Catastrophism
Encyclopedia
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. The dominant paradigm
Paradigm
The word paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" , "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" , "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" , "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" , "to show, to point out".The original Greek...
of modern geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
is uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism (science)
In the philosophy of naturalism, the uniformitarianism assumption is that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now, have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe. It has included the gradualistic concept that "the present is the...
(sometimes described as gradualism
Gradualism
Gradualism is the belief in or the policy of advancing toward a goal by gradual, often slow stages.-Politics and society:In politics, the concept of gradualism is used to describe the belief that change ought to be brought about in small, discrete increments rather than in abrupt strokes such as...
), in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion
Erosion
Erosion is when materials are removed from the surface and changed into something else. It only works by hydraulic actions and transport of solids in the natural environment, and leads to the deposition of these materials elsewhere...
, create the Earth's appearance. This view holds that the present is the key to the past, and that all things continue as they were from the beginning of the world. Recently a more inclusive and integrated view of geologic events has developed, changing the scientific consensus
Scientific consensus
Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus implies general agreement, though not necessarily unanimity. Scientific consensus is not by itself a scientific argument, and it is not part of the...
to accept some catastrophic events in the geologic past.
Creationist interpretations
ChristianChristian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
s up until the 19th century, held dominant scientific beliefs that were founded on the biblical narratives of Creation and the universal deluge. Other ancient deluge myths have been discovered since then, explaining why the flood story was "stated in scientific methods with surprising frequency among the Greeks
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
", an example being Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
's account of the Ogygian flood.
Earth's history
History of Earth
The history of the Earth describes the most important events and fundamental stages in the development of the planet Earth from its formation 4.578 billion years ago to the present day. Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to the understanding of the main events of the Earth's...
was viewed as the result of an accumulation of catastrophic events over a relatively short time period, before the depth of geological time was appreciated. In this way they were able to explain the observations of early geologists within the framework of a short Earth history
Young Earth creationism
Young Earth creationism is the religious belief that Heavens, Earth, and all life on Earth were created by direct acts of the Abrahamic God during a relatively short period, sometime between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago...
.
Cuvier and the natural theologians
The leading scientific proponent of catastrophism in the early nineteenth century was the French anatomist and paleontologist Georges CuvierGeorges Cuvier
Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist...
. His motivation was to explain the patterns of extinction
Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
and faunal succession that he and others were observing in the fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
record. While he did speculate that the catastrophe responsible for the most recent extinctions in Eurasia might have been the result of the inundation of low-lying areas by the sea, he never made any reference to Noah's flood. Nor did he ever make any reference to divine creation as the mechanism by which repopulation occurred following the extinction event. In fact Cuvier, influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
and the intellectual climate of the French revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, avoided religious or metaphysical speculation in his scientific writings. Cuvier also believed that the stratigraphic record indicated that there had been several of these revolutions, which he viewed as recurring natural events, amid long intervals of stability during the history of life on earth. This led him to believe the Earth was several million years old.
By contrast in England, where natural theology
Natural theology
Natural theology is a branch of theology based on reason and ordinary experience. Thus it is distinguished from revealed theology which is based on scripture and religious experiences of various kinds; and also from transcendental theology, theology from a priori reasoning.Marcus Terentius Varro ...
was very influential during the early nineteenth century, a group of geologists that included William Buckland
William Buckland
The Very Rev. Dr William Buckland DD FRS was an English geologist, palaeontologist and Dean of Westminster, who wrote the first full account of a fossil dinosaur, which he named Megalosaurus...
and Robert Jameson
Robert Jameson
thumb|Robert JamesonProfessor Robert Jameson, FRS FRSE was a Scottish naturalist and mineralogist.As Regius Professor at the University of Edinburgh for fifty years, Jameson is notable for his advanced scholarship in natural history, his superb museum collection, and for his tuition of Charles...
