Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism Today, Modern Scientists Understand

Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism

Today, modern scientists understand that the Earth is billions of years old, they have a basic understanding of how the Earth was formed and how it developed over the eons that it has existed. However, this was not always the case and until the late 1800's, most scientists had no idea of the age of the Earth or how it had changed over time. But in the late 1700's a Scottish scientist named James Hutton carefully observed the world around him and came to the conclusion that the sedimentation observed in bedrock must take place at a very slow rate of speed and must be made up of "materials furnished from the ruins of former continents." ("James Hutton") This idea has been called "Uniformitarianism" and for its development, Hutton has been awarded the title of the "Founder of Modern Geology."

Hutton's ideas were in sharp contrast to what was believed in regard to the age of the Earth. Since the mid-1600's most people believed in a theory developed by an Anglican Archbishop named James Ussher which proposed that the Earth was created in 4004 B.C.. Catastrophism, as this idea was called, proposed that the many geologic features observed in nature were the result of various catastrophes, or "sudden and often worldwide disasters of unknowable causes that no longer operate." (Lutgen, 2011, p.239) With this theory, Ussher attempted to fit the world that he observed into the pages of the Bible, which stated exactly how the world was supposed to have been created. Using the Bible as a guide, Ussher calculated that the world must have been created in 4004 B.C., and he used this as the basis of his development of a theory of nature that would fit into that timeframe.

While Ussher's Catastrophism used the Bible as a basis of the development of an age for the Earth, Hutton's Uniformitarianism stated that "the physical, chemical, and biological laws that operate today must have also operated in the geologic past." (Lutgen, 2011, p.239) Ussher's theory relied on catastrophes which had unknown causes and were no longer operating today, but Hutton's idea was that there were no sudden disasters that shaped the Earth, just a long period of time combined with the natural forces that are observable today. With the development of Uniformitarianism, there was no longer any need for the unknown causes of periodic worldwide disasters, instead the world could be observed, data collected and extrapolated, and an age of the Earth could be calculated at millions, perhaps billions of years.