The Man Who Found Time : James Hutton and the Discovery of the Earth's Antiquity - Softcover

Jack Repcheck

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743450876 ISBN 13: 9780743450874

Publisher: Pocket Books, 2004

Synopsis

REPCHECK, J.: THE MAN WHO FOUND TIME. JAMES HUTTON AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE EARTH'S ANTIQUITY [PAPERBACK]. LONDON, 2004, vii 247 p. Encuadernacion original. Nuevo.

About this title

About the Author

Jack Repcheck is an acquiring editor at W. W. Norton, with a long career in publishing great works of science. He has an MA in Irish Social History and lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and five children. This is his first book.

From Publishers Weekly

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)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.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0743450876
• ISBN 13: 9780743450874
• Binding: Paperback