ABSTRACT A recent fad in the historiography of geology is to consider the Scottish polymath James Hutton’s Theory of the Earth the last of the “theories of the earth” genre of publications that had begun developing in the seventeenth century and to regard it as something behind the times already in the late eighteenth century and which was subsequently remembered only because some later geologists, particularly Hutton’s countryman Sir Archibald Geikie, found it convenient to represent it as a precursor of the prevailing opinions of the day. By contrast, the available documentation, published and unpublished, shows that Hutton’s theory was considered as something completely new by his contemporaries, very different from anything that preceded it, whether they agreed with him or not, and that it was widely discussed both in his own country and abroad—from St. Petersburg through Europe to New York. By the end of the third decade in the nineteenth century, many very respectable geologists began seeing in him “the father of modern geology” even before Sir Archibald was born (in 1835). Before long, even popular books on geology and general encyclopedias began spreading the same conviction. A review of the geological literature of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries shows that Hutton was not only remembered, but his ideas were in fact considered part of the current science and discussed accordingly. The strange new fashion in the historiography of geology has been promulgated mostly by professional historians rather than geologists and seems based on two main reasons: (1) a misinterpretation of what geology consists of by considering methods rather than theories as the essence of the science, and (2) insufficient attention to the scientific literature of geology through the ages. In only one case, the religious commitment of a historian seems a reason for his attempt to belittle Hutton’s contribution and to exalt those of his Christian adversaries, hitherto considered insignificant. To write a history of geology it is imperative that extra-scientific considerations such as religion or political ideology or even the mental state of the scientist(s) examined must not be mixed, overtly or covertly, into the assessment and the writer should have a good knowledge of, and experience in doing, geology. Social considerations may tell us why science is done or not done in a society, but they cannot tell us anything on the origin and evolution of its content . In understanding the intellectual development of geology, in fact science in general, sociological analysis seems not very helpful.

James Hutton’s Theory of the Earth , first published in 1785, was considered completely new by his contemporaries, different from anything that preceded it, and widely discussed both in Hutton’s own country and abroad—from St. Petersburg through Europe to New York. Yet a recent trend among some historians of geology is to characterize Hutton’s work as already behind the times in the late eighteenth century and remembered only because some later geologists found it convenient to represent it as a precursor of the prevailing opinions of the day. Painstakingly researched, richly referenced, and full of interesting stories, this Memoir shatters that line of thinking and restores Hutton’s standing as the father of modern geology, his ideas fully relevant to the geological problems of his day.

Abstract The Caspian Sea sits in the middle of an extremely enigmatic region from the viewpoint of structure and tectonic evolution. In this region, four major orogenic systems meet: in the north, the Uralides; in the northwest, the Hercynides; in the northeast, the Altaids; and in the south, the Tethysides that extend from the west to the east. The first step in understanding this region must be in sorting out structural connections. In the Urals, everything west of the Denisov– Oktyabrsk suture turns to the southwest and constitutes the pre-Triassic basement of the Scythian platform, making up the north-vergent Devonian to Permian collisional orogenic system of the Scythides. The Scythides is the connecting link between the Urals and the Hercynides. The Tornquist–Teisseyre strike-slip system (of various senses at different times) turns into the orogenic system somewhere in present-day Turkey. East of the Denisov–Oktyabrsk suture is the immense Altaid collage, which is delimited southward by the Sultan Uiz Tagh–Tien Shan suture zone, striking eastward into China north of the Tarim basin. A triangle is thus defined, the base of which is the Paleotethyan suture in the Central Pontides of Turkey, striking eastward into the Dizi succession in Svanetia and through several interruptions caused by later faulting jumps through the Chorchana– Utslevi zone in the Dzirula, Chochiani, zone in the Khrami, Rasht, and finally, Mashhad joins the Paro-pamisus in Afghanistan. Within this triangle, the provenance of rocks is unknown. We have gathered these enigmatic units under the designation ‘‘intermediate units.’’ We show that the intermediate units in Turkmenistan have the same tectonic style and same kind of rock material as the Altaid collage. It is a strike-slip, repeated collection of arc and accretionary complex fragments. The basement of the Greater Caucasus also turns out to have much accretionary complex material. All of this material gathered into the triangle zone just mentioned at the end of the Paleozoic and Triassic. It is unknown where it came from. In Eurasia, it is hard to find a home for them. The alternative is Gondwanaland, a giant continent with insufficient subduction record around it, especially along its Tethyan margins. The intermediate units may have been the missing arc apparatus; rifted from Gondwanaland sometime in the middle Paleozoic, they may have switched polarity upon encounter with Eurasia. Their south facing is thus only a record of a late event in their eventful history.

