James Hutton and the Theory of the Earth.
2026 is the tercentenary of the birth of James Hutton, enlightenment polymath, agricultural improver and natural philosopher. He is best known for his Theory of the Earth, presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1785, a seminal contribution to geology, geomorphology and our understanding of the earth’s history. Hutton argued that there had been no act of ‘creation’, but that the earth was of immense age with ‘no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end’. The earth, he suggested, had been shaped by the geological processes that we can observe in operation in nature today, an understanding subsequently labelled ‘uniformitarianism’.
Hutton’s Theory had been in development over many years. When he had been a farmer at Slighhouses in Berwickshire Hutton watched, with frustration, the rain wash away soil from his fields, carried away to the sea by the river Tweed. He hypothesised that the material lost from the land was deposited on the seabed. Over time these deposits accumulated creating rock strata that were uplifted by enormous heat within the earth to form new land, which was then subject to the same process of erosion.
His Theory thus described a cycle of erosion, deposition and uplift that took place over an enormous period of time, meaning that the earth must be of immense age. Hutton found no evidence in the rocks of Scotland of any original act of creation, or of any likely end to the process. He believed that this system was the product of a beneficent God, but the age of the earth that his theory predicted contradicted any literal interpretation of the Mosaic account of creation. It also dismissed the calculations from biblical sources by Newton, Ussher and others, who estimated that the earth was about 6,000 years old.
The response of the Church of Scotland and its ministers
How did the Church of Scotland and its ministers respond to this apparently heretical challenge? The debates of the annual General Assembly of the Church are the obvious place to look for criticism or comment, but the formal record, the Acts of the Assembly from 1780 to 1800 are silent on the subject, and there is no mention of Hutton. Nor is Hutton mentioned in the unofficial and more gossipy record of the assemblies that appeared in The Scots Magazine.
If the Assembly was silent, what about individual ministers? Is there any evidence that they were upset by Hutton? By good fortune there is a very rich source of evidence from the years after the publication of the Theory that can throw light on ministers’ attitudes and concerns: the Statistical Account of Scotland.
The Statistical Account of Scotland
The Statistical Account of Scotland was a national exercise led by Sir John Sinclair, to compile information on the economic and social state of Scotland and its natural resources. It was compiled from written contributions by ministers from across Scotland between 1790 and 1797. These parish accounts were written in response to a request sent by Sinclair to parish ministers after the General Assembly of 1790. His letter to ministers was accompanied by a list of 160 questions, 60 of which related to the geography and natural history of the parish. Ministers initially responded with limited enthusiasm to the questionnaire but, following several reminders, cajoling and some pleading, Sinclair was successful by 1797 in compiling parish accounts for all parts of Scotland. The magnificent result, a publication in 21 volumes, the Statistical Account of Scotland, is now readily available online.[1]
The parish accounts provide an enormous amount of information about Scotland’s environment during the 1790s, a decade of rapid economic and environmental change. Agricultural transformation, the growth of coal mining and the development of new industries were all recorded by ministers, as were hundreds of descriptions of woodland, fauna and flora, landforms, river, coasts, and the minerals found in their parishes. The accounts demonstrate that most ministers were interested in the natural environment and its exploitation, and that some were expert. Specifically, the accounts also provide insights into the interests of ministers in mineralogy, geology, landscape formation and the history of the earth.
James Hutton appears only once in the accounts. In William Crawford’s account of Straiton in Ayrshire, he is mentioned in relation to an unusual lacustrine deposit:
On the margin of Loch Doon, there are beds of a very singular soft bluish substance, which, when taken up, and exposed to the sun and atmosphere, becomes white as any fuller’s earth, and acquires the consistency of chalk. It has been examined chemically by the celebrated Dr Hutton, who can give the fullest and best account to it.
There was no explicit criticism of the Theory of the Earth in the accounts nor was there any mention of earlier estimates of the age of the earth. There were, however, many references to rocks and to minerals. Minerals were of interest as part of the natural history of the parish but, of greater importance to many ministers, they were mentioned as a resource for agriculture or industry. Coal, lime and iron attracted particular attention. For example, in Dunfermline the minister noted that 80,000 to 90,000 tons of limestone were quarried annually, much of it to be manufactured into agricultural lime at the works at Charleston, consuming 12,000 tons of coal in the process.
