View source for Earth:Catastrophism

{{Short description|Geological theory of abrupt, severe change}}
[[File:Anoplotherium 1812 Skeleton Sketch.jpg|thumb|The discoveries of different layers of fossils, such as those containing ''Palaeotherium'' and ''Anoplotherium'' (pictured), by Georges Cuvier led him to believe that series of catastrophic events wiped out worlds before the modern one.]] 
In [[Earth:Geology|geology]], '''catastrophism''' is the theory that the [[Astronomy:Earth|Earth]] has largely been shaped by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope.<ref>
{{cite journal
 |last1= Turney |first= C.S.M. |last2= Brown |first2= H. |year= 2007 |title= Catastrophic early Holocene sea level rise, human migration and the Neolithic transition in Europe |journal= Quaternary Science Reviews |volume=26 |pages=2036–2041 |bibcode= 2007QSRv...26.2036T |doi=10.1016/j.quascirev.2007.07.003 |issue=17–18}}</ref>
This contrasts with [[Philosophy:Uniformitarianism|uniformitarianism]] (sometimes called [[Earth:Gradualism|gradualism]]), according to which slow incremental changes, such as [[Earth:Erosion|erosion]], brought about all the Earth's [[Earth:Geology|geological]] features. The proponents of uniformitarianism held that the present was "the key to the past", and that all geological processes (such as [[Earth:Erosion|erosion]]) throughout the past resembled those that can be observed today. Since the 19th-century disputes between catastrophists and uniformitarians, a more inclusive and integrated view of geologic events has developed, in which the [[Philosophy:Scientific consensus|scientific consensus]] accepts that some catastrophic events occurred in the geologic past, but regards these as explicable as extreme examples of natural processes which can occur.

Proponents of catastrophism proposed that each geological epoch ended with violent and sudden natural catastrophes such as major [[Earth:Flood|flood]]s and the rapid [[Physics:Orogeny|formation of major mountain chains]].  Plants and animals living in the parts of the world where such events occurred [[Biology:Extinction|became extinct]], to be replaced abruptly by the new forms whose fossils defined the geological strata. Some catastrophists attempted to relate at least one such change to the Biblical account of Noah's flood.

The French scientist [[Biography:Georges Cuvier|Georges Cuvier]] (1769{{endash}}1832) popularised the concept of catastrophism in the early 19th century; he proposed that new life-forms had moved in from other areas after local floods, and avoided religious or metaphysical speculation in his scientific writings.<ref name="McG 3" /><ref name="Rudwick 133" />

==History==

===Geology and biblical beliefs===
{{Main|Earth:History of geology}}

In the early development of [[Earth:Geology|geology]], efforts were made in a predominantly [[Religion:Christianity|Christian]] western society to reconcile biblical narratives of Creation and the universal flood with new concepts about the processes which had formed the Earth. The discovery of other ancient flood myths was taken as explaining why the flood story was "stated in scientific methods with surprising frequency among the Greeks", an example being [[Philosophy:Plutarch|Plutarch]]'s account of the Ogygian flood.<ref>{{Harvardnb|King|1877|p=450}}</ref>

===Cuvier and the natural theologians===
The leading scientific proponent of catastrophism in the early nineteenth century was the French anatomist and paleontologist [[Biography:Georges Cuvier|Georges Cuvier]]. His motivation was to explain the patterns of [[Biology:Extinction|extinction]] and faunal succession that he and others were observing in the [[Biology:Fossil|fossil]] 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 did not make any reference to Noah's flood.<ref name="McG 3">{{Harvardnb|McGowan|2001|pp=3–6}}</ref> 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 [[Philosophy:Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] and the intellectual climate of the {{wipe|French Revolution}}, avoided religious or metaphysical speculation in his scientific writings.<ref name="Rudwick 133">{{Harvnb|Rudwick|1972|pp=133–134}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Harvnb|Rudwick|1972|p=131}}</ref>

By contrast in Britain, where [[Philosophy:Natural theology|natural theology]] was influential during the early nineteenth century, a group of geologists including William Buckland and Robert Jameson interpreted Cuvier's work differently. Cuvier had written an introduction to a collection of his papers on fossil quadrupeds, discussing his ideas on catastrophic extinction. Jameson translated Cuvier's introduction into English, publishing it under the title ''Theory of the Earth''. He added extensive editorial notes to the translation, explicitly linking the latest of Cuvier's revolutions with the biblical flood. The resulting essay was extremely influential in the English-speaking world.<ref>{{Harvnb|Rudwick|1972|pp=133–135}}</ref> Buckland spent much of his early career trying to demonstrate the reality of the biblical flood using geological evidence. He frequently cited Cuvier's work, even though Cuvier had proposed an inundation of limited geographic extent and extended duration, whereas Buckland, to be consistent with the biblical account, was advocating a universal flood of short duration.<ref>{{Harvnb|Rudwick|1972|p=135}}</ref> Eventually, Buckland abandoned [[Unsolved:Flood geology|flood geology]] in favor of the glaciation theory advocated by Louis Agassiz, following a visit to the Alps where Agassiz demonstrated the effects of glaciation at first hand. As a result of the influence of Jameson, Buckland, and other advocates of natural theology, the nineteenth century debate over catastrophism took on much stronger religious overtones in Britain than elsewhere in Europe.<ref>{{Harvnb|Rudwick|1972|pp=136–138}}</ref>

