Talk:Catastrophism

message: What about the "Snowball Earth" theory?  That comes from real scientists... does it qualify?
Also read Asteroid impact if you think that such events are unlikely.
I've always associated this theory with Cuvier, but neither this article nor the article on him make the association. Am I just wrong?(unsigned)
Omission corrected. Vsmith 01:07, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: snowball earth

message: Actually, the Missoula Floods seem a good example of a much earlier discovery contrary to uniformitarianism though not one with global reprecussions. - KarlHallowell 17:48, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: floods

message: Was the Palmer book used as a reference for writing this or listed as a further source? Also, what is the ISBN? I don't find that title on Amazon or bookfinder.com. Do find two later books by Palmer (1999 and 2003). Vsmith 23:34, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: I removed what appears to be a promotional bit about books published by a vanity press. An attempt to revive the velikovsky cruft. Vsmith 00:35, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It keeps getting re-added by a vigilant and non-communicative anon. -- Stbalbach 16:32, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Ackerman/velikovsky

message: I've removed it again.  It was online long enough for a blog to latch onto it and use it to bash Wikipedia:  http://johnmckay.blogspot.com/2006/10/object-lesson-in-wiki-research-this.html  It was inserted by nearly identical anon IP addresses.
* 66.82.9.90 contribs (talk) 19:39, 15 October 2006 UTC.  7 days.
* 66.82.9.56 contribs (talk) 18:44, 8 November 2006 UTC.  almost 6 hours.
* 66.82.9.73 contribs (talk) 15:38, 22 November 2006 UTC.  66 minutes.
* 66.82.9.85 contribs (talk) 14:38, 23 November 2006 UTC.  10 minutes.
Hu 15:11, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It keeps getting re-added by a vigilant and non-communicative anon. -- Stbalbach 16:32, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pernicious nonsense 

message: We should add references to A.H. Delsemme's book, "Our Cosmic Origins", which gives a very thorough analysis of the various "catastrophes" which paved the way to life: Jupiter disrupting planetoids early in the Solar System's formation, Earth's collision with a Mars-sized planetoid (formation of the moon and destruction of Earth's initial CO2-rich atmosphere), later cometary bombardment of Earth (which enriched Earth's "new" atmosphere), various discussions on fundamental chemical reactions and elements abundance, etc. The author does not advocate panspermia. Rather, he tries to isolate the various events which helped life emerge. All in all, a very interesting book. -- Hugo Dufort 10:47, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: A.H. Delsemme

message: Am confused.  Always thought that Uniformitarianism was, basically, same natural laws + same processes = same results.  So, while I agree that Uniformitarianism may imply Gradualism, how does it require Gradualism?
````David Tisdale
:Uniformitarianism is a term that is used a couple of different ways in science. Historically in geology it has been associated with the views advocated by Charles Lyell that the geological features of the earth could be explained by the long term action of forces that can still be observed in action in the present day. This view was put forward in direct opposition to the idea that the earth had been shaped by catastrophic (and possibly supernatural) events in its past. As the article makes clear this view advocated by Lyell is really a combination of uniformitarianism (using the philosophy of science defintion you use) and the assumption of gradualism. Even if this usage is not entirely consistent with the modern definitions it is still appropriate for this article, as the 2 labels (uniformitariansim and catastrophism) for these viewpoints are widely known, and the debate between them was historically very important in the development of the earth sciences.Rusty Cashman 19:44, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, in germanspeaking countries it is common to oppose gradualism to catastrophism as theories about the history of the earth (smoothe and slow vs. quick and dirty), while uniformitarianism ("Aktualismus") is rather seen as a method or an axiom of geological investigation. Hereby "Aktualismus" is opposed to "Ekzeptionalismus" (the view, that there may have existed processes in the past, which do not happen today anymore (like the formation of Banded Iron Formations), or in the extreme case: that the laws of nature may have changed during the course of time (like the change of the gravitational constant, proposed by Paul Dirac). I wonder if there is any term like "exceptionalism" in english? Greets Geoz (talk) 14:37, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: UNIFORMITARIANISM vs GRADUALISM

message: The part about Immanuel Velikovsky that says "Not all scientists however shared this viewpoint, and Albert Einstein remained a close friend of Velikovsky's until his death." needs a source. Gedfan (talk) 20:40, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have provided several sources for the entire paragraph, and made it clear that while Einstein may have been his friend he carefully avoided endorsing most of his ideas.Rusty Cashman (talk) 07:04, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Einstein bit

message: The study cited - or at least the publicity blurbs, haven't seen the Science article - says nothing about catastrophism.
