By 1827, he had abandoned law and embarked on a geological career that would result in fame and the general acceptance of uniformitarianism, a working out of the idea proposed by James Hutton a few decades earlier.

The central argument in Principles was that the present is the key to the past – a concept of the Scottish Enlightenment which David Hume had stated as " all inferences from experience suppose ... that the future will resemble the past ", and James Hutton had described when he wrote in 1788 that " from what has actually been, we have data for concluding with regard to that which is to happen thereafter.

Followers of Hutton were known as Plutonists because they believed that some rocks were formed by vulcanism, which is the deposition of lava from volcanoes, as opposed to the Neptunists, led by Abraham Werner, who believed that all rocks had settled out of a large ocean whose level gradually dropped over time.

Margaret Murray had mentioned this information in her 1933 book The God of the Witches, and Hutton theorised that Alex Sanders had taken it from there, enjoying the fact that he shared his name with the ancient Macedonian emperor.

Around 1747 he had a son by a Miss Edington, and though he gave his child James Smeaton Hutton financial assistance, he had little to do with the boy who went on to become a post-office clerk in London.

Hutton inherited from his father the Berwickshire farms of Slighhouses, a lowland farm which had been in the family since 1713, and the hill farm of Nether Monynut.

Between 1767 and 1774 Hutton had considerable close involvement with the construction of the Forth and Clyde canal, making full use of his geological knowledge, both as a shareholder and as a member of the committee of management, and attended meetings including extended site inspections of all the works.

Hutton subsequently read an abstract of his dissertation Concerning the System of the Earth, its Duration and Stability to Society meeting on 4 July 1785, which he had printed and circulated privately.

At Glen Tilt in the Cairngorm mountains in the Scottish Highlands in 1785, Hutton found granite penetrating metamorphic schists, in a way which indicated that the granite had been molten at the time.

Continuing along the coast, they made more discoveries including sections of the vertical beds showing strong ripple marks which gave Hutton " great satisfaction " as a confirmation of his supposition that these beds had been laid horizontally in water.

Following criticism, especially the arguments from Richard Kirwan who thought Hutton's ideas were atheistic and not logical, Hutton published a two volume version of his theory in 1795, consisting of the 1788 version of his theory ( with slight additions ) along with a lot of material drawn from shorter papers Hutton already had to hand on various subjects such as the origin of granite.

Studies of Charles Darwin's notebooks have shown that Darwin arrived separately at the idea of natural selection which he set out in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, but it has been speculated that he may have had some half-forgotten memory from his time as a student in Edinburgh of ideas of selection in nature as set out by Hutton, and by William Charles Wells and Patrick Matthew who had both been associated with the city before publishing their ideas on the topic early in the 19th century.

Whilst this theory is today widely disputed and discredited by historians like Norman Cohn, Keith Thomas and Ronald Hutton, it has had a significant effect in the origins of Neopagan religions, primarily Wicca, a faith she supported.

As later historian Ronald Hutton noted, " Among that small number of scholars who were familiar with the trial records, theories never had a chance.

" As Hutton noted, she had " a tendency to deny any good motives or virtues to those who criticized her theories.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a controversy exported from Geology, between supporters of James Hutton ( uniformitarianism Thesis ) and Georges Cuvier ( catastrophism ) strongly influenced the field of geography, because geography at this time was a natural science since Human Geography or Antropogeography had just developed as a discipline in the late nineteenth century.

Throughout the twentieth century, Stonehenge began to be revived as a place of religious significance, this time by adherents of Neopagan and New Age beliefs, particularly the Neo-druids: the historian Ronald Hutton would later remark that " it was a great, and potentially uncomfortable, irony that modern Druids had arrived at Stonehenge just as archaeologists were evicting the ancient Druids from it.

Peckinpah's first big-budget film had a large cast, including Heston, Richard Harris, James Coburn, Senta Berger, Jim Hutton, Ben Johnson, Warren Oates, R. G. Armstrong and L. Q. Jones.

Ronald Hutton notes that while medieval Irish authors do attribute a historical pagan significance to the Beltane festival, they are silent in this respect in regard to Samhain, apparently because no tradition of pagan ritual had survived into the Christian period.

Evidence that the wording of the dossier was " strengthened " was presented to the Hutton Inquiry, a judicial review set up to investigate the circumstances leading up to the death of an eminent government weapons expert, David Kelly, who had criticised the wording of the dossier in off-the-record briefings to journalists.

