Edinburgh
This morning we arrived in a rainy Edinburgh. Sailing up the Firth of Forth we could see Castle Rock standing prominent above the city. East of Castle Rock we could see Calton Hill and, most prominent of all, Arthur’s Seat and the Salisbury Crags. These high-standing topographic features are all remnants of volcanoes which dominated the Edinburgh landscape 350 million years ago, when the British Isles were located about 25 degrees south of the equator. James Hutton, father of modern geology and one the creators of the Edinburgh Enlightenment in the last half of the 18th-century, recognized these features as volcanic. Stimulated, no doubt, by others in his dining society, known as the Oyster Club, and including economist Adam Smith, engineer James Watt and chemist Joseph Black, with occasional appearances by philosopher David Hume, Hutton developed the notion of “deep time.” Since there are no active volcanoes in Scotland today, he realized that these rocks must be very old indeed and so stimulated the evolution of the new science of geology.
After breakfast we visited Edinburgh Castle, atop Castle Rock. The rock stands tall because it resisted the erosional forces of the Ice Age glaciers flowing past it from the west and carving deep furrows in the softer rocks on either side. The rock thus provides a perfect site for the Castle, from which we can now look down upon the Princess Street Gardens and the great monument to Sir Walter Scott below, and imagine the view, which the defenders of the ramparts had of any approaching forces.
The earth’s rocks play important roles in all our lives, but never more obviously than here in Edinburgh, capital city of Scotland and birthplace of modern geology.
This morning we arrived in a rainy Edinburgh. Sailing up the Firth of Forth we could see Castle Rock standing prominent above the city. East of Castle Rock we could see Calton Hill and, most prominent of all, Arthur’s Seat and the Salisbury Crags. These high-standing topographic features are all remnants of volcanoes which dominated the Edinburgh landscape 350 million years ago, when the British Isles were located about 25 degrees south of the equator. James Hutton, father of modern geology and one the creators of the Edinburgh Enlightenment in the last half of the 18th-century, recognized these features as volcanic. Stimulated, no doubt, by others in his dining society, known as the Oyster Club, and including economist Adam Smith, engineer James Watt and chemist Joseph Black, with occasional appearances by philosopher David Hume, Hutton developed the notion of “deep time.” Since there are no active volcanoes in Scotland today, he realized that these rocks must be very old indeed and so stimulated the evolution of the new science of geology.
After breakfast we visited Edinburgh Castle, atop Castle Rock. The rock stands tall because it resisted the erosional forces of the Ice Age glaciers flowing past it from the west and carving deep furrows in the softer rocks on either side. The rock thus provides a perfect site for the Castle, from which we can now look down upon the Princess Street Gardens and the great monument to Sir Walter Scott below, and imagine the view, which the defenders of the ramparts had of any approaching forces.
The earth’s rocks play important roles in all our lives, but never more obviously than here in Edinburgh, capital city of Scotland and birthplace of modern geology.
