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In Defense of History

Revising the Revisions

James Hutton’s Reputation among Geologists in
the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

¸
By A.M. Celâl Sengör
Revising the Revisions

James Hutton’s Theory of the Earth,

first published in 1785, was considered James Hutton’s Reputation among Geologists in
completely new by his contemporaries, the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
different from anything that preceded it,
and widely discussed both in Hutton’s own By A.M. Celâl S ¸engör
country and abroad— from St. Peters burg
through Europe to New York. Yet a recent
trend among some historians of geology is
to characterize Hutton’s work as already be-
hind the times in the late eighteenth century
and remembered only because some later ge-
ologists found it convenient to represent it as a
precursor of the prevailing opinions of the day.
Painstakingly researched, richly referenced, and
full of interesting stories, this Memoir shatters
that line of thinking and restores Hutton’s stand-
ing as the father of modern geology, his ideas
fully relevant to the geological problems of his day.
MWR216, 150 p. + index, ISBN 9780813712161
list price $70.00 | member price $49.00

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