Revolutions in the Earth

James Hutton and the True Age of the World

By: Stephen Baxter

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Paperback | 1 May 2004

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In 1650, the theologian and scholar Bishop James Ussher announced that the world was created on 23rd October 4004 BC. This date had been carefully calculated by adding together all the ages and reigns of the monarchs recorded in the Bible. In the late eighteenth century, James Hutton set out to prove him wrong.A gentleman farmer with legal and medical training, Hutton was fascinated by the natural landscape and in particular by rock formations. He was also surrounded by some of the most brilliant men of his day - Erasmus Darwin, Adam Smith, James Watt and David Hume. Looking at the irregular strata in the layers of the earth, Hutton deduced that the world must be much, much older than Ussher's prediction. His revelation was blasphemy - but it was also one of the most extraordinary defining moments in history, forming the framework for Darwin's theory of evolution, and shaping our modernview of the world and our place in it.

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According to Bishop James Ussher, writing in the middle of the 17th century, the Earth was created on Saturday 22 October, 4004 BC, at six in the evening. For over 100 years this date, based on Biblical timelines, sank into the public consciousness. It was so accepted that it was even printed in new editions of the Bible. The idea that the world might be considerably older gave both the Church and the Establishment serious problems. It questioned the very foundations of the Christian faith - namely the validity of the Bible as the literal Word of God. To suggest any other world view was to invite not just ridicule, but public outrage. But this is exactly what James Hutton did. Centuries before the birth of modern geology - a term unknown in Hutton's time - this untrained gentleman farmer recognized that the Earth's greatest secrets were written in the very rocks beneath our feet; they were, in effect 'God's library'. James Hutton was one of history's true polymaths. Trained as a doctor, his passions included philosophy, epistemology, agriculture and chemistry. But it was geology which was to earn him his own slice of immortality. Hutton was the first to recognize the importance of erosion, heat on rocks and the interconnection between the Earth's surface and underground forces. As an intellectual, Hutton's place amongst the super-charged elite of the Scottish Enlightenment was well deserved. But the Hutton that Stephen Baxter's biography presents to us is no dry, sober scientist. Lascivious, bawdy and fond of good living, Baxter's Hutton leaps from the pages and straight into our affections. An animated and entertaining read. (Kirkus UK)

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction History Regional & National History European History British & Irish History Earth Sciences, Geography, Environment, Planning Earth Sciences Geology & The Lithosphere Biographies & True Stories Biographies Science, Technology & Medicine Biographies Historical, Political and Military Biographies

Science Science in General Popular Science History of Science Historical Geology Archaeology

Prologue	p. 1
Deposition	p. 9
'They make a desert, and they call it peace'	p. 11
'The first day of the creation is deduced'	p. 17
'A mind formed for different pursuits'	p. 24
'Every man was a soldier'	p. 32
'The Earth's blood is the veins of its waters'	p. 40
'Upon this chaos rode the distressed ark'	p. 47
'The wandering infidelities of the heart'	p. 57
'A cursed country where one has to shape everything out of a block'	p. 65
'The Work of Infinite Power and Wisdom'	p. 74
Consolidation	p. 83
'Assemblies of good fellows'	p. 85
'The power of heat is unlimited'	p. 99
'Lord pity the arse that's clagged to a head that will hunt stones'	p. 108
'Britain derives nothing but loss from the dominion'	p. 118
'We have now got to the end of our reasoning'	p. 130
'The world was tired out with geological theories'	p. 146
'A wild and unnatural notion'	p. 162
'An abyss from which human reason recoils'	p. 170
'A passage from one condition of thought to another'	p. 177
Uplift	p. 187
'I could see the marks of his hammer'	p. 189
'It altered the tone of one's mind'	p. 204
'The bold outline traced with so masterly a hand'	p. 214
Epilogue	p. 222
Acknowledgements	p. 232
Further Reading	p. 233
Index	p. 238
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Revolutions in the Earth

James Hutton and the True Age of the World

Industry Reviews

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How to return your order

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