Editing Neptunism (section)

== The neptunist–plutonist controversy ==
A rival theory known as [[plutonism]] (or vulcanism) held that rocks were formed in fire. This was originally proposed by Abbé [[Anton Moro]] (1687–1750) with reference to his studies of volcanic islands, and was taken up by [[James Hutton]] who put forward a [[Uniformitarianism (science)|uniformitarian]] theory of a [[rock cycle]] extending over infinite time in which rocks were worn away by weathering and erosion, then were re-formed and uplifted by heat and pressure.

Neptunists differed from the plutonists in holding that [[basalt]] was a sedimentary deposit which included fossils and so could not be of volcanic origin. Hutton correctly asserted that basalt never contained fossils and was always insoluble, hard, and crystalline. He found geological formations in which basalt cut through layers of other rocks, supporting his theory that it originated from molten rock under the Earth's crust.

The debate was not just between scientists. [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], one of the most respected authors of the day, took sides with the neptunists. The fourth act of his famous work ''[[Goethe's Faust|Faust]]'' contains a dialogue between a neptunist and a plutonist, the latter being [[Mephistopheles]], the antagonist of the play who is a devil. Doing so he implicitly expressed his favour for the neptunist theory, though he also did so explicitly and sometimes even harshly elsewhere.<ref>{{citation| last=Raman| first=V. V.| title=Ugandan Martyrs and James Hutton| date=June 3, 2002|newspaper=The Global Spiral| volume=6| issue=3| url=http://www.metanexus.net/Magazine/Default.aspx?TabId=68&id=6447&SkinSrc=%5BG%5DSkins%2F_default%2FNo+Skin&ContainerSrc=%5BG%5DContainers%2F_default%2FNo+Container| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928032113/http://www.metanexus.net/Magazine/Default.aspx?TabId=68&id=6447&SkinSrc=%5BG%5DSkins%2F_default%2FNo+Skin&ContainerSrc=%5BG%5DContainers%2F_default%2FNo+Container| url-status=dead| archive-date=September 28, 2007| access-date=2007-06-19}}</ref>

The controversy lasted into the early years of the 19th century, but the works of [[Charles Lyell]] in the 1830s gradually won over support for the uniformitarian ideas of Hutton and the plutonists. However, [[sedimentary rock]]s such as [[limestone]] are considered to have resulted from processes like those described by the neptunists, and so modern theory can be seen as a synthesis of the two approaches.{{according to whom|date=October 2017}}