would interpret Cuvier's work in a very different way. Jameson translated the introduction Cuvier wrote for a collection of his papers on fossil quadrupeds that discussed his ideas on catastrophic extinction into English and published it under the title Theory of the Earth. He added extensive editorial notes to the translation that explicitly linked the latest of Cuvier's revolutions with the biblical flood, and the resulting essay was extremely influential in the English-speaking world. Buckland spent much of his early career trying to demonstrate the reality of the biblical flood with geological evidence. He frequently cited Cuvier's work even though Cuvier had proposed an inundation of limited geographic extent and extended duration, and Buckland, to be consistent with the biblical account, was advocating a universal flood of short duration. Eventually, Buckland would abandon flood geology
Flood geology
Flood geology is the interpretation of the geological history of the Earth in terms of the global flood described in Genesis 6–9. Similar views played a part in the early development of the science of geology, even after the Biblical chronology had been rejected by geologists in favour of an...
in favor of the glaciation theory advocated by Louis Agassiz
Louis Agassiz
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz was a Swiss paleontologist, glaciologist, geologist and a prominent innovator in the study of the Earth's natural history. He grew up in Switzerland and became a professor of natural history at University of Neuchâtel...
, who had briefly been one of Cuvier's students. As a result of the influence of Jameson, Buckland, and other advocates of natural theology, the nineteenth century debate over catastrophism took on religious overtones in Britain that were not nearly as prominent elsewhere.
The rise of uniformitarianism in geology
Uniformitarian explanations for the formation of sedimentary rockSedimentary rock
Sedimentary rock are types of rock that are formed by the deposition of material at the Earth's surface and within bodies of water. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause mineral and/or organic particles to settle and accumulate or minerals to precipitate from a solution....
and an understanding of the immense stretch of geological time, or as the concept came to be known Deep time
Deep time
Deep time is the concept that the Geologic time scale is vast because the Earth is very old. The modern philosophical concept was developed in the 18th century by Scottish geologist James Hutton...
, were found in the writing of James Hutton
James Hutton
James Hutton was a Scottish physician, geologist, naturalist, chemical manufacturer and experimental agriculturalist. He is considered the father of modern geology...
, sometimes known as the father of geology, in the late 18th century. The geologist Charles Lyell
Charles Lyell
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, Kt FRS was a British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which popularised James Hutton's concepts of uniformitarianism – the idea that the earth was shaped by slow-moving forces still in operation...
built upon Hutton's ideas during the first half of 19th century and amassed observations in support of the uniformitarian idea that the Earth's features had been shaped by same geological processes that could be observed in the present acting gradually over an immense period of time. Lyell presented his ideas in the influential three volume work, Principles of Geology
Principles of Geology
Principles of Geology, being an attempt to explain the former changes of the Earth's surface, by reference to causes now in operation, is a book by the Scottish geologist Charles Lyell....
, published in the 1830s, which challenged theories about geological cataclysms proposed by proponents of catastrophism like Cuvier and Buckland.
From around 1850 to 1980, most geologists endorsed uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism (science)
In the philosophy of naturalism, the uniformitarianism assumption is that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now, have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe. It has included the gradualistic concept that "the present is the...
("The present is the key to the past") and gradualism
Gradualism
Gradualism is the belief in or the policy of advancing toward a goal by gradual, often slow stages.-Politics and society:In politics, the concept of gradualism is used to describe the belief that change ought to be brought about in small, discrete increments rather than in abrupt strokes such as...
(geologic change occurs slowly over long periods of time) and rejected the idea that cataclysmic events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions
Volcano
2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...
, or floods of vastly greater power than those observed at the present time, played any significant role in the formation of the Earth's surface. Instead they believed that the earth had been shaped by the long term action of forces such as volcanism, earthquakes, erosion, and sedimentation, that could still be observed in action today. In part, the geologists' rejection was fostered by their impression that the catastrophists of the early nineteenth century believed that God was directly involved in determining the history of Earth. Some of the theories about Catastrophism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were connected with religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
and catastrophic origins were sometimes considered miraculous
Miracle
A miracle often denotes an event attributed to divine intervention. Alternatively, it may be an event attributed to a miracle worker, saint, or religious leader. A miracle is sometimes thought of as a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature. Others suggest that a god may work with the laws...
rather than natural events.
