AUTHOR: Jack Repcheck
STARTED: August 31, 2014
FINISHED: September 15, 2014
PAGES: 247
GENRE: Non-Fiction
FIRST SENTENCE: Before there was science, there was the Bible.
SUMMARY: [From BN] There are three men whose life’s work helped free science from the
strait-jacket of religion. Two of the three—Nicolaus Copernicus and
Charles Darwin—are widely heralded for their breakthroughs. The third,
James Hutton, is comparatively unknown, yet he profoundly changed our
understanding of the earth, its age, and its dynamic forces. A Scottish gentleman farmer,
Hutton’s observations on his small tract of land led him to a theory
that directly contradicted biblical claims that the Earth was only 6,000
years old. This expertly crafted narrative tells the story not only of
Hutton, but also of Scotland and the Scottish Enlightenment, including
many of the greatest thinkers of the age, such as David Hume and Adam
Smith.
THOUGHTS: This book was surprisingly readable. The Man Who Found Time is the biography of James Hutton, a forward-thinker who pushed science past the boundaries of biblical time. This could have been very dry text, but it read like fiction. I love it when that happens. I learned quite a bit about how the study of the earth progressed, and how other thinkers began to build on Hutton's work. My main criticism of this book is that it spends so much time talking about things other than Hutton. The book is readable because it goes into the history of Scotland, earth studies, and scientific reasoning... but Hutton doesn't really come along until almost half-way through the text. That felt odd to me.
RATING:6/10 [Good]
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