James Hutton’s recognition of the geologic cycle
In the late 1780s the Scottish scientist James Hutton launched an attack on much of the geologic dogma that had its basis in either Werner’s Neptunist approach or its corollary that the prevailing configuration of the Earth’s surface is largely the result of past catastrophic events which have no modern counterparts. Perhaps the quintessential spokesman for the application of the scientific method in solving problems presented in the complex world of natural history, Hutton took issue with the catastrophist and Neptunist approach to interpreting rock histories and instead used deductive reasoning to explain what he saw. By Hutton’s account, the Earth could not be viewed as a simple, static world not currently undergoing change. Ample evidence from Hutton’s Scotland provided the key to unraveling the often thought but still rarely stated premise that events occurring today at the Earth’s surface—namely erosion, transportation and deposition of sediments, and volcanism—seem to have their counterparts preserved in the rocks. The rocks of the Scottish coast and the area around Edinburgh proved the catalyst for his argument that the Earth is indeed a dynamic, ever-changing system, subject to a sequence of recurrent cycles of erosion and deposition and of subsidence and uplift. Hutton’s formulation of the principle of uniformitarianism, which holds that Earth processes occurring today had their counterparts in the ancient past, while not the first time that this general concept was articulated, was probably the most important geologic concept developed out of rational scientific thought of the 18th century. The publication of Hutton’s two-volume Theory of the Earth in 1795 firmly established him as one of the founders of modern geologic thought.
It was not easy for Hutton to popularize his ideas, however. The Theory of the Earth certainly did set the fundamental principles of geology on a firm basis, and several of Hutton’s colleagues, notably John Playfair with his Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802), attempted to counter the entrenched Wernerian influence of the time. Nonetheless, another 30 years were to pass before Neptunist and catastrophist views of Earth history were finally replaced by those grounded in a uniformitarian approach.
This gradual unseating of the Neptunist theory resulted from the accumulated evidence that increasingly called into question the applicability of Werner’s Universal and Partial formations in describing various rock successions. Clearly, not all assignable rock types would fit into Werner’s categories, either superpositionally in some local succession or as a unique occurrence at a given site. Also, it was becoming increasingly difficult to accept certain assertions of Werner that some rock types (e.g., basalt) are chemical precipitates from the primordial ocean. It was this latter observation that finally rendered the Neptunist theory unsustainable. Hutton observed that basaltic rocks exposed in the Salisbury Craigs, just on the outskirts of Edinburgh, seemed to have baked adjacent enclosing sediments lying both below and above the basalt. This simple observation indicated that the basalt was emplaced within the sedimentary succession while it was still sufficiently hot to have altered the sedimentary material. Clearly, basalt could not form in this way as a precipitate from the primordial ocean as Werner had claimed. Furthermore, the observations at Edinburgh indicated that the basalt intruded the sediments from below—in short, it came from the Earth’s interior, a process in clear conflict with Neptunist theory.
While explaining that basalt may be intrusive, the Salisbury Craigs observations did not fully satisfy the argument that some basalts are not intrusive. Perhaps the Neptunist approach had some validity? The resolution of this latter problem occurred at an area of recent volcanism in the Auvergne area of central France. Here, numerous cinder cones and fresh lava flows composed of basalt provided ample evidence that this rock type is the solidified remnant of material ejected from the Earth’s interior, not a precipitate from the primordial ocean.
Lyell’s promulgation of uniformitarianism
Hutton’s words were not lost on the entire scientific community. Charles Lyell, another Scottish geologist, was a principal proponent of Hutton’s approach, emphasizing gradual change by means of known geologic processes. In his own observations on rock and faunal successions, Lyell was able to demonstrate the validity of Hutton’s doctrine of uniformitarianism and its importance as one of the fundamental philosophies of the geologic sciences. Lyell, however, imposed some conditions on uniformitarianism that perhaps had not been intended by Hutton: he took a literal approach to interpreting the principle of uniformity in nature by assuming that all past events must have conformed to controls exerted by processes that behaved in the same manner as those processes behave today. No accommodation was made for past conditions that do not have modern counterparts. In short, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and other violent geologic events may indeed have occurred earlier in Earth history but no more frequently nor with greater intensity than today; accordingly, the surface features of the Earth are altered very gradually by a series of small changes rather than by occasional cataclysmic phenomena.
Lyell’s contribution enabled the doctrine of uniformitarianism to finally hold sway, even though it did impose for the time being a somewhat limiting condition on the uniformity principle. This, along with the increased recognition of the utility of fossils in interpreting rock successions, made it possible to begin addressing the question of the meaning of time in Earth history.