erased from geological evidence by the cycling of its products through so many subsequent worlds. We discern "no prospect of an end" because the current regime of natural law cannot undo our planet-but the earth will terminate, or change to a different status, when higher powers choose to abolish the current regime. With one stroke, Hutton both gained the benefit and avoided the dilemma of time's cycle in its pure form. He acquired the virtue (as he saw it) of a perfect, repeating system with no peculiarities of history to threaten the hegemony of a timeless set of causes; and he resolved Borges's dilemma by relegating beginnings and ends, the anchors that comprehension requires, to a realm outside science. As Playfair wrote in summary: "Thus he arrived at the new and sublime conclusion, which represents nature as having provided for a constant succession of land at the surface of the
earth, according to a plan having no natural termination, but calculated to endure as long as those beneficent purposes, for which the whole is destined, shall continue to exist" (1805, 56-57).
This long exegesis of time's cycle and its meaning for Hutton has left one essential question unanswered. If I am right, and the Hutton of our textbooks is the Hutton of history turned on his head, why have we read him so wrongly, and with such consistency in error? How could we have taken such a brilliant man, driven by such a powerful vision of time's cycle imposed upon the earth to solve a problem in final causality, and reconstructed him as a modern empiricist, a field geologist dedicated only to efficient causes? Geikie may have perpetrated this myth, but how did he get away with it? People arc not so stupid. Could they possibly have read Hutton, however blinded by expectation, and found Geikie's version within?
The answer must lie, in large part, with Hutton's legendary unreadability.4 By long tradition, and by simple unavailability, geologists do not read Hutton himself. Nineteenth-century Britain was blessed with a number of fine scientists who were also superb literary, stylists-Charles Lyell and T. H. Huxley in particular. But the best writer of all may have been John Playfair, professor of mathematics at Edinburgh, dedicated amateur geologist, and intimatc friend of Hutton. After Hutton's death, Playfair decided to rescue his friend's ideas from their poor presentation by publishing
4. 1 have never found Hutton nearly so obtuse or infelicitous
as tradition dictates. I will not defend the rambling thousand-page 1795
Theory with its endless quotations in French (one runs for forty-one
pages), but I find the 1788 version reasonably crisp and concise,
with occasional lines of literary brilliance. Still, the historical record
speaks for itself Lyell admitted that he had never managed to read it all.
Even Kirwan, Hutton's dogged, almost frantic critic (he opposed Hutton in
whole books), never read all of both volumes--for many pages of his
personal copy are uncut (see Davies, 1969).
a shorter volume describing the Huttonian theory in clearer form. We know
Hutton almost exclusively from Playfair's beautifiil and successful
exposition, Illustrations of the Huttontan Theory of the Earth (1802).
Tradition also dictates that Playfair simply translated his friend's
ideas without alteration-so that, in the Illustrations, we really do
read pure Hutton spruced up. In one sense, I do not deny this claim. The
essence of Hutton's system receives an accurate and sensitive description
in Playfair's writing. Time's cycle, in particular, appears in unvarnished
form, with appropriate Newtonian analogies and incisive comparisons. I
particularly treasure Playfair's contrast of Buffon's historical earth,
declining to destruction by loss of heat, with Hutton's timeless cycles.
Note Playfair's equation of time's cycle with rationality itself-
Yet, in another sense, I find a universe of difference between Hutton and
Playfair-a distinction that has been missed because Hutton has not been
understood as a theorist of time's cycle who denied history. These arc the
parts of Hutton's work that seem most unacceptable and archaic in the light
of geology's later tradi-
tions. And these arc the aspects of Hutton's thought that Playfair
either soft-pedals or presents in altered light. Playfair subtly "mod-
ernized" his friend, and helped to set the basis of Hutton's legend by
toning down his hostility to history.
in one important change, Playfair largely excises Hutton's commitment to
final cause. He does not deny his friend's obsession with a style of
science already becoming archaic. Playfair even acknowledges the primacy of
final cause in Hutton's system: "He would have been less flattered, by
being told of the ingenuity and originality of his theory) than of the
addition which it had made to our knowledge of final causes" (1802, 122).
But whereas final cause and purpose are relentless themes on every page of
Hutton's theoretical discussion, Playfair hardly mentions the subject. I
can find only two passages that discuss final cause explicitly (121-122 and
129), while hundreds of Playfair's pages recount the mechanics of Huttonian
cycles in a world of efficient causation.
But Playfair's most striking change is an alteration of sense, not
emphasis. In discussing field evidence, Playfair follows the primary
tradition of geology from its inception, and does not portray Hutton's
primary idiosyncrasy-his denial of history.5 Playfair covers the
same ground as Hutton, but his discussions of unconformities (for example)
express the traditional interest of geologists in history for itself,
whereas Hutton used historical events only to establish his cycling world
machine, never to record the slightest concern for unique happenings in
time.
