This excellent introduction to James Hutton was first published by National Museums Scotland in 2001. Scientists currently think that the Earth is four and a half billion years old but until the eighteenth century the Christian world firmly believe in its creation about 4000 BC. James Hutton (1726-97) was the man whose pioneering fieldwork proved that this was not so. A leading figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, he not only established that the Earth is immensley old, but in the process also saw the possibility of both evolution and natural selection - fifteen years before Charles Darwin was born. This new edition has: a new format; 10 replacement pictures; an additional chapter; a foreword by the James Hutton Institute; and an appreciation by Alan McKirdy of his co-author Donald McIntyre who died in 2009.