James Hutton, one of the great figures of Enlightenment Scotland, was born in Edinburgh on 3 June, 1726. Today we celebrate the birthday of the man who became known as the Father of Modern Geology with a poem by Ron Butlin from his collection The Magicians of Scotland.
But first a little scene setting. James Hutton was not a man to rush into the limelight. After forming a revolutionary new theory of the age of the Earth he was in no hurry to publish it. It was 25 years before Hutton presented his, then, controversial Theory of The Earth to the newly formed Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1785.
“He was in no haste,” his friend, the mathematician John Playfair observed, “For he was one of those who are much more delighted with the contemplation of truth than with the praise of having discovered it.”
The scientific establishment was not so delighted. Received wisdom even in the age of the Enlightenment held the Earth to be no more than six thousand years old, according to a literal interpretation of Biblical time.
Hutton, a farmer and naturalist, based his theory on the evidence he saw around him over many years; farming his land in the Borders, and on expeditions into the hills and around the cliffs of Scotland. In the Cairngorms, on Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, in Galloway, on the Isle of Arran – there he found layers of rock in formations created at different times by different forces which he believed must have taken millions, not thousands, of years.
“The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time,” said Playfair after contemplating the evidence on a trip with Hutton to Siccar Point in Berwickshire in June 1788. “We find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.” Hutton wrote later that year.
Back, now, to 21st Century Edinburgh. For Ron Butlin, poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer and opera librettist, enjoys playing with time, making mischief with chronology, taking flights of fancy over rooftops and mountainsides.
In his live performances, the former Makar of Edinburgh employs both words and music to blur the lines between fact and fantasy, past and present, science and art. Between poems of love and loss he weaves reflections on complex theories, probing starry heights and deep time, often with a deceptively light and humorous touch.
He is not afraid to conjure up the blacker arts of politics – see his treatment of Tony Blair – but he clearly delights in the imagined company of great scientists and James Hutton is one of them.
JAMES HUTTON LEARNS TO READ THE
HIEROGLYPHICS OF THE EARTH
Woken once too often by the rattle-clatter
of tumbril wheels on cobbles, the click . . . click . . .
click of distant knitting needles,
James Hutton decided never to go
to sleep again.
Then, by the light of several Edinburgh Council moons
(spares, in case the heavens were taken over
by the church), he tip-toed past storm-wrecked
Holyrood Abbey, went striding down
unimagined corridors,
through undreamt-of walls and doors where
Scottish Hope would one day
be cemented into place
(the bars across its parliament windows
wooden, just in case).
The Park . . . Salisbury Crags . . .
where several hundred million years ago,
the Earth had cracked itself wide open –
*
Detailed as a map of Man’s undiscovered self,
zigzag Time lies flat-packed,
for everyone to see . . .
Stacked magma, olivine, dolerite chilled to glass,
eternity crushed to lines of slowly
spelled-out hieroglyphics, and cut
in blood-red haematite.
. . . and Hutton sees it. He’s the first!
First to know he walks upon an ancient ocean floor
(God’s Flood, the merest puddle in all that vastness).
First to hear the stone-hard heartbeat pound-pound-
pounding out Existence.
Elsewhere, Revolution has taken to the streets
with an accusation and a scream,
a guillotine-swish . . .
French clocks run backwards to Year One.
Sunday 23rd October 4,004 BC?
All in the blink of a biblical eye! says Hutton.
*
Meanwhile, you and I continue turning
on our axis to the tick . . .
tick . . . tick of Time that never
started Once upon a . . .
And will surely never, ever –
Ah, these strata, these infinities glimpsed between!
The Magicians of Scotland is published by Birlinn and available in paperback and ebook.
Featured image: James Hutton in the Enlighten event, Edinburgh City of Literature, 2012.
Kerry Willet says
And what I have seen in rocks under magnification is yet another challenge to a more recent assertion by men of science and that is , that humans did not evolve from apes. My record of rocks from Mts., deserts,fields and rivers has shown me that humans have evolved from beings one can see in photographs sent by the Hubble satellite , light years away, beings made of gases, dust, and metals.