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Revisiting Clarence King’s "Catastrophism and Evolution" (1877)

Niles Eldredge

Biological Theory > 2019 > 14 > 4 > 247-253

Published comments by American scientists on Darwin’s evolutionary theory are rather rare in the latter half of the 19th century. Clarence King, the founding director of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1879, and an experienced field geologist, focused on the relation between Darwin’s evolutionary concepts and the larger context of Hutton/Lyell’s uniformitarianism versus Cuvier’s catastrophism in his...

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APOCALYPSES NOW: MODERN SCIENCE AND BIBLICAL MIRACLES: THE BOYLE LECTURE 2018

Mark Harris

Zygon® > 53 > 4 > 1036 - 1050

I explore an intriguing area that has crept under the radar of today's science‐and‐theology conversation, namely, scientific studies of the big miracle and catastrophe stories of the Bible (e.g., Noah's flood, or the plagues of Egypt). These studies have proposed naturalistic explanations for some of the most spectacular and unlikely of the biblical miracles. While the scientists believe their naturalistic...

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Morphology, diet, and stable carbon isotopes: On the diet of Theropithecus and some limits of uniformitarianism in paleoecology

Antoine Souron

American Journal of Physical Anthropology > 166 > 1 > 261 - 267

Geladas were long supposed to be the only living primates feeding almost entirely on graminoids and accordingly display dramatic dental and manual adaptive traits. A recent study of Theropithecus gelada, the first in a relatively undisturbed habitat, revealed a more diverse diet, also incorporating large quantities of forbs. The peculiar adaptive traits of T. gelada are also observed in extinct Theropithecus...

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Reconciling the community with a concept—The uniformitarian principle in the dendro-sciences

Martin Wilmking, Tobias Scharnweber, Marieke van der Maaten-Theunissen, Ernst van der Maaten

Dendrochronologia > 2017 > 44 > C > 211-214

The uniformitarian principle is one of the most important foundations of all dendro- and paleo-sciences. Without it, no inferences about the past can be made. However, the use of this principle in our community is not consistent and partially incorrect, with the main confusion relating to the understanding of the “uniformitarian principle” as somehow implying a stable relationship between climate...

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The new nature: Limitations and prospects of the paleoenvironmental tradition in biogeography in the 21^st century

Glen M. MacDonald

The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien > 61 > 1 > 41 - 51

Paleoenvironmental research is an important component of biogeography. The profound environmental changes wrought by human activity over the past 300 years challenge the previous focus on past “natural” systems and the use of past environmental conditions to anticipate future anthropogenic environmental changes. In many cases, due to profound environmental changes brought on by humans, the past may...

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Pollen-climate relationships in time (9 ka, 6 ka, 0 ka) and space (upland vs. lowland) in eastern continental Asia

Fang Tian, Xianyong Cao, Anne Dallmeyer, Yan Zhao, more

Quaternary Science Reviews > 2017 > 156 > C > 1-11

Temporal and spatial stability of the vegetation–climate relationship is a basic ecological assumption for pollen-based quantitative inferences of past climate change and for predicting future vegetation. We explore this assumption for the Holocene in eastern continental Asia (China, Mongolia). Boosted regression trees (BRT) between fossil pollen taxa percentages (Abies, Artemisia, Betula, Chenopodiaceae,...

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Ethnographic analogy, the comparative method, and archaeological special pleading

Adrian Currie

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A > 2016 > 55 > C > 84-94

Ethnographic analogy, the use of comparative data from anthropology to inform reconstructions of past human societies, has a troubled history. Archaeologists often express concern about, or outright reject, the practice—and sometimes do so in problematically general terms. This is odd, as (or so I argue) the use of comparative data in archaeology is the same pattern of reasoning as the ‘comparative...

