James Hutton
(1726-97), Geologist
Since the Dark Ages when Christianity became Scotland’s religion
it had been accepted without question that God had created the
world in seven days at some point in the past. Antiquated accounts
of Scottish history were related back to the Garden of Eden, and
nobles, such as Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, claimed they
could trace their ancestry back through 143 generations to Adam.
In the late 17th century, Christian theologians formed the belief,
based on precise calculations derived from their examination of
the Bible, that the date of world creation could be pinpointed
to 4004BC. That belief was never questioned until James Hutton,
a religious sceptic and geologist, examined the rocks of Scotland.
The secrets of time, he discovered, were not in written in books
but in the rocks. To a geologist a rock is a page of the Earth’s
autobiography with a story to unfold. Hutton demonstrated how
to read rocks and in so doing he revealed the significance of
‘deep time’.
At Siccar
Point, in Berwickshire, Hutton spotted a now famous unconformity
in the land, where different kinds of rock, volcanic and sedimentary,
overlay each other and tilt up. From this he deduced that the
geological processes that had created the Earth were very ancient
indeed and that the Earth had, ‘No vestige of a beginning,
no prospect of an end’.
According
to the Creationists, the creation of the Earth was a unique event,
but Hutton couldn’t believe that the laws of nature that
had shaped the Earth were different from the laws of nature that
apply today. For Hutton the same natural processes were at work
and did not rely on preternatural events. In a brilliant leap
of the imagination he recognised that, ‘Time is to nature
endless and as nothing’. Through his recognition of the possibility
of limitless time he suddenly saw how natural forces had shaped
the Earth’s surface, not over 6000 years but over millions
of
years.
Hutton believed, like other Enlightenment thinkers, that the findings
of science, and not tradition, should be the basis of the laws
of the universe: that any theory should be established by observation
and testing of hypotheses against the evidence. At Jedburgh he
found ample scientific evidence to prove his theories. The River
Jed had exposed a rock face which showed that the Borders had
once been part of the ocean bed, had then become dry land, then
ocean again, before finally becoming the land mass we know today.
More evidence
came at Glen Tilt in Perthshire, where he explored deposits of
granite and disproved his contemporaries’ theories that granite
had been formed in the singular creation of the world. Hutton
found granite deposited above other rocks laid down on an old
sea bed, therefore, he theorised, the creation of granite had
been a repeatable and not a singular process. It was his Eureka
moment. His guides thought he had struck gold, such was his excitement
at the discovery. Hutton
published the results of his studies in A Theory of the Earth
in 1785. His ideas form the basis of modern geology.
David Hume, Philosopher (1711-1776)
Born in Ninewells, Berwickshire, David Hume was one of the greatest
philosophers the world has ever known. At the age of only 28 he
returned from France with his groundbreaking philosophical work,
A Treatise on Human Nature, which was a bold attempt to introduce
scientific reasoning into moral subjects.
Hume was a
sceptic, a thinker who questioned everything, who sought to explain
the world without reference to a God. He aimed to create a ‘Science
of Man’, a new form of philosophy which took human nature
as its basis and which used scientific methods to reach its conclusions.
One of his principle areas of study was the human mind. Hume did
not set out to discover the original qualities or essence of the
human mind, as countless other philosophers had done, because
this type of philosophy was not based on human experience. For
Hume, experience was the boundary of knowledge, no one ‘can
go beyond experience, or establish any principles which are not
founded on that authority.’ Humanity was to become another
branch of science and in applying his new philosophy Hume reached
new and startling conclusions.
Three
of the most influential thinkers in European History emerged during
the Scottish Enlightenment - James Hutton, David Hume and Adam Smith.
