Join Professor Colin Campbell, Chief Executive, The James Hutton Institute while he traces James Hutton’s life and intellectual development.
James Hutton, physician, chemist, farmer and natural philosopher, is best known as the founder of modern geology that is the basis of the “Deep Time” of our Earth. Yet his contribution reaches far beyond the rocks of Siccar Point. In his Theory of the Earth, Theory of Rain, Elements of Agriculture and the Principles of Knowledge and Reason, Hutton articulated a profoundly modern vision of science: that nature operates through continuous, observable processes; that knowledge progresses gradually through evidence and reason; that truth is constantly hampered by error and uncertainty and that human understanding is refined through disciplined inquiry.
This online lecture traces Hutton’s life and intellectual development within the Scottish Enlightenment, examining how his ideas of systems and cyclical processes operated in diverse areas of human physiology, agricultural experimentation and field observation of rocks and geological strata to a coherent philosophy of nature. It explores how his concept of uniformitarianism reshaped our thinking of a “Dynamic Earth”, influenced Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, and James Lovelock and helped establish a worldview grounded in process, system, and deep time.
Speaker: Professor Colin D. Campbell, Chief Executive, The James Hutton Institute
Facilitator: Professor Eric Blair, Vice President, Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society
Free online webinar – book here
This webinar is hosted by The James Hutton Institute and The Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society.
An event in the Scottish Geology Festival 2026, organised by the Scottish Geology Trust.
