Status Updates From Theory of the Earth

As I recall others had to step in and write their own accounts of Hutton's plutonist insights, and I can definitely see why. What a tedious, confusing, arrogant slog this book is. What a shortsighted idiot arguing with other shortsighted idiots. Fascinating how science, and geology specifically, somehow emerged from all this rot.

Gosh, this is a slog. I keep going because I really am curious what an 18th century perspective on geology could be, and so far it's pretty depressing. The slapdash generalizations and catastrophically arrogant arguments about the processes that formed various classes of rocks make great reminders of the need for intellectual humility.

Chapter 1 was intriguing, and I read it in 2021. Chapter 2 I finally returned to and finished slogging through; it's an incredible example of terrible science, in which Hutton convinces himself that hydrothermal alteration and even diagenesis do not exist; it's all "fusion" [melting or at least softening by heat] doncha know. I mean, it's obvious, look at the texture. Absolute proof of my point. Case closed. Yeeech.