Born to rock: Pioneering geologist James Hutton hailed before anniversary

Scotland’s first rock star James Hutton broke new ground in the 18th Century with his pioneering work in geology but his thirst for knowledge and discovery ranged far further, from Scotland’s hills to its rain clouds and around the world.

Yet, despite being one of history’s most significant Scots, few today would recognise his portrait. Supporters are determined to change that before the tercentenary of his birth in 2026.

Hutton, who is regarded as The Father of Geology, is better known in the US than in his homeland, with American high schools often teaching their students about the advancements made during the Scottish Enlightenment, while Scottish high schools do not.

His work was truly revolutionary across a variety of scientific disciplines, and he was the original thinker still shaping our knowledge today. Professor Colin Campbell is the chief executive of The James Hutton Institute, an agricultural and land research institute named in Hutton’s honour. He spoke to The Post about how far-reaching, and ranging, Hutton’s work was. “He was a bit of a polymath,” said Campbell. “He invented new chemical processes made of chimney soot that made him financially independent and gave him the freedom to think and study many different things.

“I love that he was a Scotsman and came up with the first theory of rain in 1788. He studied climate and meteorology. He did some of the first calculations of what hillwalkers would recognise as the lapse rate, which is the change of temperature when you climb a hill. He climbed Arthur’s Seat and measured the temperature at the bottom, then at the top, then calculated the lapse rate. That is still used by climbers today to work out how much clothing they should bring on a climb.

He was also a pragmatic thinker, and was involved with the building of the Forth and Clyde Canal, and worked with industry to come up with new ways of building things, and he was interested in agriculture, owning farms in the Scottish Borders. Before Charles Darwin came up with the theory of evolution, Hutton identified the principle of natural selection.”

Yet it was as a geologist where Hutton made his most remarkable progress. Through over 30 years of study of the soil on his farms, and the huge rock formations he found while searching the width and breadth of the country, Hutton theorised that the world was not merely a few thousand years old, but instead older than anyone at the time could fully comprehend.

He is quoted as saying that he could “see no vestige of a beginning and no prospect of an end”. It was a full two centuries later that scientists were able to determine that the Earth was formed around 4,540,000,000 years ago. He is also noted for developing what has now become one of the cornerstone principles of geological study, in that “the present is key to the past”. This means by looking at how nature shapes the Earth today, like how a river smooths a rock and carries it downstream, we can use that information and look for similarities in other rocks to decipher how they were formed, and how they ended up where they are today.

Alan McKirdy is the author of James Hutton: The Founder of Modern Geology, which has recently released a new, revised and expanded edition outlining Hutton’s life and work. McKirdy explained how controversial Hutton’s geological arguments were at the time.

“It is important to understand the context of the time in which he was working. There was a German chap called Werner who said that everything on the face of the Earth was deposited during the biblical flood, and encouraged people to look no further than that. It was believed by many people that the biblical flood was the major geological event that shaped the face of the Earth.

Hutton was a believer in a Christian God, but he didn’t believe that what was written in Genesis in the Bible as literal truth. To say that things were very, very old, and that biblical time scales didn’t apply, was quite a dangerous thing to do. The church was very powerful and anything that questioned their teaching was looked on askance.”

Hutton lived during the height of the Scottish Enlightenment, and while he does not have the same level of name recognition as contemporaries such as economist Adam Smith, or the poet Robert Burns, each relied on each other to bolster and inspire their work and ideas. Without a community of fellow thinkers and philosophers to probe and debate their ideas with, the Scottish Enlightenment, and the advancements that came with it, might never have happened.

Professor Campbell said: “The Scottish Enlightenment was a really unique period of time when there was so many characters and individuals who were making a massive contribution in so many different areas, that it really stands out as a remarkable period of invention and intellectual development.

“People ask why did this happen in Edinburgh at that time. I don’t think I have an answer for that, but what I think was key is that all of these individuals used to meet each other on a regular basis, both socially and through deliberate action.

“It was during the Enlightenment that the Royal Society of Edinburgh was formed, and James Hutton was one of its founding members. That was a recognition that people should be talking to each other and challenging their ideas. It wasn’t just science and technology, it was also the arts and humanities.

“Some lines of Robert Burns’ poetry are attributed to his interacting with James Hutton and scientist James Watt. For example, in the poem A Red, Red Rose, he says, ‘Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; I will love thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run’.

“It has been suggested that that mixing and socialising seemed to be part of the reason why there was so much invention and creative thinking.”

Hutton’s work was preliminary, in that a lot of his work became the foundation that later scientists refined and perfected. Yet while a lot of his work could be thought of as ‘early demos’ for fully fledged scientific theory that came after his death, he was remarkably forward- thinking, and his ideas about the world seem contemporary and current.

Professor Campbell said: “He also postulated that the planet was a living system and that it would balance out, which is effectively the basis of the Gaia hypothesis that James Lovelock developed in the 1970s and was awarded Wollaston Medal in 2006, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London. It is a very contemporary idea in terms of climate change, that when things are imbalanced, they have to react. His work has stood the test of time – instead of finding his work dated, I tend to find more things in that are still relevant today.”

McKirdy believes that Hutton and the Enlightenment should be taught in Scottish schools, like it is in United States. He is passionate that Scottish young people should know more about what he believes is one of Scotland’s finest eras, especially as we approach the 300-year anniversary of Hutton’s birth in 2026.

He said: “Hutton is a fundamental and important person. When I was at school, we learned about Bonnie Prince Charlie twice.

“I only really learned about the Scottish Enlightenment when I was in my mid-40s, which is ridiculous. For 30 to 40 years, Scotland led the world in thinking and innovation for the first and only time. Every Scot should know about it.”