Title: Perilous planet earth : catastrophes and catastrophism through the ages /
Authors: Palmer, Trevor, 1944-
Publisher: Cambridge University Press,
Year: 2003
Subjects: Asteroids Collisions with Earth; Catastrophes (Geology); Evolution
Abstract: Perilous Planet Earth places our present concern about the threat to Earth from asteroids and comets within an historical context, looking at the evidence for past events within the geological and historical records. The book looks at the way in which prevailing views about modes of global change have changed dramatically over the years. It also considers the way in which catastrophic events are now seen to have influenced the course of evolution in the distant past, as well as the rise and fall of civilizations in more recent times. Professor Palmer argues that the better we understand our past, the greater the likelihood that we will be able to take appropriate action to preserve our civilization for the future.
Contents: Catastrophism: The Story of its Decline and Fall ... and Resurrection -- From prehistory to 1899: Catastrophism dominates for centuries, but then gives way to gradualism -- Mythology, religion and catastrophism -- Hutton: fact and fiction about the origins of modern gradualism -- Cuvier and Lamarck: choosing between extinction and evolution -- Natural theology and Noah's Flood: the high-water mark of catastrophism -- Catastrophism, uniformitarianism and idealist philosophy -- Lyell triumphant: gradualism dominates geology -- Darwin and evolution -- After the Origin: the triumph of evolutionary gradualism -- From 1900 to 1979: Gradualism reigns supreme -- Neo-Darwinism: the Modern Synthesis -- Phyletic gradualism -- Gradualist perceptions of human evolution -- Heretical catastrophists -- Atlantis: rational and irrational theories of a 'lost' civilisation -- Evolutionary mass extinctions and neocatastrophism -- Punctuated equilibrium: a new evolutionary perspective.