:===Recent developments regarding formation of geological landscapes ===
:The longstanding understanding of how the "sedimentary geological record" was formed is being challenged as being in error, according to research by geologists at Indiana University (Bloomington) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The research, which appears in the December 14th edition of Science, counters the prevailing uniformitarian view of geologists that mud only settles when water is placid, instead showing that "muds will accumulate even when currents move swiftly."Schieber, Juergen, John Southard, and Kevin Thaisen, "Accretion of Mudstone Beds from Migrating Floccule Ripples," Science, 14 December 2007: 1760-1763.
:What is most interesting for students of the geological and fossil record is how this research potentially overturns the previous view on mudstone deposition, erosion, and re-deposition, as the press release outlines:
"The finding feels like something of a vindication, Schieber says. He and his colleagues have (genially) argued about whether muds could deposit from rapidly flowing water. Schieber had posited the possibility after noting an apparent oddity in the sedimentary rock record."Indiana University (2007, December 18). "As Waters Clear, Scientists Seek To End A Muddy Debate." ScienceDaily. Retrieved 27 December, 2007.
:Schieber noted that, "In many ancient mudstones, you see not only deposition, but also erosion and rapid re-deposition of mud - all in the same place... The erosive features are at odds with the notion that the waters must have been still all or most of the time. We needed a better explanation.""As waters clear, scientists seek to end a muddy debate," at PhysOrg.com (accessed 27 December 2007).
Simply does not belong in the article.  Seems to be synthesis or original research to make that jump. It is simply a study of sedimentological processes, a refinement of scientific understanding. Vsmith (talk) 05:05, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It actually does belong in the article, as it does indeed deal with "Catastrophism re-emerging and re-examined by science". Perhaps the confusion lies in the wording of the subhead title, so I've retitled that.
And it's not OR, as it simply reports what the Science article reports - which is about the challenge to catastrophism. Goo2you (talk) 14:08, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

text: claiming that it is "supporting catastrophism" as your section title does, is blatant (and fallacious) WP:OR. HrafnTalkStalk 14:20, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No it's not, any more than claiming the "Luis Alvarez impact event hypothesis" or "Moon-formation" entries support "Catastrophism re-emerging and re-examined by science" is WP:OR. Please be reasonable here.  Goo2you (talk 15:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You have not established even the slightest connection between the cited article and catastrophism, let alone support from it for catastrophism. It is you who is being unreasonable here. HrafnTalkStalk 16:05, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Hopefully with this revision you will finally be satisfied that the connection exists, as established by multiple reliable sources, and no OR is occurring. Otherwise, someone might start to think that you own this article. Some friendly advice:"If you find yourself warring with other contributors over deletions, reversions, and so on, why not take some time off from the editing process? Taking yourself out of the equation can cool things off considerably. Take a fresh look a week or two later... Since working on an article does not entitle you to "own" the article, it is still important to respect the work of your fellow contributors. When making large scale removals of content, particularly content contributed by one editor, it is important to consider whether a desirable result could be obtained by working with the editor, instead of against him or her..."Perhaps the real issue here is that this challenge to uniformitarianism in the geologic record means that, as Macquaker and Bohacs infer, a huge tower of interpretation, touching on fields as diverse as climate change, earth history and even solar system dynamics, has been built on a flawed assumption: that mudstones always settled out slowly in calm water. Now that the assumption is shown to be unfounded, it is not just the geologists who will have to consider a paradigm shift. And paradigm shifts hurt. Goo2you (talk) 22:36, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Hrafn, the link between the article and catastrophism is established quite clearly within the cited article itself. What we are dealing with here appears to be a problem with WP:NPOV, not WP:OR, as evidence by your (now third) personal attack on me in this comment. Perhaps if you took a few days off, cooled off for a while, and maybe edited articles that you aren't so personally attached to and that tend to make you "more than a little irate" when you don't like another editors encyclopedic edits. Just a friendly suggestion. Goo2you (talk) 01:57, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Thanks Wilson44691 -- I rather suspected that was the case, and have reverted the article on the basis of your comment. We seem to have a consensus here that the section does not belong in this article. I would therefore suggest that it should not be reintroduced without discussion that leads to a change of this consensus. HrafnTalkStalk 03:46, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

text: I see that Goo2you is playing out the same argument on Uniformitarianism (science), with a similar consensus to reject it. HrafnTalkStalk 04:51, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sedimentology research 

message: I'm assuming that this article is in the pseudoscience category because of its association with creationism.  However, there are modern, scientifically-accepted variants of catastrophism that have nothing to do with creationism — and they're even mentioned in the article!  I think the connection to pseudoscience needs to be clarified, or the article made more general and less creationism-specific and the category tag removed entirely.  --Sapphic (talk) 01:16, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Evolution of biological organisms does not violate the laws of thermodynamics. That's some old creationists arguments that even Ken Ham objects to. The first law talks about the conservation of energy. I have not seen any cases where it is said that organisms produce energy from nothing or destroy energy. The second law is about entropy, which is about converting one type of energy into another. For example, a system that would claim that it can convert thermal energy into something else without any differential in thermal energy is not possible according to this law. No such thing occurs with biological systems. Biological systems usually start off with photons which come from the Sun. Some systems use certain molecules to start off, such as H2S. I'll let you read about the 3rd one and get back to me. As for god or gods, they certainly do violate such laws. After all, how did they create things? Vmelkon (talk) 03:22, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pseudoscience category? 