===The rise of uniformitarianism in geology===
Uniformitarian explanations for the formation of [[Earth:Sedimentary rock|sedimentary rock]] and an understanding of the immense stretch of geological time, or as the concept came to be known [[Physics:Deep time|deep time]], were found in the writing of James Hutton, sometimes known as the father of geology, in the late 18th century. The geologist Charles Lyell 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'', published in the 1830s, which challenged theories about geological cataclysms proposed by proponents of catastrophism like Cuvier and Buckland.<ref>{{Harvnb|Rudwick|1972|pp=174–175}}</ref> One of the key differences between catastrophism and uniformitarianism is that uniformitarianism observes the existence of vast timelines, whereas catastrophism does not. Today most geologists combine catastrophist and uniformitarianist standpoints, taking the view that [[Earth:History of Earth|Earth's history]] is a slow, gradual story punctuated by occasional natural catastrophic events that have affected Earth and its inhabitants.<ref>{{cite book |year=2007 |chapter=Uniformitarianism |chapter-url=http://www.bartleby.com/65/un/uniformi.html |title=The Columbia Encyclopedia |edition=6th |publisher=Columbia University Press |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060624122338/http://www.bartleby.com/65/un/uniformi.html |archive-date=2006-06-24 }}</ref>

From around 1850 to 1980, most geologists endorsed uniformitarianism ("The present is the key to the past") and [[Earth:Gradualism|gradualism]] (''geologic change occurs slowly over long periods of time'') and rejected the idea that cataclysmic events such as earthquakes, [[Earth:Volcano|volcanic eruptions]], 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]] and catastrophic origins were sometimes considered [[Philosophy:Miracle|miraculous]] rather than natural events.<ref>{{Harvnb|Rudwick|1972|pp=174–179}}</ref>

The rise in uniformitarianism made the introduction of a new catastrophe theory very difficult. In 1923 J Harlen Bretz published a paper on the channeled scablands formed by glacial [[Earth:Lake Missoula|Lake Missoula]] in Washington State, USA. Bretz encountered resistance to his theories from the geology establishment of the day, kicking off an acrimonious 40 year debate. Finally in 1979 Bretz received the Penrose Medal; the Geological Society of America's highest award.<ref>[https://www.geosociety.org/awards/past.htm Penrose Medal 1979] to J Harlen Bretz, Geological Society of America</ref>

===Immanuel Velikovsky's views===
In the 1950s, [[Biography:Immanuel Velikovsky|Immanuel Velikovsky]] propounded catastrophism in several popular books. He speculated that the planet [[Astronomy:Venus|Venus]] is a former "[[Astronomy:Comet|comet]]" which was ejected from [[Astronomy:Jupiter|Jupiter]] 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 BCE, before settling into its current [[Physics:Orbit|orbit]]. Velikovsky used this to explain the biblical plagues of [[Place:Egypt|Egypt]], 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 [[Philosophy:Atlantis|Atlantis]]. Scientists vigorously rejected Velikovsky's conjectures.<ref name="UnMuseum">{{cite web |last1=Krystek |first1=Lee |title=Venus in the Corner Pocket: The Controversial Theories of Immanuel Velikovsky |url=http://www.unmuseum.org/velikov.htm |publisher=Museum of Unnatural Mystery |access-date=2007-12-14}}</ref>

==Current application==
Neocatastrophism is the explanation of sudden extinctions in the palaeontological record by high magnitude, low frequency events (such as asteroid impacts, super-volcanic eruptions, supernova gamma ray bursts, etc.), as opposed to the more prevalent [[Physics:Geomorphology|geomorphological]] thought which emphasises low magnitude, high frequency events.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Goudie |first1=A. |title=Encyclopedia of Geomorphology |page=709 }}</ref>

===Luis Alvarez impact event hypothesis===
{{Main|Earth:Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event}}
In 1980, Walter and [[Biography:Luis Walter Alvarez|Luis Alvarez]] published a paper suggesting that a {{convert|10|km|mi}} [[Astronomy:Asteroid|asteroid]] [[Astronomy:Impact event|struck Earth]] 66 million years ago at the end of the [[Earth:Cretaceous|Cretaceous]] period. The impact wiped out about 70% of all species, including the non-avian [[Biology:Dinosaur|dinosaur]]s, leaving behind the [[Earth:Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary|Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary]] (K–T boundary). In 1990, a {{convert|180|km|mi}} candidate crater marking the impact was identified at [[Earth:Chicxulub crater|Chicxulub]] in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. These events sparked a wide acceptance of a scientifically based catastrophism with regard to certain events in the distant past. 

