Revolutions in the Earth: James Hutton and the true age of the world by Stephen Baxter, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 拢16.99, ISBN 0297829750
The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the discovery of the Earth鈥檚 antiquity by Jack Repcheck, Perseus, $26/拢20.50, ISBN 073820692X Reviewed by Douglas Palmer
THE Scottish 18th-century natural philosopher James Hutton was a deist whose theology allowed his mind 鈥渢o grow giddy looking so far into the abyss of time鈥�. He saw evidence for the existence of a world millions and millions of years old, rather than the few thousand years constrained by literal interpretations of Old Testament creationism. For Hutton, an 鈥渁rgument may be established for the wisdom and benevolence to be perceived in nature which has system and economy鈥� in producing a 鈥渃ountry fertile and inhabited鈥�.
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He is one of the most posthumously influential but also elusive figures in the history of the earth sciences because his writings were so opaque. As with the English geological mapmaker William Smith, there was a lack of Hutton biographies. But now we have two, one by the English science writer Stephen Baxter, the other by American science editor Jack Repcheck.
As Repcheck points out, there are frustratingly few details about Hutton鈥檚 early life. Fortunately for biographers, Hutton lived in exciting times in Scottish history, witnessing the abortive 1745 rebellion, and knew many of the Edinburgh Enlightenment glitterati, such as the chemist Joseph Black and the engineer James Watt.
Both Baxter and Repcheck make the best of this background, with the result that both books provide readable introductions to the life, times and geology of James Hutton.