message: The term NeoCatastrophism has been around since at least 1990.  The concept has been around since at least the 1970s.  The following is by anti-creationist and evolutionist Richard Huggett who is/was a geology lecturer at the U. of Manchester.
Catastrophism: Systems of Earth History
RICHARD HUGGETT
Lecturer, School of Geography, University of Manchester
Pub:  Edward Arnold: A division of Hodder & Stoughton LONDON 
1990
p5
The purpose of this book is to explore past and present systems of Earth history, and especially the old and new catastrophism, with a view to seeing the shape that neocatastrophism might take in the future, thus giving rudimentary form to Thorn's 'fully articulated standpoint'. Before proceeding to the meat of the text, a general discussion on the nature of catastrophes and catastrophism will be given with the aim of clarifying problematical issues in a subject beset with misinterpretations and misunderstandings
p194-6
Neocatastrophism and uniformitarianism 
The evidence for sudden and violent events having occurred during the course of Earth history is very strong. It is far less clear whether the catastrophic events were caused by terrestrial or cosmic causes. But, whatever their origin, if grand catastrophes have occurred then the tenets of uniformitarianism collapse. It is rather curious, therefore, to find that recent attempts to reevaluate catastrophism in the light of demonstrable non-uniformity of rate and state in Earth history have produced rather lame results. The chief reason for this appears to be an unwillingness to let go the term uniformitarianism. For instance, to accommodate the episodic nature of rock-forming events into a gradualistic system, S. Moorbath (1977) coined the term 'episodic uniformitarianism'. Even geoscientists who hold that many episodic events occur with uncommon suddenness and violence seem reluctant to drop the term uniformitarianism. Thus, to describe his view that long intervals of gradual change in the stratigraphical record are punctuated by short bouts of sudden and violent change, Ager (1973, 1981) offered and term 'catastrophic uniformitarianism'. George W. Wetherill and Eugene M. Shoemaker (1982) went so far as to declaim that the process of cosmic bombardment does nothing to undermine the principles of uniformitarianism. They argued that the effects of cosmic encounters are catastrophic in terms of their magnitude, but applied to the interpretation of Earth history they are uniformitarian in the sense that current geological processes are used to explain the past. The mistake they made here was to equate uniformitarianism with actualism. To be sure, the bombardment hypothesis is actualistic, even though impacts have never actually been observed: the cratering record shows that impacts have occurred, possibly periodically, throughout the history of the Earth. But, impact events occur suddenly and with much violence. The bombardment hypothesis is thus at odds with one of the chief ingredients of Lyellian uniformitarianism, the substantive uniformity of rate. With the substantive uniformity of state already undermined, that means that, if the bombardment hypothesis be accepted, then both Lyell's substantive uniformities, and thus uniformitarianism, must be rejected.
