The Collaborative International Dictionary
Catastrophism \Ca*tas"tro*phism\, n. (Geol.) The doctrine that the geological changes in the earth's crust have been caused by the sudden action of violent physical causes; -- opposed to the doctrine of uniformism.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
as a geological or biological theory, 1869, coined by Huxley from catastrophe + -ism.\n\nBy CATASTROPHISM I mean any form of geological speculation which, in order to account for the phenomena of geology, supposes the operation of forces different in their nature, or immeasurably different in power, from those which we at present see in action in the universe.
[T.H. Huxley, "Address" to the Geological Society of London, Feb. 19, 1869]
\nRelated: Catastrophist.Wiktionary
n. (context geology English) The doctrine that sudden catastrophes, rather than continuous change, cause the main features of the Earth's crust
Wikipedia
Catastrophism is the theory that the Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. This was in contrast to uniformitarianism (sometimes described as gradualism), in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, created all the Earth's geological features. Uniformitarianism held that the present is the key to the past, and that all things continued as they were from the indefinite past. Since the early disputes, a more inclusive and integrated view of geologic events has developed, in which the scientific consensus accepts that there were some catastrophic events in the geologic past, but these were explicable as extreme examples of natural processes which can occur.
Catastrophism held that geological epochs had ended with violent and sudden natural catastrophes such as great floods and the rapid formation of major mountain chains. Plants and animals living in the parts of the world where such events occurred were killed off, being replaced abruptly by the new forms whose fossils defined the geological strata. Some catastrophists attempted to relate at least one such change to the Biblical account of Noah's flood.
The concept was first popularised by the early 19th-century French scientist Georges Cuvier, who proposed that new life forms had moved in from other areas after local floods, and avoided religious or metaphysical speculation in his scientific writings.
Usage examples of "catastrophism".
He woke from a confused dream, in which he argued Catastrophism with the Coughing Gent, to hear repeated knocking at his door.
It is enough, for Mallory, that Catastrophism proved a fortunate road to higher geological truth, leading him to his greatest personal triumph: the discovery, in 1865, of continental drift.
Perhaps catastrophism, the search for mathematical certainty, was his way of appeasing the gods, much like the prayers of the Indonesians.
Ideas of catastrophism, previously unquestioned, were quickly relegated to obscurity.
This was enough to revive my interest in the subject of catastrophism generally.
In Britain, the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies was founded under the impetus of Howard Tresman and puts out the journal Chronology and Catastrophism Review, besides hosting a regular program of workshops and conferences.
The new battle became an argument between catastrophism and uniformitarianism—unattractive terms for an important and very long-running dispute.
Catastrophists, as you might expect from the name, believed that the Earth was shaped by abrupt cataclysmic events—floods principally, which is why catastrophism and neptunism are often wrongly bundled together.
Lyell and his adherents didn’t just disdain catastrophism, they detested it.
By the 1980s, catastrophism had been out of fashion for so long that it had become literally unthinkable.
But though Kidd knew a great deal about Sir Claude--a great deal more, in fact, than there was to know-- it would never have crossed his wildest dreams to connect so showy an aristocrat with the newly-unearthed founder of Catastrophism, or to guess that Sir Claude Champion and John Boulnois could be intimate friends.
That very evening, marked by Mr Kidd for the exposition of Catastrophism, had been marked by Sir Claude Champion for an open-air rendering of Romeo and Juliet, in which he was to play Romeo to a Juliet it was needless to name.