James Hutton

For many years most folks thought that the Earth evolved through a series of catastrophes, like Noah´s Flood. That formed the basis for a theory called "Catastrophism". Then James Hutton (1726 - 1797) a gentlemen farmer and naturalist, suggested that the processes he saw at work around him, for example, a stream eroding its banks, could have caused the Earth to look the way it did, without any catastrophes - if the processes were at work long enough, that is. His theory, called "uniformitarianism," stated that "the present is the key to the past." Because of his insights into earth processes he is often called the "Father of Modern Geology."