Statements by neocatastrophists on the implications of cosmic catastrophism for the neo-Darwinian system of organic history carry much more of a punch. In his book The Nemesis Affair (1986), David M. Raup sees the current debate over cosmic process and mass extinctions as a battle between the ideas espoused by Cuvier on the one hand and Lyell on the other. Likewise, Kenneth Hsii (1986) contends that the new perspective on mass extinctions compels geologists and palaeobiologists to shake the Lyellian and Darwinian scales from their eyes. Antoni Hoffman (1989b) thinks that such extreme views go too far. He opines that Raup errs in pointing to Cuvier as a godfather of global mass extinctions: Cuvier recognized discontinuities in the fossil record in the Paris Basin and explained them by a series of local catastrophes; a truer progenitor is William Buckland who did envision worldwide catastrophes. But, the question of grandparentage aside, Hoffman believes that the twentieth-century debate over mass extinctions, unlike the debate slogged out during the early nineteenth century, 'hinges more upon the assessment of the quality and meaning of empirical data of stratigraphy and historical geology rather than upon the patterns of thought established long ago by Brocchi, Cuvier, Buckland, Lyell and Darwin - especially since those patterns were incomparably more complex than a simple black-and-white clich6 of catastrophism versus uniformitarianism . . . would suggest' (Hoffman, 1989b, 23). To Hoffman, the current revival of the concept of geologically instantaneous global biotic crises is not a revolution against the allegedly gradualist system of the geosciences, is not a collapse of the fortress of prejudice and dogma which for long suppressed the rival viewpoint on Earth's and life's history, but is a consequence of new discoveries and new refinements in stratigraphical time correlation (Hoffman, 1989b, 23). Admittedly, only empirical investigations can reveal whether mass extinctions have occurred. But the existence of catastrophic events which could give rise to mass extinctions seems beyond doubt. If these catastrophic changes in the physical world have actually led to mass extinctions, then the neo-Darwinian system is severely shaken. Gould (1985) makes this point very clearly: if mass extinctions are indeed caused by occasional bombardment episodes, if they are more frequent, more rapid, more extensive, and more different qualitatively in effect than traditionally expected, then the microevolutionary processes invoked by the neo-Darwinians are inadequate to explain the shape of the biosphere. Thus it is possible that current revival of catastrophism might well signal the downfall of Lyellian and neo-Darwinian doctrines. It is certainly doing for geoscience what the high-fibre diet has done for constipation.
I did not invent the term.  Ignornace is no excuse.  I'm changing it back.   Christian Skeptic (talk) 02:40, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: NeoCatastrophism

message: I'm not sure how this is relevant. The article is not about catastrophes but something quite different, catastrophism. And it certainly is not a place to start claiming Antarctica is Atlantis. dougweller (talk) 09:13, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, the focus of this article is geology, not mythology. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 06:38, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

text: Such material belongs in Deluge myth, not here. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 13:24, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Atra-Hasis 

message: The remark that Velikovsky and Einstein remained friends from 1946 to Einstein's death in 1955 needs to be rephrased because the two were out of contact from 1946 to 1953 when Velikovsky addressed the Princeton Graduate Forum, which lecture Einstein did not attend for fear of what his attendance would do to his reputation.  Instead, as Velikovsky remarks in Stargazers and Gravediggers, Einstein sent two women from his household to the lecture as intermediaries. It should also be noted that the two men did not see each other from 1923 in Berlin until they happened to meet at a lake at Princeton in 1952 or thereabouts. Their interaction in 1946 was entirely by correspondence with Einstein in Princeton and Velikovsky in New York. 128.252.65.183 (talk) 00:27, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: A discussion of catastrophism is a study of bias. The Creationist view is not science, it is pseudoscience: the "supposed proof" is avoided only by the unlettered. Complaints of "bias" do always seem to have the subtext, as here, "not my point-of-view". The evolution of Catastrophism in the history of ideas receives an unbiased report in the present article, which could be expanded and improved— though not, hopefully, by tagging it as "not my point of view"--Wetman (talk) 18:34, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Velikovsky & Einstein 

message: I am going to place the Moon Formation Theory Section under Catastrophic Geology, I think it fits better there.--Gniniv (talk) 05:12, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think that this merge is going to happen. Catastrophism is an important entity in the history of thought, and so I see no reason to remove it. Furthermore, this sort of philosophical debate is absent from modern geology. Awickert (talk) 05:35, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

text: That is because there is widespread evidence that they are right, and nothing to the contrary outside of interpretations of religious texts. It is a done deal. Awickert (talk) 06:07, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Notes on Future Plans for Catastrophism

message: There are serious problems with the Catastrophism article:
As soon as any new information is added to the article it is deleted. The Catastrophism article for over the last year, has remained the SAME, with any new information being deleted. The article is biased, the only reason it's been setup is to attack creationists. The REAL problem is, is that the article just talks about creationism, the article is about Casastrophism why is 60% of it just talking about the bible and Christianity?. There are many different types of Catastrophism which have NOTHING to do with religion, why are they not discussed on the article?. 
