"it should be sikkar but who knows, they were probably all illiterate anyway."


I did wonder...
Most of the aristos in Scotland were as literate and multilingual as anywhere else btw...And as far as the eighteenth c goes the general population were probably the most literate in Europe...thus Hutton, who was blessed by the unintended consequences of the literacy drive of the Reformation: geared towards enabling the reading of the bible...the unintended consequences in the minds of the bright were a critical understanding of the literal approach (such as Usshers date of the creation:23rd October, 4004BC) which of course spurred on those both literate and curious such as Hutton to disproving it. The peculiar and ancient geology of Scotland itself helped of course...

It is said that Hutton invented or indeed discovered "time": certainly in the way that we understand it in the modern world that would seem true to me.