Coal measures, fossils and landforms
Descriptions of coal mining also provide evidence that ministers were interested in the geology underlying their parishes. For example, John Paton, minister at Lasswade near Edinburgh, described how the coalfield appeared to be folded into a giant trough with seams dipping towards the centre on each side. Other ministers described the number and thickness of coal measures, some including sketches to show the arrangement of seams. Fossil remains were a source of fascination to some ministers. Foremost among these was David Ure, Assistant Minister at East Kilbride, who described and drew fossils he found at quarries in the parish. His groundbreaking work led subsequently to his being described as the ‘father of Scottish palaeontology’. Quarrying and coal mining thus provided ministers with insights into the structure and history of the earth beneath their feet.
Landforms and their creation also attracted ministers’ attention. At Bendochy in Angus, James Playfair described the ‘drums’ (drumlins) in Strathmore and attempted to explain their common orientation, forty years before drumlins were first described in geological literature. In the northwest highlands at Assynt, William MacKenzie discussed the origins of rock formations, believing that they might be igneous. His account suggests he was familiar with the contemporary debate between ‘vulcanists’ and ‘neptunists’ on the origin of rocks, and whether they were primarily igneous or sedimentary.
There was one minister who, without mentioning Hutton by name, wrote an account that was critical of elements of the Theory. Patrick Graham, at Aberfoyle, knew the mountains, rivers and lochs of his parish well. He accepted that rivers and burns eroded material from the mountains but, he argued, such materials never made it to the sea. Rather soil, gravel and other detritus were deposited in the lochs and lochans of the parish, where they created deltas and gradually filled the glens with small areas of flat land. Graham argued that rivers in the parish lacked the energy to erode and transport material to the sea. How, Graham argued, was the theory credible if the rivers in the parish could not even fill the lochs of the parish? The answer, we now know, was in the disruptive impact of glaciation, but neither the minister, nor Hutton, understood the power of ice to shape the landscape. What is important it is important to note is that Graham’s concerns were empirical, not theological.
The education of ministers in Scottish universities
These few examples represent a small sample of many hundred descriptions of the natural environment in the accounts. They point to the interest of ministers in a range of subjects, including the study of minerals, landforms and fossils. This interest was, in part, due to their education in Scottish universities. During the eighteenth century, the five Scottish universities were centres of enlightenment learning where science (both natural philosophy and natural history) was taught as part of the arts curriculum that was followed by aspiring ministers. Their teachers included John Walker, Professor of Natural History in Edinburgh, and Thomas Reid, Regent in King’s College Aberdeen and later Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, both of whom were Church of Scotland ministers and both of whom actively promoted the teaching of natural history and natural philosophy as part of the arts curriculum. Students were taught that the study of nature was both useful, not only in promoting agricultural ‘improvement’ and commercial development, but was also theologically important, as it revealed the glory of God’s creation. When ministers went from universities to take up positions in parishes across Scotland, they went out as agents of enlightenment thinking, with every encouragement to study and learn about the natural environment in their parishes. The hundreds of descriptions of the natural environment contained in the accounts reflect this enlightenment education. It also helps us to understand their lack of shock or horror in response to Hutton’s Theory.
James Hutton, John Playfair and Siccar Point
A final example may help to throw light on the response of ministers to Hutton’s Theory. In 1788 James Hutton took James Hall and John Playfair to Siccar Point on the coast of Berwickshire to show them rock formations that provided evidence supporting the Theory of the Earth. At Siccar Point they saw horizontal layers of old red sandstone lying ‘unconformably’ on vertical strata of greywacke. An ‘unconformity’ is a surface where two rock strata of different ages meet. At Siccar point the old red sandstone is from the Devonian period while the greywacke below is from the older Silurian period, separated in time by about 50 million years. Hutton explained how this formation had been created by the repeated cycles of uplift, erosion and deposition he explained in his Theory. Playfair responded to the sight with a memorable description: ‘The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time’. Playfair was Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh, and he was later Professor of Natural Philosophy, but he had also been a Church of Scotland minister. He went on to be the most important advocate of Hutton’s Theory, publishing Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth in 1802. His response to Hutton provides an insight into what some other ministers may have been thinking in the decade after 1785. They were quite possibly made giddy, but not shocked or dismayed by the immense age of the earth emerging from the study of geology.
July 2026
Adrian Shaw has recently completed a PhD on Science, Religion and the Environment in the Scottish Enlightenment at Glasgow University. He was previously Climate Change Officer at the Church of Scotland. Here he discusses one important finding in his research: the silence of the Church of Scotland and its ministers in response to the revolutionary Theory of the Earth of James Hutton.
The thesis is available to download at Glasgow University Library website: Science, religion and the environment in the old statistical account of Scotland – Enlighten Theses
[1] The Statistical Account of Scotland, along with the New Statistical Account of Scotland from the nineteenth century are available online at: https://stataccscot.ed.ac.uk/static/statacc/dist/home