I suggest a section is added to the article regarding the work of Victor Clube He is known primarily for his work in collaboration with Bill Napier and others on the theory of "coherent catastrophism". I suggest reading their books The Cosmic Serpent (1982) and The Cosmic Winter (1990). 
86.10.119.131 (talk) 12:11, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The 'John Ray' section has been removed because it is a copyright violation of the source that you linked to. If you produce a version that does not have this problem then it could be integrated into the article (not sure that it would justify its own section though). Your description of the article doesn't seem to match its current content, Creationism is discussed in one short section and mentioned once or twice in other sections where relevant. As to Clube, a section on 'coherent catastrophism' looks worth having see here and maybe something on 'coordinated catastrophism' as well. Mikenorton (talk) 13:10, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

text: I note that in 'Perilous Planet Earth: Catastrophes and Catastrophism through the Ages', Trevor Palmer starts with a chapter entitled 'Mythology, religion and catastrophism' and the book follows a similar overall structure to the article - I'm not saying that the article is anything like perfect or anywhere close to complete, just that it's not quite as bad as you're painting it. You have also failed to understand copyright violation issues, you can't just copy and paste from other websites, preferring instead to see signs of some sort of conspiracy. Ray, Clube and others should be included here as you have correctly identified but Velikovsky gets quite enough coverage here already I think - you would need to present some sort of evidence of support for him in scientific circles, I can't find any. Mikenorton (talk) 16:23, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: To mention ancient texts you'll need current reliable sources discussing them. It simply isn't true that " most geology or science students these days just rely on wikipedia", they wouldn't get very far if they did because our articles are too basic. I doubt that any editors here identify as 'uniformitarians', that seems to be mainly a misleading label when it's used (probably mainly by 'catastrophists') to describe current thinking and people. Dougweller (talk) 17:07, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems regarding the Catastrophism Article 

message: [Moved from User talk: Hrafn ]
What's your reasoning for dropping a link to an extensive external resource on Catastrophism (both now and in 2008)? kees (talk) 19:28, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links 

message: I removed this:
::An alternative paradigm to the traditional view of catastrophism was proposed as early as the eleventh century by the Persian geologist, Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980-1037), who provided the first uniformatarian explanations for geological processes in The Book of Healing. He recognized that mountains were formed after a long sequence of events.Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield (1965), The Ancestry of Science: The Discovery of Time, p. 64, University of Chicago Press (cf. The Contribution of Ibn Sina to the development of Earth sciences) While discussing the formation of mountains, he explained:

Later in the eleventh century, the Chinese naturalist, Shen Kuo (1031–1095), also recognized the concept of 'deep time'. After The Book of Healing was translated into Latin in the twelfth century, a few other natural philosophers also reasoned in uniformitarian terms. 
The Muslim heritage site is not reliable. Avicenna's theory on the formation of mountains was considered ahead of his time (in 1830) but most of his theories on geology were not. J8079s (talk) 19:36, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:   [[WP:Jagged 85 cleanup]] 

message: I think the article is a great generalization of the topic. There are sold references to back data. Some things that could be changed though are the lead section, structure, and expansion on facts. In the lead section instead of going right into a comparison between Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism add more onto the origins of Catastrophism. Religion had a huge influence on science before the 19th century so the section on creationists needs to be expanded on greatly adding more major specific events in the creationist theory that alludes to why Catastrophism plausible. From what I read in the article it seems as if Georges Cavier is one of the main scientists that have empirical evidence backing Catastrophism. Even though there is a link to the bio page of Cavier there should still be a time period when he lived, where he studied, and more information of his findings, works, and expeditions. After the history section it jumps to current applications. There is a whole chunk of about 100 years of science missing from the description. Understanding Uniformitarianism is key to understanding the history of Catastrophism but instead of throwing ideas about Uniformitarianism in here and there in the article there should be a criticisms section and that is where ideas about Uniformitarianism should be. Lastly the part about moon formation at the end looks like it was just thrown into the bottom of the article. Instead try to rework the portion about the moon in somewhere else because it is a great bit but does not fit where it is.
Lgn006 (talk) 00:12, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overall Review of Article 

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: "The leading scientific proponent of catastrophism in the early eighteenth century was the French anatomist and paleontologist Georges Cuvier." - Cuvier was born in 1769, so how can he possibly have been the leading proponent of catastrophism is the early eighteenth century? - Eroica (talk) 15:06, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Good catch, 18th seems to be simply an error, same ref used in lead for 19th so have changed it. Thanks, dave souza, talk 18:44, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cuvier