When did James Hutton present his theory of the Earth as a dynamic system?

James Hutton presented his ideas on Earth’s history in 1785, introducing a new way of thinking about deep time. He argued that the same natural processes seen today, such as erosion, deposition, and uplift, had also operated in the distant past. This view became known as uniformitarianism, often summarized by the phrase “the present is the key to the past.” Hutton’s work helped launch modern geology by showing that Earth was far older than traditional chronologies suggested.