ABSTRACT
It has been two hundred years since James Hutton of Edinburgh published in the transactions of his Royal Society the geological theory now commonly regarded as basic to all subsequent progress in geomorphology. Not unlike the case with other major scientific theories, however, Hutton’s success was far from immediate. My essay, therefore, begins with a brief review of the theory itself and then traces the several distinct stages involved in its eventual acceptance. That acceptance, always a partial one at best, was undoubtedly delayed by the relative indifference of certain British investigators toward the origins of landforms. Even so, we have good reason to associate the effective founding of geomorphology with Hutton’s name.
