Catastrophism (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Catastrophism is the idea that Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. The dominant paradigm of modern geology, in contrast, is uniformitarianism (also sometimes described as gradualism), in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, 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 to accept some catastrophic events in the geologic past.