James Hutton argued that the earth is shaped by slow, endless cycles of erosion, deposition and uplift driven by heat, but his own writing was notoriously obscure. His friend Playfair restated the theory plainly, answering the Neptunists who held that rocks and veins were deposited from water, and gathering evidence from granite, veins, rivers and mountains.
The book through which Hutton’s deep time reached the world, and later Charles Lyell. Download the free EPUB.