The Alpine-Himalayan system of orogenic belts is the product of the obliteration of Tethys. The Tethyan domain consisted, during the early and middle Mesozoic, of two oceans separated by a strip or string of continent(s), called the Cimmerian Continent , which had begun separating from the northern and northeastern margin of Gondwana-Land mainly during Triassic time, although rifting in the eastern-most parts had begun earlier. North of this Cimmerian Continent lay Paleo-Tethys , the original, east-facing, equatorial embayment of Permo-Triassic Pangea. To the south Neo-Tethys was evolving at the expense of Paleo-Tethys. In the eastern Tethyan domain, three large, independent continental pieces, namely the North China and South China Platforms and the Indochina Block, all possibly of Gondwanian origin, took part in Tethyan evolution and effected the division of eastern Tethys into a number of branches. The double closure resulting from the Late Triassic to the present elimination of the two Tethyan oceans generated a double, largely over-printed orogenic system. That which resulted from the closure of Paleo-Tethys is here called the Cimmerides , including a multi-strand suture network that extends from the eastern Carpathians to the Pacific shores—from the Sea of Okhotsk to eastern Sulawesi, and for that orogen, which is the product of the disappearance of Neo-Tethys, the designation Alpides is reserved. As far east as Afghanistan and in Indonesia, the Cimmeride orogen is almost completely overprinted by Alpide structures, but in Tibet and China the increasing width of the continental pieces separating Paleo-Tethys from Neo-Tethys effected a clear spatial distinction of the Cimmerides from the Alpides. From the eastern Carpathians to the Caucasus, the Cimmeride orogen is asymmetric and simple, with north-facing orogenic polarity (i.e., predominant pre-collision subduction polarity). In this segment it was constructed largely atop earlier Hercynian structures, making the recognition and reconstruction of Cimmeride structures extremely difficult. Between the eastern Caucasus and the 92°E meridian, it is asymmetric, with south-facing orogenic polarity, and contains a complex Laurasia-bound orogenic collage consisting dominantly of ophiolitic mélange/flysch packages. East of 92°E it is generally symmetric, involving large, multiple, both Laurasia- and Cimmerian Continent-bound collages, and east of the Songpan-Ganzi system it becomes multi-branched. Along the entire orogen, terminal collisions took place between the late Middle Triassic and the Late Jurassic. From Afghanistan to Indonesia, the smaller orogen of the Waşer-Tanggula-Sittang Valley/Myitkyina zone, of Middle Jurassic-Early Cretaceous age, and the latest Triassic Karakaya Orogen in Turkey are located south of the main trunk of the Cimmerides. They grew out of intra-Cimmerian Continent mini-oceans that may have begun opening locally as Paleo-Tethyan marginal basins. Extensive fore- and hinterland areas of complex thrust, strike-slip, and normal fault deformation accompany the entire strike-length of the orogen from eastern Europe to Indochina and include such well-known structures as the Late Triassic-Early Jurassic compressional belt of Donetz, the Turan block-fault terrain and a major part of the West Siberian Basin Complex, the east Iranian Flysch Zone, and the Angaran inversion structures. Most of the Cenozoic structures north of the Alpine-Himalayan belt seem to have nucleated on these older Cimmeride fore- and hinterland structures. The analysis presented here suggests that nearly all of the Eurasian “intra-cratonic” structures, classically viewed by some geologists to have resulted from primary vertical movements, may be products of horizontal movements caused by repeated orogenies around the periphery of cratons. Understanding the evolution of the Cimtnerides together with their fore- and hinterlands sheds much light on the Mesozoic tectonics of all of Asia and eastern Europe and leads to a number of interesting concepts concerning continental evolution, such as “hidden subduction.” Finally, a study on the evolution of ideas on the Cimmerides clearly shows how much we remain under the spell of the Kober-Stillean fixist philosophy.