Immanuel Velikovsky's views
In the 1950s, Immanuel VelikovskyImmanuel Velikovsky
Immanuel Velikovsky was a Russian-born American independent scholar of Jewish origins, best known as the author of a number of controversial books reinterpreting the events of ancient history, in particular the US bestseller Worlds in Collision, published in 1950...
propounded catastrophism in several popular books. He speculated that the planet Venus
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...
is a former "comet
Comet
A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet...
" which was ejected from Jupiter
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...
and subsequently 3,500 years ago made two catastrophic close passes by Earth, 52 years apart, and later interacted with Mars, which then had a series of near collisions with Earth which ended in 687 B.C., before settling into its current orbit
Orbit
In physics, an orbit is the gravitationally curved path of an object around a point in space, for example the orbit of a planet around the center of a star system, such as the Solar System...
. Velikovsky used this to explain the biblical plagues of Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, the biblical reference to the "Sun standing still" for a day (Joshua 10:12 & 13, explained by changes in Earth's rotation), and the sinking of Atlantis
Atlantis
Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....
. Scientists rejected Velikovsky's theories, often quite passionately.
Current application
Neocatastrophism is the explanation of sudden extinctions in the palaeontological record by high magnitude, low frequency events, as opposed to the more prevalent geomorphologicalGeomorphology
Geomorphology is the scientific study of landforms and the processes that shape them...
thought which emphasises low magnitude, high frequency events.
Luis Alvarez impact event hypothesis
Over the past 25 years, however, a scientifically based catastrophism has gained wide acceptance with regard to certain events in the distant past. One impetus for this change came from the publication of a historic paper by Walter and Luis AlvarezLuis Alvarez
Luis W. Alvarez was an American experimental physicist and inventor, who spent nearly all of his long professional career on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley...
in 1980. This paper suggested that a 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) asteroid
Asteroid
Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...
struck Earth
Impact event
An impact event is the collision of a large meteorite, asteroid, comet, or other celestial object with the Earth or another planet. Throughout recorded history, hundreds of minor impact events have been reported, with some occurrences causing deaths, injuries, property damage or other significant...
65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous , derived from the Latin "creta" , usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide , is a geologic period and system from circa to million years ago. In the geologic timescale, the Cretaceous follows the Jurassic period and is followed by the Paleogene period of the...
period. The impact wiped out about 70% of all species, including the dinosaur
Dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...
s, leaving behind the so-called K–T boundary
K–T boundary
The K–T boundary is a geological signature, usually a thin band, dated to 65.5 ± 0.3 Ma ago. K is the traditional abbreviation for the Cretaceous period, and T is the abbreviation for the Tertiary period...
. In 1990, a 180 kilometres (111.8 mi) candidate crater marking the impact was identified at Chicxulub
Chicxulub Crater
The Chicxulub crater is an ancient impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Its center is located near the town of Chicxulub, after which the crater is named...
in the Yucatán Peninsula
Yucatán Peninsula
The Yucatán Peninsula, in southeastern Mexico, separates the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico, with the northern coastline on the Yucatán Channel...
of Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
.
Since then, the debate about the extinction
Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
of the dinosaurs and other mass extinction events has centered on whether the extinction mechanism was the asteroid impact, widespread volcanism (which occurred about the same time), or some other mechanism or combination. Most of the mechanisms suggested are catastrophic in nature.
The observation of the Shoemaker-Levy 9
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 was a comet that broke apart and collided with Jupiter in July 1994, providing the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of solar system objects. This generated a large amount of coverage in the popular media, and the comet was closely observed by...
cometary collision with Jupiter illustrated that catastrophic events occur as natural events.
Comparison to uniformitarianism
One of the key differences between catastrophism and uniformitarianism is that to function, uniformitarianism requires the assumption of vast time-lines, whereas catastrophism can function with or without assumptions of long timelines.Today most geologists combine catastrophist and uniformitarianist standpoints, taking the view that Earth's history
History of Earth
The history of the Earth describes the most important events and fundamental stages in the development of the planet Earth from its formation 4.578 billion years ago to the present day. Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to the understanding of the main events of the Earth's...
is a slow, gradual story punctuated by occasional natural catastrophic events that have affected Earth and its inhabitants.
