Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
It has kept before our eyes the power of the infinitely little, time being granted, and has compelled us to exhaust known causes, before flying to the unknown. To my mind there appears to be no sort of necessary theoretical antagonism between Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism. On the contrary, it is very conceivable that catastrophes may be part and parcel of uniformity.
But that this herculean labor of land-sculpturing could have been accomplished by the slow action of wind and frost and shower was an idea few men could grasp within the first half-century after Hutton propounded it; nor did it begin to gain general currency until Lyell's crusade against catastrophism, begun about 1830, had for a quarter of a century accustomed geologists to the thought of slow, continuous changes producing final results of colossal proportions.
To his mind this excluded the thought of catastrophic changes in either inorganic or organic worlds. But to deny catastrophism was to suggest a revolution in current thought. Needless to say, such revolution could not be effected without a long contest. For a score of years the matter was argued pro and con., often with most unscientific ardor.
There was a time when catastrophism might, pre-eminently, have claimed the title of "British popular geology;" and assuredly it has yet many adherents, and reckons among its supporters some of the most honoured members of this Society. By UNIFORMITARIANISM, I mean especially, the teaching of Hutton and of Lyell.
The catastrophists, after clinging madly to their phantom for a generation, at last capitulated without terms: the old heresy became the new orthodoxy, and the way was paved for a fresh controversy. The fresh controversy followed quite as a matter of course. For the idea of catastrophism had not concerned the destruction of species merely, but their introduction as well.
No one can doubt that the influence of uniformitarian views has been enormous, and, in the main, most beneficial and favourable to the progress of sound geology. Nor can it be questioned that Uniformitarianism has even a stronger title than Catastrophism to call itself the geological speculation of Britain, or, if you will, British popular geology.
Catastrophism, a short-sighted teleology, and a still more short-sighted orthodoxy, joined forces to crush evolution.
By CATASTROPHISM, I mean any form of geological speculation which, in order to account for the phenomena of geology, supposes the operation of forces different in their nature, or immeasurably different in power, from those which we at present see in action in the universe. The Mosaic cosmogony is, in this sense, catastrophic, because it assumes the operation of extra-natural power.
I have said that the three schools of geological speculation which I have termed Catastrophism, Uniformitarianism, and Evolutionism are commonly supposed to be antagonistic to one another; and I presume it will have become obvious that, in my belief, the last is destined to swallow up the other two.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking