The Art Institute of Chicago | October 2010
I could stare at this painting in its 96 x 72 in. glory for hours. So soft, three-dimensional in its transparency and layering, and mildly spooky, thus comforting.
The Earth may be a man, but which one? Read The Granite Controversy: Neptunism vs. Plutonism at David Bressan’s excellent History Of Geology blog.
An alternative, even contrasting theory to [Abraham Gottlob] Werner’s Neptunism was proposed by the English naturalist James Hutton: primordial rocks, and their exposure, are due the effect of magmatic intrusions and eruptions. This theory was named after the Roman god of the underworld Plutonism. The resulting conflict divided geologists and an intense research begun to solve the riddle of rock formation.