Playfair discusses Hutton's unconformity (see Figure 3.1) as a sequence
of distinctive occurrences in time. He argues that the picture displays
evidence for three worlds in succession, and he discusses them from oldest
to youngest. He notes that the bottom strata contain sand and gravel from
the dissolution of a world still older-"the most ancient epocha, of which
any memorial exists in
5. This distinction seems to me vitally important, vCt I
believe that all commentators have missed it. This difference has not been
noted, I think, because Plavfair's descriptions in the historical mode seem
so obvious and "natural" that they have not been deemed odd or worthy of
note as potentially distinct from Hutton-all because Hutton's ahistorical
perspective has not been properly documented.
the records of the fossil kingdom" (123). Playfair clearly cares about old
for old's sake, and he notes with pleasure that continents wasted to
produce vertical strata below the unconformity represent a world "third in
succession" (123) back from our present earth.
Continuing the historical sequence, Playfair discusses vertical strata
below the unconformity and marvels at the vicissitudes of history. These
rocks were broken and raised, lowered to receive sediments above the
unconformity, then raised onto continents a second time-"so that they have
twice visited the superior and twice the inferior regions" (123). They also
represent the second world of this historical sequence. Playfair then moves
on to the horizontal strata above the unconformity-the third world-and
brings his narrative to the latest event of erosion, "the shaping of all
the present inequalities of the surface" (124). Whereas Hutton disdained to
record sequential events, Playfair orders all these stages into history. He
concludes: "These phenomena, then, arc all so many marks of the lapse of
time, among which the principles of geology enable us to distinguish a
certain order, so that we may know some of them to be more, and others to
be less distant" (124-125).
Playfair's historical descriptions seem so simple, so innocent, so
obvious. How could they mark a major departure? Yet you may read a thousand
pages of Hutton's Theory and never find a phrase written in this
mode. In short, Playfair won greater acceptability for Hutton by portraying
his field evidence in the traditional, historical style that Hutton himself
had consistent1v shunned. Even Hutton's Boswell could not follow his
friend's rigorously ahistorical tastes, a predilection so contrary to our
ordinary interest in the distinctive arrangement of things in time.
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Buffon represents the cooling of our planet,
and its loss of heat, as a process continually advancing, and which has
no limit, but the final extinction of life and motion over all the
surface, and through all the interior, of the earth. The death of nature
herself is the distant but gloomy object that terminates our view, and
reminds us of the wild fictions of the Scandinavian mythology, according
to which, annihilation is at last to extend its empire even to the gods.
This dismal and unphilosophic vision was unworthy of the genius of
Buffon, and wonderfully ill suited to the elegance and extent of his
understanding. It forms a complete contrast to the theory of Dr Hutton,
where nothing is to be seen beyond the continuation of the present order;
where no latent seed of evil threatens final destruction to the whole;
and where the movements are so perfect, that they can never terminate of
themselves. This is surely a view of the world more suited to the dignity
of Nature and the wisdom of its Author.
(485-486)
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Hutton "discovered" deep time by imposing his rigid view of time's cycle upon a complex earth. He did so, in part, to resolve a paradox in final cause-an issue that is no longer part of science. But his
other motivation echoes a theme of outstanding relevance today. Hutton did not grasp the power, worth, and distinction of history. He followed a model of science that exalted simple systems, subject to experiment and prediction, over narrative and its irreducible uniquenesses. In so doing, he followed a tradition of ordering the sciences by status-from the hard and more "experimental" (physics and chemistry) to the soft and more "descriptive" (natural history and systematics). Geology resides in the middle of this false continuum, and has often tried to win prestige by aping the procedures of sciences with higher status, and ignoring its own distinctive data of history. This problem, born of low self-esteem, continues to our day. Hutton pursued a chimerical view of rigor by deference to Newton, and hoped to assimilate time to Newton's models for space. Today, this deference may be expressed in a fetish for quan- tification that leads psychologists to conceive intelligence as a single, measurable thing in the head, or biologists to classify organisms by computer without judging the different historical value of characters (the marsupial pouch as more informative than body length).
Charles Lyell recognized the link between Hutton and Newton, but he also noted an unhappy comparison-the triumph of cosmology versus the limited success of Hutton's world machine. He attributed this unflattering difference to the relative paucity of geological evidence, implying that diligence in collecting data might close the gap: "Hutton labored to give fixed principles to geology, as Newton had succeeded in doing to astronomy; but in the former science too little progress had been made towards furnishing the necessary data to enable any philosopher, however great his genius, to realize so noble a project" (1830, 1, 61). 1 dedicate this book to a different view of this discrepancy: time's cycle cannot, in principle, encompass a complex history that bears irreducible signs of time's arrow. Hutton's rigidity is both a boon and a trap. It gave us deep time, but we lost history in the process. Any adequate account of the earth requires both.