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Reviewing the term uniformitarianism in modern Earth sciences

Marco Romano

Earth-Science Reviews > 2015 > 148 > C > 65-76

Uniformitarianism is a classical term of the geological sciences, coined in 1832 by Whewell to indicate a specific part of Lyell's hypothesis. However, over the years uniformitarianism has been used with different meanings, finally becoming synonymous with the entire theoretical system proposed by Lyell in his Principles. The popularity of this term and its frequently kaleidoscopic usage in the literature...

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A question of uniformitarianism: Has the geological past become the key to humanity’s future?

Jonathan D. Paul

Anthropocene > 2015 > 9 > Complete > 70-74

The acceptance of the Anthropocene as a new unit of geological time presents challenges for uniformitarian geologists. The principle of uniformitarianism, and relative merits of uniformitarian concepts in general, are subject to fierce debate. While the present may hold the key to the past, it is increasingly difficult to make accurate, credible, and useful inferences of future behaviour using the...

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Uniformitarianism, earth system science, and geology

Victor R. Baker

Anthropocene > 2014 > 5 > Complete > 76-79

If logic is viewed as a normative science of right reasoning, then various forms of uniformitarianism introduced in the late 18th and 19th centuries were logically flawed at their inception. As noted by William Whewell in 1833, a priori metaphysical assertions about nature are always highly suspect parts of scientific reasoning. Thus, the extension of such presumptions to predictive Earth systems...

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W obronie uniformitaryzmu

Bruce L. Gordon

Filozoficzne Aspekty Genezy > 2014 > 11 > 133-149

Naukę uprawia się w zgodzie z założeniem niezawodnej regularności zjawisk świata fizycznego. Przyjmuje się, że świat ma strukturę przyczynową, którą można badać i rzetelnie poznać za pośrednictwem eksperymentów, obserwacji i hipotez naukowych. Co do tego nie ma wątpliwości. Pozostaje jednak problem uzasadnienia — zasadniczego dla heurystycznej użyteczności nauki — metafizycznego i metodologicznego...

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A critical framework for the assessment of biological palaeoproxies: predicting past climate and levels of atmospheric CO₂ from fossil leaves

Gregory J. Jordan

New Phytologist > 192 > 1 > 29 - 44

Contents SummaryThis review uses proxies of past temperature and atmospheric CO₂ composition based on fossil leaves to illustrate the uncertainties in biologically based proxies of past environments. Most leaf‐based proxies are geographically local or genetically restricted and therefore can be confounded by evolution, extinction, changes in local environment or immigration of species. Stomatal frequency...

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Charles Darwin and marine biology

Philip S. Rainbow

Marine Ecology > 32 > s1 > 130 - 134

In a celebration of the 200th anniversary of his birth in 1809, this short essay explores the influence of marine biology on Charles Darwin, and vice versa. Darwin made his first forays into the world of marine biology as a medical student in Edinburgh from 1825 to 1827. He came under the influence there of the Lamarckian Robert Grant, and developed an understanding of the simple organisation of the...

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Just Methodology? A Review of Archaeology’s Debts to Michael Schiffer

Diane Gifford-Gonzalez

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory > 2011 > 18 > 4 > 299-308

Michael Schiffer’s Behavioral Archaeology is one of several moves in mid- to late twentieth century archaeology toward actualistically based, detailed materials analysis with the aim of developing uniformitarian principles to apply to archaeological cases. Substantial parallels exists between Schiffer’s agenda and its products and those of at least some zooarchaeologists and taphonomists, including...

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Methodological recommendations for ungulate mortality analyses in paleoanthropology

Henry T. Bunn, Travis Rayne Pickering

Quaternary Research > 2010 > 74 > 3 > 388-394

Age profiling of fossil faunal samples relies on the correlation of animal tooth-wear patterns with life history stages, but the criteria used to infer these stages are not necessarily valid. Here we redefine some commonly used prey age classes, such as “juvenile,” “prime-age adult,” and “old adult,” based on the variable characteristics of tooth wear that we have observed in different ungulate size...

