James Hutton changed the thinking of how our world was formed, so why is he barely recognised today?

I’m always amazed when so many figures of the Scottish enlightenment have such widespread recognition such as Adam Smith, Robert Burns and James Watt; that James Hutton, literally the man who is regarded as the person who changed the thinking of how our world was formed; is barely recognised and almost a peripheral figure amongst these other leading lights of their time.

James Hutton deserves more recognition. Picture: Wikicommons

This is in contrast to what his friends clearly thought of him and he was central to their company and held in the highest regard by these other great thinkers.

He was born in 1726 in Edinburgh and raised and educated in the capital during the period of the Enlightenment. Like many of his time from the merchant classes, he travelled further afield to extend his education and experience in England, The Netherlands and France.

He was at university in Edinburgh at age 14, and although he graduated as a medic and made useful insights into how blood circulated in the body, his passion turned out to be chemistry.

Ten years later, aged 24, he co-founded a company making sal ammoniac from the soot of Edinburgh’s chimneys which is used in dye making. After his travels he returned to Edinburgh and farmed in the Scottish Borders where he applied many of the agricultural improvements he had learned further afield.

He described agriculture as the “study of my life” and his observations of soil formation and erosion eventually led him to think of deeper forces and earth processes.

His most famous contribution was a Theory of Earth in which he correctly outlined the earth processes by which rocks are made, and how landscapes changed over time due to long slow processes which were fuelled by the heat in the middle of our planet.