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Geology

By the nineteenth century Geology was transitioning from a hobbyist activity of naturalist enthusiasts to a discipline of trained scholars. During this time wide-ranging theories developed within the discipline, with practitioners framing positions, forming acaedmic camps and resolving contested issues.

A Brief History of Earth History

Pre-eighteenth century geometry passed through several waver of dispute with inter-related themes:

  • Biblical vs. Secular: disputing the source of knowledge

    The debate foucssed on a move from Biblical exegisis to empirical study as the dominant epistemic route.

    This does not mean that Biblical influence was rejected in some punctuating event. Rather, there were intital moves to find natnatural corroboration for textual interpretations and religious positions.

  • Castrophists vs. Uniformists: fast or slow history change

    The debate lay over the pace of the Earth's evolution. Catastrophists (sometimes but not only with the Bible as testement) looked to extreme natural events as prime shapers of the Earth's history: volcanoes, earthquakes, fires and floods. In contrast Uniformists saw incremental (often immediately impercetpible) actions as causing change over relatelvely vast periods of time: deposition and errosion.

  • Vulcanists vs. Plutonists: the source of change

    The debate lay over the mechanisms of the Earth's evolution. Vulcanists considered heat the most likely source of change (often at a relatively fast pace). Plutonists saw water as the source of change.

As the discipline developed scholars could take various combinations of positions, however a few proponents had especially effective impact on the field with important legacy.

James Hutton (1726-1797)

The Earth as a stable, dynamic system. Processes of errosion are balanced by processes of deposition and lifting of rocks above the oceans and back to face weathering.

As the system is stable and the processes act cotemporaneously and indefinitely. This effectively excludes the possiblility of locating the temporal position of the Earth on a timeline (as the patterns of destruction and creation are identicle over cycles), or a direction of evolution on Earth as processes are balanced. The Earth therefore has an indefinite age with an effectively infinite temporal horizon behind and before it.

Hutton's deist position was secularly popularised by the mathematician and astronomer John Playfair.

Charles Lyell (1797-1875)

The past looks like the present. In order to understand the processes which governed the evolution of the Earth to it's current state, the current processes of change must be investigated.

Using observation of the present mechanisms of change, their propoensity and intensity a model of previous development can be derived. This places a timescale on the cycles of errosion and deposition even if the beginning or end of the process is unknown.

Lyell's approach to geology influenced Charles Darwin as he sought to understand the previous development of biological systems using current observations as a guide.