catastrophism
the doctrine that certain vast geological changes in the earth's history were caused by catastrophes rather than gradual evolutionary processes.
Origin of catastrophism
1Other words from catastrophism
- ca·tas·tro·phist, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use catastrophism in a sentence
In May, he published his fifth book, Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong.
Virtually none of the disastrous results foretold by declinists and catastrophists materialized in 2013.
The one point the catastrophists and the uniformitarians agreed upon, when this Society was founded, was to ignore it.
Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews | Thomas Henry HuxleyWhy, your disciples in a slow and creeping manner beat all the old Catastrophists who ever lived.
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I (of II) | Charles DarwinHence it maintained an opposition to the catastrophists, and in this, it may be said, was actually not true to its own principles.
History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume II (of 2) | John William Draper
In this paper he boldly attacked the tenets of the Catastrophists.
Darwin and Modern Science | A.C. Seward and Others
British Dictionary definitions for catastrophism
/ (kəˈtæstrəˌfɪzəm) /
an old doctrine, now discarded, that the earth was created and has subsequently been shaped by sudden divine acts which have no logical connection with each other rather than by gradual evolutionary processes
Also called: neo-catastrophism a modern doctrine that the gradual evolutionary processes shaping the earth have been supplemented in the past by the effects of huge natural catastrophes: Compare uniformitarianism, gradualism (def. 2)
Derived forms of catastrophism
- catastrophist, noun
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Cultural definitions for catastrophism
[ (kuh-tas-truh-fiz-uhm) ]
A theory holding that changes in the Earth take place swiftly and irreversibly. (Contrast gradualism.)
Notes for catastrophism
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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