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PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
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Release: March 7, 1995
Contact: Kenneth S. Deffeyes (609/258-3597)
Jacquelyn Savani (609/258-5729)


Freshmen Travel to Scotland
for Geology Field Work

Princeton, N.J.--A group of 20 Princeton students is traveling to
Scotland during spring break, March 10 to 19, to mark the 200th
anniversary of the book that gave geology its modern form. The
students and two professors, Kenneth S. Deffeyes and Jason Morgan,
are going to the Isle of Arran near Glasgow. It was on Arran that
James Hutton first found evidence of the enormous extent of
geologic time. He also discovered evidence there that granite
formed from cooling of a hot molten mass. In 1795 he published a
set of two books detailing his discoveries. Entitled Theory of
the Earth, the books are usually considered the beginning of
geology.

On its first day in the field, the Princeton group intends to
visit the actual outcrops that Hutton studied. The field work is
part of a freshman seminar focusing on the two great revolutions
in the earth sciences. The first was launched by Hutton, and the
second--the development of plate tectonics--began when Morgan, one
of the seminar's instructors, discovered plate tectonics in 1967.
Arran is also a particularly good place to study plate tectonics
because a former plate tectonic boundary cuts through the island.

Freshman seminars are designed to give first-year students a
chance to work with senior faculty on focused topics.

The Isle of Arran, although only 10 miles wide and 20 miles long,
is a microcosm of Scottish geology. During the spring, most of
the British universities bring geology students to Arran. A group
of first-year students from the University of Cambridge will be on
Arran at the same time at Princeton's freshmen. Cambridge and
Princeton were the two schools that led in the development of
plate tectonics, and there has long been an exchange of people and
ideas between the two universities.

The opening of the present-day Atlantic Ocean happened during the
most recent five percent of geologic time. Before the Atlantic
opened, Scotland was part of North America. The Scottish
Highlands are the extension of our Appalachian Mountains.

Although the course work focuses primarily on geology, there is a
secondary interest in Scottish history. Hutton's work is
considered to be part of the Scottish Enlightenment, which took
place from 1700 to 1800. Princeton's own roots derive from the
same period in Scotland. Most of the early presidents of
Princeton were Scottish Presbyterian ministers. On the way to
Arran, the Princeton students will have a few hours to wait for a
train connection in the town of Paisley, Scotland, where a plaque
marks the church where John Witherspoon was pastor before becoming
president of Princeton. Witherspoon was the only minister among
the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

One of the books that the students are reading is Basin and Range,
by John McPhee, who teaches nonfiction writing at Princeton. In
that book, McPhee coined the phrase ``deep time'' to emphasize
Hutton's discovery of the enormous extent of geologic time. The
geologist featured in McPhee's book is Deffeyes, the other seminar
instructor going to Scotland with the Princeton freshmen.

An anonymous gift to Princeton University is covering the expense
of the field work in Scotland.

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