"Hutton published a landmark treatise, Theory of the Earth, in which he set forth the principle of uniformitarianism: the present is the key to the past. He proposed the same processes of erosion, weathering, uplift and sedimentation that are sculpting the land today have been at work throughout the eons. ...In Hutton's day, uniformitarianism was a refutation of theories that called upon catastrophic events like the biblical flood to explain the way the world looked. But even as these deux ex machina theories fell to the wayside, Hutton's ideas continued to hold sway..."
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Academics from ScotlandGeologists from ScotlandPhysicians from ScotlandBiologists from ScotlandBusinesspeople from Scotland
Original Language: English
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Shawna Vogel, Naked Earth: the New Geophysics (1995)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Hutton
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James Hutton
James Hutton (3 June 1726 – 26 March 1797) was a Scottish geologist, physician, chemical manufacturer, naturalist, and experimental agriculturalist. He originated the theory of uniformitarianism—a fundamental principle of geology—that explains the features of the Earth's crust by means of natural processes over geologic time. Hutton's work established geology as a science, and as a result he is referred to as the "Father of Modern Geology".
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