James discovered that our planet is older than people believed it was. He gathered evidence with his own eyes instead of what everyone knows. Before his work it was accepted in the West that the earth was around 6000 years old. Hutton devised uniformitarianism which says that the same natural processes we see operating today are ones that have always operated, and that these everyday processes have shaped our world. Theories that require a massive amount of work such as evolution by natural selection and continental drift wouldn’t have been credible without Hutton’s work.

March ad April of 1785 is when Hutton gathered his evidence and presented the story he thought rocks tell us our planet to the Royal Society Edinburgh. His papers would later go on to become a two volume book.

Charles Lyell revisited Hutton’s theory and replaced it with his own. His theory stated that natural geological processes such as erosion and tectonics have the surface of the earth in a state of constant, gradual change. Before James’ theory, the theory of the earth never changing and Evolution could not take place. Since James and Charles showed that change could take place, evolution could also occur.