The English resident in Brussels, John Hutton, had already obtained a portrait, but realising this picture was not as perfect as one made by Master Haunce, " a man very excellent in makyng of phisanymies ," he recalled his messenger.

He already held the castles of Brancepeth, Raby, Middleham and Sheriff Hutton when he received from Henry IV the honour and lordship of Richmond for life.

Hutton's authority was also compromised by the MCC, who did not give Hutton the tour manager he requested ; instead, they appointed the inexperienced Charles Palmer, the Leicestershire captain, who had already been selected as a player on the tour.

Hutton further downplayed his team's chances through deliberately exaggerating its inexperience when talking to an Australian press already sympathetic to Hutton as a professional captain of a class-driven country.

By the time Gere had returned to the project, Lauren Hutton had already been hired.

A form of the idea had already been set out by an earlier Edinburgh author, James Hutton, but in that case the effect was limited to improvement of varieties rather than the formation of new species.

General limitations about the structure and philosophy of CITES include: by design and intent it focuses on trade at the species level and does not address habitat loss, ecosystem approaches to conservation, or poverty ; it seeks to prevent unsustainable use rather than promote sustainable use ( which generally conflicts with the Convention on Biological Diversity ), although this has been changing ( see Nile Crocodile, African elephant, South African white rhino case studies in Hutton and Dickinson 2000 ).

This has been identified by the historian Ronald Hutton, cited in an article by Roger Dearnsley " The Influence of Aleister Crowley on Ye Bok of Ye Art Magical, as a piece of medieval ecclesiastical Latin used to mean " lifting the veil.

Ruickbie, Hutton, and others further argue that much of what has been published of Gardnerian Wicca, as Gardner's practice came to be known by, was written by Blake, Yeats, Valiente and Crowley and contains borrowings from other identifiable sources.

His claims regarding the New Forest coven have been widely scrutinised, with Gardner being the subject of investigation for historians and biographers such as Aidan Kelly, Ronald Hutton and Philip Heselton.

Hutton reasoned that there must have been innumerable cycles, each involving deposition on the seabed, uplift with tilting and erosion then undersea again for further layers to be deposited.

" She was also a believer and a practitioner of magic, performing curses against those whom she felt deserved it: as Ronald Hutton noted, " Once she carried out a ritual to blast a fellow academic whose promotion she believed to have been undeserved, by mixing up ingredients in a frying pan in the presence of two colleagues.

The factual historical validity of her theories has been disputed by many scholars, including historian Ronald Hutton.

Hutton then sought evidence to support his idea that there must have been repeated cycles, each involving deposition on the seabed, uplift with tilting and erosion, and then moving undersea again for further layers to be deposited.

He also claimed that he had been given the book by a Tuscan woman named Maddalena, although historians such as Ronald Hutton have disputed the truth of these such claims.

it has been suggested that Ceridwen first appeared as a simple sorceress character in the Tale of Taliesin, of which the earliest surviving text dates to the mid-16th century, but which appears from its language to be 9th-century in composition, according to Hutton.

However, a wide perception that Hutton had not been punished enough ( for example, the New York Times William Safire claimed that the $ 2. 75 million fine amounted to " putting a parking ticket on the Brink's getaway car "), led several customers to pull their accounts with Hutton, and many of the firm's star performers fled to other firms.

According to William Hutchinson a commission, had been issued in 1576 or 1577 to examine matters of complaint against him, but had proved ineffectual because the Earl of Huntingdon and Matthew Hutton sided with the dean against the third commissioner, Sandys.

Ronald Hutton and Leo Ruickbie have concluded that Clutterbuck is unlikely to have been involved in Gardner's activities, in particular because of her apparent commitment to Christianity.

" Lil ' Bobby Hutton Day " has been held annually at the park since April 1998.

Although usually associated with women of reigning and noble families, tiaras have been worn by commoners as well, especially rich American socialites like Barbara Hutton, although this has been perceived as bizarre and pretentious as tiaras were normally reserved for blue-blooded ladies.

Hutton also supported the idea that the Earth was very old as opposed to the prevailing concept of the time which said the Earth had only been around a few millennia.

The story of the Lovings has been turned into two films, Mr. & Mrs. Loving ( 1996 ), starring Lela Rochon, Timothy Hutton and Ruby Dee.