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Bovid mortality profiles in paleoecological context falsify hypotheses of endurance running–hunting and passive scavenging by early Pleistocene hominins

Henry T. Bunn, Travis Rayne Pickering

Quaternary Research > 2010 > 74 > 3 > 395-404

The world’s first archaeological traces from 2.6 million years ago (Ma) at Gona, in Ethiopia, include sharp-edged cutting tools and cut-marked animal bones, which indicate consumption of skeletal muscle by early hominin butchers. From that point, evidence of hominin meat-eating becomes increasingly more common throughout the Pleistocene archaeological record. Thus, the substantive debate about hominin...

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Tracking the rise of neocatastrophism

Nick Marriner, Christophe Morhange, Stefan Skrimshire

Global and Planetary Change > 2010 > 74 > 1 > 43-48

Although it is acknowledged that there has been an exponential growth in neocatastrophist geoscience inquiry, the extent, chronology and origin of this mode have not been precisely scrutinized. In this study, we use the bibliographic research tool Scopus to explore ‘catastrophic’ words replete in the earth and planetary science literature between 1950 and 2009, assessing when, where and why catastrophism...

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Design, science and naturalism

David Deming

Earth-Science Reviews > 2008 > 90 > 1-2 > 49-70

The Design Argument is the proposition that the presence of order in the universe is evidence for the existence of God. The Argument dates at least to the presocratic Greek philosophers, and is largely based on analogical reasoning. Following the appearance of Aquinas' Summa Theologica in the 13th century, the Christian Church in Europe embraced a Natural Theology based on observation and reason that...

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THE BASIC THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS OF CHARLES LYELL'S 'PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY' (1830-1833).

J. Gegotek

Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki > 2008 > 53 > 3-4 > 227-257

The aim of the paper is a reconstruction of basic ontological assumptions revealed in Charles Lyell's 'Principles of Geology'. The most important of them was the principle of uniformitarianism. Unfortunately, Lyell never gave a precise and unambiguous formulation of the principle, and, as a consequence, opinions about its meaning are discrepant. Analysis of Lyell's reasoning revealed that he treated...

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The lights of other days

Virginia Trimble

New Astronomy Reviews > 2006 > 50 > 1-3 > 13-18

The concept of first lights can be thought of as the most recent iteration in an extended interplay between the idea that the world around us can be explained in terms of processes that are still going on and amenable to examination (“uniformitarianism”) and the idea that many important things happened only long ago when the universe was very different (“catastrophism”). As is usually the case in...

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Search results

Revisiting Clarence King’s "Catastrophism and Evolution" (1877)

APOCALYPSES NOW: MODERN SCIENCE AND BIBLICAL MIRACLES: THE BOYLE LECTURE 2018

Morphology, diet, and stable carbon isotopes: On the diet of Theropithecus and some limits of uniformitarianism in paleoecology

Reconciling the community with a concept—The uniformitarian principle in the dendro-sciences

The new nature: Limitations and prospects of the paleoenvironmental tradition in biogeography in the 21^st century

Pollen-climate relationships in time (9 ka, 6 ka, 0 ka) and space (upland vs. lowland) in eastern continental Asia

Ethnographic analogy, the comparative method, and archaeological special pleading

Reviewing the term uniformitarianism in modern Earth sciences

A question of uniformitarianism: Has the geological past become the key to humanity’s future?

Uniformitarianism, earth system science, and geology

W obronie uniformitaryzmu

A critical framework for the assessment of biological palaeoproxies: predicting past climate and levels of atmospheric CO₂ from fossil leaves

Charles Darwin and marine biology

Just Methodology? A Review of Archaeology’s Debts to Michael Schiffer

Methodological recommendations for ungulate mortality analyses in paleoanthropology

Bovid mortality profiles in paleoecological context falsify hypotheses of endurance running–hunting and passive scavenging by early Pleistocene hominins

Tracking the rise of neocatastrophism

Design, science and naturalism

THE BASIC THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS OF CHARLES LYELL'S 'PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY' (1830-1833).

The lights of other days

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