I love rocks. There is no doubt about it. I love them more than most people, I would say. I’m always keeping an eye to the ground for that special one. I bring them into my home and place them, like treasures, on my shelves.
But when it comes to knowing about that rock? I have very little knowledge, and to be honest, not much interest. To say it flatly, I don’t care how the thing got there, I’m just happy that it did.
I can remember a trip to the Grand Canyon about ten years ago. We decided to take an all-day bus tour around the canyon and hear the ins and outs of things. Well. Our driver had a larger interest in geology than he did history. We heard about every rock layer, from Utah to Arizona and back again. The dates, the shifts, the bumps, the eruptions.
One has to really appreciate geology to appreciate geology.
However, that is not to say I am not amazed by it. The other night on 60 Minutes, we watched the volcanic eruptions currently happening in Iceland. I looked at Mary and said, “That’s coming out from the underneath of us.” It gave me chills to think about the inner core of Earth and how long things have been shifting, moving, and stirring down there.
All of this brings to this. Today is James Hutton’s birthday. He was a Scottish guy, born in Edinburgh on June 3, 1726. He was one of five children of Sarah Balfour and William Hutton.
His father, William, good old Bill, died when James was three. His career listed him as being a merchant and Edinburgh City Treasurer. However, he must have been a farmer because Hutton inherited a farm from his father. It was the Berwickshire farms of Slighhouses and had been in the family since 1713. When James was in his early 20s, he moved to Slighhouses and began making improvements on the farmland. He introduced farming practices that came from Britain. He also experimented with plant and animal husbandry.
This developed his interest in geology.
Eventually, he became so interested in the land and how it existed on his farm that he started forming notions and ideas, paths to finding answers.
Hutton is credited with establishing geology as a true science. He formulated, wrote, and presented his controversial ‘Theory of the Earth.’ James Hutton was the first person to suggest that the Earth is millions of years old.
His ‘Theory of the Earth’ must have been in our canyon driver’s library, I’ll tell you. Hutton had noted that features of the Earth’s surface must have formed through cycles of natural processes over time. He talked about how rocks on mountains may have been formed in the bottom of the sea and such.
This smart guy saw what no one else did. As plain as the rock in your field. The Earth, millions and millions of years old. His geological research contributed to the main principles of uniformitarianism.
From Webster:
uniformitarianism — the theory that changes in the Earth’s crust during geological history have resulted from the action of continuous and uniform processes. Often contrasted with noun catastrophism.
catastrophism — an event causing great and often sudden damage or suffering; a disaster
And there it is.
James Hutton studied this all his life. He was 59 years old when he presented his full theory of uniformitarianism at a meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
He then drove his wagon around, giving tours to people, telling them about the formations of rocks in the land all around them. A precursor to bus drivers in the Grand Canyon.
I’m joking.
However, this is true. You have to be patient with geologists. They all have their faults.
And. Geologists have a tendency of drinking too much. Eventually, though, they hit rock bottom.
Never mind that. Just be glad you are not a tectonic plate. Tectonic plates can’t maintain a relationship — there was too much friction between them.
Okay, okay. James Hutton. Thanks for the quartz and granite, big guy. He died, in 1797, from an illness resulting from stones in the bladder. Fitting, I’d say.
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“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
― Marcel Proust
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“Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
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“No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.”
― Isaac Newton
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It rocks. It all rocks.
