BBC Radio 4 – 19:15 Sunday 9th August – programme web page
For Radio 4’s Illuminated strand – the home of creative documentary making – award winning musician and writer Karine Polwart celebrates the tercentenary of James Hutton, the 18th century Scottish scientist, philosopher and farmer known as the Father of Geology.
With specially performed music, song and spoken word – in collaboration with pianist Dave Milligan and sound designer Pippa Murphy – Polwart explores one of Hutton’s most radical concepts: Deep Time.
Hutton’s hypothesis that the formation of the earth had taken unfathomably longer than contemporary Biblical understandings was bound up with his hands on experience of earth processes as an innovative farmer. When he and two companions stepped ashore from a boat trip to Siccar Point, a rugged promontory in the Scottish Borders in June 1788, what Hutton saw was horizontal layers of Old Red Sandstone overlaying tilted, vertical ribs of dark greywacke, laid down some 60 million years earlier. The immense gap in time between these rock types, a breach in the continuous geological record, is what geologists today call an unconformity. And it is evidence, as Hutton had theorised, of unfathomably long, slow processes of geologic change.
Recreating Hutton’s Siccar Point boat journey on foot for the programme, Karine is joined by geologist Dr Angus Miller, writer and Professor of Literature and the Environment at the University of Edinburgh, David Farrier and artist Ilana Halperin.
Angus explains the geological processes at play, offers insight into Hutton’s character and tells us also how Hutton’s theory was popularised after his death through the words of his boat trip companion, John Playfair: “The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time”.
For David Farrier, Hutton’s discoveries illuminate not only the deep past but pose ethical questions about the future. He wonders how our urban, industrial and technological debris might eventually manifest in rock strata, what our future ancestors might make of us and what responsibilities we have to generations as yet unborn.
Ilana Halperin shares a birthday with Iceland’s Eldfell volcano, which she visits at significant milestones throughout their lives. Her art explores the intersection of human and geological time, evoking deeply personal connections to rock. For Ilana, Hutton’s discoveries offer a radical reimagining of our relationship with the fabric of the planet.
Karine weaves these threads together with music and poetic spoken word, blending the events of Hutton’s Siccar Point visit with dizzying ideas about Deep Time and challenges around our responsibility to those still to come.
Written by Karine Polwart
Music by Karine Polwart, Dave Milligan & Pippa Murphy
Sound design by Pippa Murphy
Produced by Peter McManus
