History of the geologic time scale
Werner had the idea that all rocks had precipitated out of a single enormous flood. That is called the Neptunist theory. A major shift in thinking came when James Hutton read his Theory of the Earth; or, an Investigation of the Laws Observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land Upon the Globe before the Royal Society of Edinburgh in March and April 1785. James Hutton in those reading became "the founder of modern geology". Hutton suggested the interior of the Earth was hot, and that this heat was the engine which drove the creation of new rock. Land was eroded by air and water and deposited as layers in the sea; heat then consolidated the sediment into stone, and uplifted it into new lands. This theory was called Plutonist in contrast to the flood-oriented theory.