Ages in Chaos : James Hutton and the Discovery of Deep Time
- Book Review,
by Stephen Baxter
From Publishers Weekly
James Hutton (1726–1797) was the father of modern geology, but as Baxter reveals, fellow scientists in Enlightenment Scotland didn't take to his ideas right away. Although more than a century earlier James Ussher had famously propounded that the beginning of the world as 4004 B.C., by the 18th century, fossils and other geological evidence were undermining that proposition. Hutton's principle of uniformitarianism—which holds that if physical laws are viewed as consistent throughout time, present conditions must be the result of processes similar to those observable today—showed that the earth had to be much, much older than Ussher claimed. When he presented his theory to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1785, however, it met with sharp resistance because of the theory's radical nature and Hutton's failure to present experimental evidence. Only after admirers subtly repackaged Hutton's ideas did they became genuinely influential not just in geology but, indirectly, on Charles Darwin's concept of evolution. Baxter, best known for his science fiction (coauthor, Times' Eye, with Arthur C. Clarke), does a commendable job of contextualizing Hutton's career within the Enlightenment. Yet Hutton's struggle never quite develops any drama, and his nonscientific life remains largely a cipher, rendering the scientific lessons somewhat dry. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The Scotsman
"Baxter is [an] eloquent storyteller."-
Review
"Baxter is [an] eloquent storyteller."-
Book Description
"This book, then, is the story of how a farmer's son from Scotland learned to peer into the deepest abysses of time. It is a drama of personality, landscape and ideas, of an intellectual revolution that shaped our world--and of a man whose vision, rooted in antiquity yet tinged with modern philosophies, was not only ahead of his own time but speaks to our new century."--From the Foreword
In the eighteenth century, the received wisdom, following Bishop Ussher's careful biblical calculations, was that the Earth was just six thousand years old. James Hutton, a gentleman farmer with a passion for rocks, knew that could not be the case. Looking at the formation of irregular strata in the layers of the Earth he boldly deduced that a much longer span of time would be required for the landscape he saw to have evolved. In the lusty and turbulent world of Enlightenment Scotland, he set out to prove it.
He could not have achieved this without the help of his friends. Hutton's entourage in Edinburgh would turn out to be the leading thinkers of the age, including Erasmus Darwin, Adam Smith, James Watt, David Hume, and Joseph Black. But Hutton had his enemies, too. His geological theories would ignite profound religious debate and was condemned as "a wild and unnatural notion" that would lead to "skepticism, and at last to downright infidelity and atheism."
Ultimately, however, his revelation was one of the most extraordinary and essential moments in scientific history. Hutton's discovery of deep time changed our view of humanity's place in the universe forever.
Like Dava Sobel's bestselling Longitude, Ages In Chaos vividly captures a transcendent moment in the history of human accomplishment.
About the Author
Stephen Baxter is the award-winning author of many SF novels, including (with Arthur C. Clarke) Times Eye. His recent book, Evolution, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2003. He lives in England.
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