Biology - Admission/Application Essay Example

Charles Lyell and James Hutton Influence on Charles Darwin’s Theories and Ideas Charles Lyell was born on November 14th 1797 and was of British ancestry. He was a lawyer as well as a geologist and is famous for his work the Principles of Geology –a book that popularized the works of James Hutton- concepts of Uniformitarianism- which argues that the processes that are still operating today shaped the Earth. On the other hand, James Hutton was born in 1726 and was a Scottish naturalist and farmer popularly referred to as the father of modern geology.

James Hutton was a keen observer of the environment surrounding him (Martin, 2013).Both Lyell and Hutton keenly observed the various geological changes shaping the earth and discovered that the processes in the past that shaped the earth are identical to the ones that are in operation today. This served as a great influence to the Evolution theory put forward by Charles Darwin since it demonstrated that things are continuously changing on earth and if that is so, then even organisms are also constantly changing.

Thus, both Hutton and Lyell are regarded as the founders of Uniformitarianism geology. Hutton laid the base for Uniformitarianism geology through disputing the then held belief that sedimentary rock stratum was formed during the worldwide flooding of Noah. Hutton showed evidence of numerous deposition events together with successive upheavals in addition to igneous intrusions that exposed earth’s long history. Even though it appeared that a lot of the provided evidence pointed to catastrophism, Uniformitarianism was the only thing Hutton saw.

Whereas forty five years passed before Hutton’s concepts really had a considerable influence during those times, it is Charles Lyell who added geologic column which is a chronology of rock layers. Lyell also included names and age dates to these layers. Thus the conceptual groundwork for Uniformitarianism geology was laid by Hutton with Lyell building the framework of geology upon that groundwork (Martin, 2013).The concept of Uniformitarianism alongside its compulsory associated old earth philosophy, offered the principal influence for Darwin’s Evolution theory.

All these concepts have together resulted to a paradigm move from a creationist, youthful earth standpoint to a humanistic and evolutionary standpoint. Before these concepts of change, the idea of “immutability” (this means that the earth never changes and therefore Evolution which is pushed by natural selection which later is pushed by environmental forces, could not occur)was generally believed to be true. Lyell and Hutton evidently demonstrated that change could occur and if that was so, then Evolution too could take place as well.

In this way, the 2 geologists greatly contributed and assisted Darwin in formulating his Evolution theory.Works citedRonald, Martin. Earths Evolving Systems:The History of Planet Earth. New York: Jones & Barlett Learning, 2013.