Since then, the debate about the [[Biology:Extinction|extinction]] 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 cometary collision with Jupiter illustrated that catastrophic events occur as natural events.

===Moon-formation===
Modern theories also suggest that Earth's anomalously large [[Astronomy:Moon|moon]] was formed catastrophically. In a paper published in ''Icarus'' in 1975, William K. Hartmann and Donald R. Davis proposed that a catastrophic near-miss by a large [[Astronomy:Planetesimal|planetesimal]] early in Earth's formation approximately 4.5 billion years ago blew out rocky debris, remelted Earth and formed the [[Astronomy:Moon|Moon]], thus explaining the Moon's lesser density and [[Astronomy:Internal structure of the Moon|lack of an iron core]].<ref>{{cite journal |last2=Gott III |first=J. R. |year=2005 |title=Where Did The Moon Come From? |journal= [[Astronomy:The Astronomical Journal|The Astronomical Journal]] |volume= 129 | issue=3 | pages= 1724–1745 |arxiv=astro-ph/0405372 |bibcode=2005AJ....129.1724B |doi=10.1086/427539 |last1=Belbruno |first2=J. Richard|s2cid=12983980 }}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web |date=September 2009 |title=Moonwalk  |url=http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/webdav/site/GSL/shared/pdfs/Geoscientist/Download%20PDF%20copy%20of%20Geoscientist%2019.9%20September%202009.pdf |publisher=Geological Society of London |access-date=2010-03-01}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Binder |first1=A.B. |year=1974 |title=On the origin of the Moon by rotational fission |journal=The Moon |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=53–76 |bibcode=1974Moon...11...53B |doi=10.1007/BF01877794|s2cid=122622374 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1= Stevenson |first1=D. J. |year=1987 |title=Origin of the Moon-The Collision Hypothesis |journal=Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences |volume= 15|pages= 271–315|bibcode=1987AREPS..15..271S |doi=10.1146/annurev.ea.15.050187.001415 }}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Biology:Alternatives to evolution by natural selection|Alternatives to evolution by natural selection]]
*Clarence King
* [[Earth:Flood basalt|Flood basalt]]
* [[Earth:Glacial lake outburst flood|Glacial lake outburst flood]]
* [[Earth:History of geology|History of geology]]
* History of paleontology
* [[Physics:Megatsunami|Megatsunami]]
* [[Unsolved:Pensée (Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered)|Pensée (Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered)]]
* [[Biology:Punctuated equilibrium|Punctuated equilibrium]] 
* [[Earth:Supervolcano|Supervolcano]]
* Uniformitarianism
* [[Earth:Volcanic winter|Volcanic winter]]
* Zanclean flood

==References==
{{reflist|30em}}

==Sources==

* {{cite journal |last=King |first=Clarence |title=Catastrophism and Evolution |journal=The American Naturalist |volume=11 |issue=8 |year=1877 |pages=449–470 |doi=10.1086/271929|doi-access=free }}
* {{cite book |last=Rudwick |first=Martin J. S. |title=The Meaning of Fossils |location=Chicago, Illinois |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=1972 |isbn=0-226-73103-0 }}
* {{cite book |last=McGowan |first=Christopher |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vC4c3Kx746QC |title=The Dragon Seekers |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |publisher=Perseus Publishing |year=2001 |isbn=0-7382-0282-7 }}

==Further reading==

* Lewin, R.; ''Complexity'', Dent, London, 1993, p.&nbsp;75
* Palmer, T.; ''Catastrophism, Neocatastrophism and Evolution''. Society for Interdisciplinary Studies in association with Nottingham Trent University, 1994, {{ISBN|0-9514307-1-8}} (SIS) {{ISBN|0-905488-20-2}} (Nottingham Trent University)

==External links==
*[http://www.impacttectonics.org/2020/2020%20Beyond%20the%20Craters.html Impact Tectonics]
*[http://www.pibburns.com/catastro/extinct.htm Catastrophism and Mass Extinctions]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20010108121600/http://science.ntu.ac.uk/life/staff/tp/fallc.htm The Fall and Rise of Catastrophism]
*[http://www.catastrophism.com/ Catastrophism! Man, Myth and Mayhem in Ancient History and the Sciences]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20101119101814/http://answersincreation.org/catastrophism.htm Answers In Creation - Catastrophism Article]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20060909180136/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv4-56 ''Dictionary of the History of Ideas'':] "Uniformitarianism and Catastrophism"

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{{Sourceattribution|Catastrophism}}