The Man Who Found Time

April 7, 2003
In this engaging account of scientific discovery, Repcheck (an acquiring editor at Norton) aims to elevate the little-known Scottish geologist James Hutton (1726–1797) into the lofty company of Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin, as one who wrested modern science from the "straight jacket of religious orthodoxy." Hutton, claims Repcheck, was the first to propose that the earth was shaped not by a cataclysmic Great Flood, but rather by "the inexorable forces of wind and rain, tides and storms, volcanoes and earthquakes" over a far longer period than the 6,000 years biblical scholars said was the planet's age. Repcheck frames his narrative around Hutton's theory, weaving together the many historical threads that led to this paradigm shift in the conception of geological history. There aren't many popular histories of science that can hop from a thousand years of Church doctrine about the age of the earth to the story of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Scottish rebellion of 1745 without missing a beat, but Repcheck's comfortable style and enthusiasm for his subject permeate his book. He does a fine job of laying out Hutton's theory in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment as well as its consequences for later thinkers (most notably Darwin). Repcheck's account should appeal to anyone who's curious about intellectual history, geologist or not. (June)FYI:We'll watch as Repcheck dukes it out with Alan Cutler, who claims, in his book
The Seashell on the Mountaintop (see p. 59), that his subject, Nicolaus Steno, discovered the science of geology and challenged the 6,000-year-old age of the earth.