Arran and the first geologist
Jim Henderson rounds off his series on James Hutton, who came to Arran in 1787 and realised what the structure of its rocks implied.
James Hutton was one of the first men ever to grasp the idea of the earth as a living organism that is still in the process of slow change; there are people living today who still do not quite grasp this fact. But Hutton’s friends were quick to share the excitement of his revolutionary thinking. In 1788, the year after his visit to Arran, Hutton went in a boat with John Playfair and Sir James Hall to look at the cliff below St. Helens, where there was what Hutton called ‘a beautiful picture of this junction washed bare by the sea.’ James Hall himself became a geologist and geophysicist, and when Playfair saw what Hutton was showing him about the significance of the rock construction, he could hardly grasp it. He said later, ‘The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time.’
As the top picture shows, Hutton supposed that these rock beds had been formed horizontally in water. When he saw conglomerate covering them at altitudes that showed how far the water-level had receded (lower photo), he said, ‘We never should have dreamed of meeting with what we now perceived.’
We in turn can feel giddied by the brilliance of the men who were exchanging new ideas in the time that followed the Union in 1707. A visitor to the city at the time said that standing by the Cross of Edinburgh, in a few minutes he could take by the hand ‘Fifty men of learning who are geniuses in their particular field.’
Hutton’s friends were extraordinary, and formed what is now very accurately called ‘The Enlightenment’. The loose group of fresh thinkers met in Edinburgh frequently, at the Select Society or Poker Club, exchanging their ideas or debating fresh approaches to the academic principles of the day. It was the coming together of astonishing perceptions, when undreamed-of ideas came bursting forth like some new form of oxygen.
John Playfair, born in Angus in 1748, was a scientist, mathematician and philosopher. He had entered St Andrews University at the age of 14 and at the time of his friendship with Hutton was professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh University. He was already well known for devising an alternative postulate to Euclid’s work on geometry, and he published Hutton’s Illustration of the Theory of the Earth in 1802.
The founding father of the Enlightenment had been the philosopher Francis Hutcheson (1694 – 1746), who died when Hutton was 20. The students he taught at Glasgow University included Adam Smith and David Hume,and carried his creativity into the next generation. Hume was born in Edinburgh’s Lawnmarket in 1711, and went to Edinburgh University at the age of twelve. His concepts of political and religious philosophy are still fundamental to all thinking in the field, as is the work of Adam Smith, born in 1723 and recognised as the pioneer of political economics. His book called An inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, was of lasting influence.
Hutton’s friends were not all philosophers and economists. He saw the more hands-on skills of medicine and engineering as equally important and exciting. Joseph Black, born in France in 1728, became Professor of Medicine at Glasgow University, but also lectured in chemistry and physics. He identified latent heat and specific heat and discovered the presence of carbon dioxide. His close friend, James Watt, had been appointed as philosophical instrument maker for the Glasgow University – a post that provided financial support for his quest to improve steam engines. His idea of the condensing boiler improved the existing design so much that it facilitated the arrival of the industrial revolution.
painted by Sir Henry Raeburn.
