THE MAN WHO FOUND TIME was highly recommended in recently published THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS.

Heading south on the North Sea along with two friends who would become his champions,
James Hutton found the shale and sandstone outcrop/unconformity at Siccar Point that would prove
his erosion-sedimentation-uplift theory.

His logic and reasoning took him to the next step of the origin and timeline of the earth,
with journeys to Arthur's Seat and Glen Tilt.

Not sure that readers need so much extra information on The Bonnie Prince and the history of The Church.

It may be enough to know that not much has changed in Church intelligence since Copernicus and Galileo.
Just a modern mental IInquisition.

More maps (Edinburgh!) and photos or drawings of geology formations would enhance the tale.
As well, the author offers great build-ups to the Eureka locations, yet delivery feels anti-climactic. ( )

Short and easy to read, but mainly demonstrates how little is actually known about Hutton. Gives nice digestible passages about the Scottish Enlightenment and scientific ideas of the time. Intriguing is that Hutton's grasp of geology came literally from hands-on engagement, namely his work with the soil of his own farm. My interest partly sparked by a visit to Siccar Point, which gets only a passing mention in the main text but the writer returns to it in a postscript where he tells of his field encounter with a herd of scary cows - they scared me too! ( )

This book was really interesting. It covered a person I had heard of before, but not directly. As this book states, James Hutton postulated that the Earth was actually older than the Bible would have us believe. Some other people came up with theories for that too, but they didn't have satisfactory evidence to back up their claims. So Dr. Hutton goes out and finds proof of all of his theories, but there are detractors of course. Most people were wedded to the idea of the Biblical creation for many years after Hutton died, but then Charles Lyell comes along and rediscovers Hutton's theory.

I thought the book was well written. It established the culture of the times, how Newton had been a believer in the Biblical Creation and the history of trying to count years from the bible. That in itself was really fascinating. I knew they could count off years that were given, but I didn't know the precise way it was done. It turns out that they tried to predict the Second Coming, and flubbed the numbers to make sure it happened after they were dead. So then finally someone came up with the precise date of Creation as being October 23, 4004 BC at Noon. This undoubtedly held back progress for years, but whatever.

Back to the book itself though. It covers the years that Hutton had lived and touches upon some of the years of the Scottish Enlightenment. It talks about the luminaries of those times and lists Hutton as someone deserving of as much praise as Galileo, Newton, and Copernicus. This is something that I can agree with in the sense that Hutton turned a preconceived notion on it's head, and demanded hard facts. ( )

Dr. James Hutton is now considered the "Father of Modern Geology" but this was not always the case. Scientists, up until relatively recently, had to contend with Mother Church and its interpretations of the age of the Earth based on the Bible. Hutton was no exception to this.

Repcheck is able to blend the life of Dr. James Hutton with the events around him in Scotland, England and the Continent into a fabulous story. By giving the reader a fantastic glimpse into eighteenth-century Edinburgh society, we can truly begin to understand the Scottish Enlightenment and its profound impact on the rest of the world.

As Repcheck points out, Dr. James Hutton is not a household name while Charles Lyell is when it comes to the history of geology. I have to admit that I had never heard of Hutton and I took a number of geology classes in university. Now that I have read this book, I have a greater appreciation for Lyell because some of his ideas derived from Hutton's theory.

If you have any general interest in sciences and their development in the seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, then this book can and will give you a great introduction to the Scottish Enlightenment and the works of this particular individual and the field of geology.

Happy Reading, ( )

This is an economical, but perfectly adequate biography of James Hutton and a sketch of his theories regarding the processes which shaped the face of the planet in prehistoric and historic times. Hutton's theories clearly overthrew the belief widely held in the late 1700's that the Earth was no more than several thousand years old, a figure based on Biblical references. This book is ideally combined with Simon Winchester's 'The Map that Changed the World', and perhaps something on Alfred Wegener, the man who first suggested the possibility of continental drift, and who was - like Hutton - ridiculed and largely ignored in his own lifetime. Repcheck appears to have hit exactly the right note here. Recommended. ( )