Moon-formation
Modern theories also suggest that Earth's anomalously large moonMoon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
was formed catastrophically. In a paper published in Icarus in 1975, William K. Hartmann and Donald R. Davis proposed that a stochastic catastrophic near-miss by a large planetesimal
Planetesimal
Planetesimals are solid objects thought to exist in protoplanetary disks and in debris disks.A widely accepted theory of planet formation, the so-called planetesimal hypothesis of Viktor Safronov, states that planets form out of cosmic dust grains that collide and stick to form larger and larger...
early in Earth's formation approximately 4.5 billion years ago blew out rocky debris, remelted Earth and formed the Moon
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
, thus explaining the Moon's lesser density and lack of an iron core. The impact theory does have some faults; some computer simulations show the formation of a ring or multiple moons post impact, and elements are not quite the same between the earth and moon.
See also
- UniformitarianismUniformitarianism (science)In the philosophy of naturalism, the uniformitarianism assumption is that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now, have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe. It has included the gradualistic concept that "the present is the...
- GradualismGradualismGradualism is the belief in or the policy of advancing toward a goal by gradual, often slow stages.-Politics and society:In politics, the concept of gradualism is used to describe the belief that change ought to be brought about in small, discrete increments rather than in abrupt strokes such as...
- Paradigm shiftParadigm shiftA Paradigm shift is, according to Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science...
- Punctuated equilibriumPunctuated equilibriumPunctuated equilibrium is a theory in evolutionary biology which proposes that most species will exhibit little net evolutionary change for most of their geological history, remaining in an extended state called stasis...
(occasional periods of sudden change in evolutionEvolutionEvolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
) - SupervolcanoSupervolcanoA supervolcano is a volcano capable of producing a volcanic eruption with an ejecta volume greater than 1,000 cubic kilometers . This is thousands of times larger than most historic volcanic eruptions. Supervolcanoes can occur when magma in the Earth rises into the crust from a hotspot but is...
- Flood basaltFlood basaltA flood basalt or trap basalt is the result of a giant volcanic eruption or series of eruptions that coats large stretches of land or the ocean floor with basalt lava. Flood basalts have occurred on continental scales in prehistory, creating great plateaus and mountain ranges...
- Volcanic winterVolcanic winterA volcanic winter is the reduction in temperature caused by volcanic ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscuring the sun and raising Earth's albedo after a large particularly explosive type of volcanic eruption...
- Glacial lake outburst floodGlacial lake outburst floodA glacial lake outburst flood is a type of outburst flood that occurs when the dam containing a glacial lake fails. The dam can consist of glacier ice or a terminal moraine...
- MegatsunamiMegatsunamiMegatsunami is an informal term to describe a tsunami that has initial wave heights that are much larger than normal tsunamis...
- History of geologyHistory of geologyThe history of geology is concerned with the development of the natural science of geology. Geology is the scientific study of the origin, history, and structure of the Earth. Throughout the ages geology provides essential theories and data that shape how society conceptualizes the...
- History of paleontologyHistory of paleontologyThe history of paleontology traces the history of the effort to understand the history of life on Earth by studying the fossil record left behind by living organisms...
- Kronos: A Journal of Interdisciplinary SynthesisKronos (journal)Kronos: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Synthesis published articles on a wide range of subjects as diverse as ancient history, catastrophism and mythology. It ran 44 issues from the Spring of 1975 to the Spring of 1988. The title is an homage to the Greek name for the Roman god Saturn whose...
- Pensée (Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered)Pensée (Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered)Pensée: Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered was a special series of ten issues of the magazine Pensée produced to "encourage continuing critical analysis of all questions raised by Velikovsky's work", published between May 1972 and Winter 1974-75 by the Student Academic Freedom Forum, whose president...
- Society for Interdisciplinary StudiesSociety for Interdisciplinary StudiesThe Society for Interdisciplinary Studies is a membership-based organization "formed in 1974 in response to the growing interest in the works of modern catastrophists, notably the highly controversial Dr Immanuel Velikovsky"...
- Young Earth creationismYoung Earth creationismYoung Earth creationism is the religious belief that Heavens, Earth, and all life on Earth were created by direct acts of the Abrahamic God during a relatively short period, sometime between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago...