The reference to Hutton’s writing I got, in fact, from you, I believe. Downloaded it and printed it out so I could work my way through it. After reading Rudwick- and Gould before that- I was pleased to have the original words.

The Rudwick book referred to in the post is worth the effort, in spite of its heft. It’s a full two inches thick. But the chapters are short and, as the author suggests, you can get by with reading the Conclusions and looking at the illustrations. He is a paleontologist turned historian of science and has skills and access to resources that ordinary geologists don’t. He has some interesting slants on the interplay of science and religion, particularly the contrast between linear history (Judeo-Christian) vs the eternalist ideas of the Greeks.

Thanks for the comment.

Hutton’s Earth is quite foreign to today’s paradigm. His Earth, as he put it quite plainly, is a perpetual-motion machine for sustaining soil to support Man. The machine is so ingenious that it contains no sign of its creator. His great advance was to direct our attention to the way the machine works, and we’ve come a long way in understanding that.

I think Hutton was Newton’s ghost, as you say: both banished speculation about ultimate causes and purposes, and both laid down workable principles that underlie sound practice. Following his emphasis on studying geologic processes, we have succeeded in uncovering evidence of Earth’s creation. I’m not sure Hutton would like that, because he was a pious man who didn’t dodge the Bible like Darwin did. But probably he would have taken the mainstream viewpoint that Genesis is a figurative rather than literal account of the universe—that God is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose.

Now that we have discovered vestiges of the creation, geologists are Kelvinists again. Consider today’s news, a study purporting to date the formation of the Moon from the balance of hafnium and tungsten isotopes. Short-lived hafnium-182 was created in the supernova that kicked the solar system into being, then went extinct as surely as Kelvin’s cooling incandescent sun.