Catastrophism is a doctrine advanced by Baron Georges Cuvier, a French zoologist. It theorized that a series of sudden, short-lived, often widespread/worldwide disasters shaped the biological and physical history of the Earth. These catastrophes or disasters are no longer in action and are what sculptured physical Earth and resulted in the extinction and reappearance of fauna and flora.
This doctrine and neptunism attempted to reconcile or fit Earth processes into the short geologic time scale proposed by scriptures and religious scholars. Therefore, they were popular at one point in time. Later, they were abandoned as field evidence and observations couldn’t support them, shifting uniformitarianism.
However, modern geologists and scientists are actualists who acknowledge catastrophism’s role in shaping the Earth, including life, while holding to uniformitarianism.
Learn more about the doctrine of catastrophism, including its meaning, conception, and historical background. We will also tackle the proponents, opponents, controversies, modern views, and neocatastrophism.
Historical background
Perhaps one of the key influences of the catastrophism is a publication by James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of all Ireland, in the mid-1600s. He was a reputed biblical scholar who devised a chronology of human history on Earth, deducing that the Earth was less than 6000 years old, being created in 4004 B.C.E.
His ideas were accepted widely by not only religious leaders but also by scientific scholars. Even the Bible adopted his chronology on its margins. Ussher’s calculation of the age of Earth influenced how many scientists viewed the Earth’s process and features.
Also, Thomas Burnet inspired catastrophism in his work Sacred History of the Earth (1681). He suggested that the powerful action of water sculptured Earth, forming mountains, fissures, valleys, and other landforms from a perfectly round world that God created. He was referring to the Noachian floods.
Therefore, the need to reconcile Earth’s History with literal Scriptural interpretation gave rise to theories like catastrophism and neptunism. Many naturalists favored these theories, and the impact of early geologists like Nicolaus Steno didn’t have much effect.
Perhaps Steno’s laws or principles, like superposition, inclusions, original horizontality, lateral continuity, or cross-cutting relationships, could better explain geological features and processes, including relative ages. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
By the mid-1800s, neptunism support had gone, and catastrophism doctrine dominated the thinking of most geologists in Europe. It fitted well within the scriptural time scale, and many naturalists supported it.
What is catastrophism?
Baron Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), a French zoologist and naturalist, postulated the doctrine of catastrophism, which states that the physical and biological Earth was shaped by sudden, short-lived, and widespread or global catastrophes and disasters, in 1810. He wanted to explain what caused Earth’s large geological and biological changes. Later, in 1832, William Whewell called this doctrine catastrophism.
This theory meant that life on Earth and various geologic features and structures occurred from abrupt, brief, widespread disasters, some with global magnitudes from unknown causes, but no longer operate. Therefore, deep oceans, mountains, canyons, igneous intrusions, unconformities, faults, or evolution of life on Earth, including extinction and emergence of new organisms, were due to these catastrophes.
In this theory, Cuvier considered six major catastrophes that conveniently coincided with the six days of creation in the Bible. Each geological epoch ended with a disaster that rapidly changed the Earth, including exterminating any present life where it occurred. After the catastrophe, new organisms (fauna and flora) appeared.
The last catastrophe, “the last universal inundation,” seemed like the Biblical deluge that appealed to naturalists and theologians. However, Cuvier didn’t refer to the Bible or the Noachian floods. He avoided metaphysical or religious speculation in his work.
It was Robert Jameson and William Buckland who created the notion. However, later, Buckland ditched the flood theory, opting for Louis Agassiz’s glaciation theory.
Lastly, it was realized more than six catastrophes would be necessary for accounting for Earth’s history, necessitating more.
The conception of catastrophism
The initial works of Cuvier made him a reputed comparative anatomist and later a respected paleontologist of his time. He and his colleague Alexander Brongniart validated Smith’s law of faunal succession at Paris Basin. Also, they recognized some larger rock strata had unconformities with a gap in fossil succession.
Cuvier also noted that all the 23 species he restored were extinct, i.e., had no living analogs. To explain the missing gap fossils and lack of living analogs, he chose the argument that organisms were extinct/disappeared/destroyed over modified in form or moved to another climatic zone. However, he didn’t say the origin of the new organism or the cause of catastrophes and why they kept changing, making people assume it was an act of God, including floods.
The destruction, Cuvier said, was due to widespread and sometimes global, brief devastating catastrophes that sculptured the Earth and resulted in the extinction of all living organisms, and new ones (fauna and flora) emerged. These destructions included floods and violent crustal upheavals.
He considered destruction a general revolution of nature, the last catastrophe favored by the scriptures. Although utter destruction was not scripturally captured, his work seemed to defend the Noachian deluge, which he called ‘the last universal inundation.’
Cuvier and two other deluge defenders, Jean-André Deluc and Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu, believed the surface of Earth had undergone a sudden revolution that occurred in not over 6000 years, with Cuvier seeing it as the ‘the last universal inundation.’
Lastly, Cuvier disagreed with transformism since there were no intermediate stages in fossils. He noted that cephalopods’ ancestors could not result in fish.
Examples of catastrophism
A good example is the Cretaceous–Paleogene (66 million years ago) extinction that killed 75%, including all dinosaurs, due to two catastrophic events, i.e., massive volcanism and an asteroid impact (Luis Alvarez impact event).
Another example was by J Harlen Bretz (1882-1981), an American geologist. While advocating for flooding, he noted that channeled for scabland terrains in Eastern Washington were from catastrophic floods. However, his hypothesis was unaccepted until the 1960s and 1970s when features revealed only a high-intensity Ice Age flood caused the diagnostic landforms.
Proponents of catastrophism
Cuvier was the leader of catastrophists, especially after his Essay on the Theory of the Earth (1813), which talked about catastrophes, including floods, as what shaped the biological and physical Earth. Some of his supporters were William Buckland ( Lyell’s teacher), Adolphe Brongniart, and Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873), a British geologist.
Sedgwick believed historical events on Earth were because of catastrophes, as Cuvier did. Also, he opposed the gradualism of Darwin and Lyell. His reason for opposition to Darwin was the lack of involvement of a god/creation in how life and the Earth evolved.
Other proponents were Charles Dessalines d’Orbigny, Jean-Baptiste Élie de Beaumont, and Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz. However, some of these supporters had reservations. For instance, d’Orbigny accepted the concept of stratigraphy from catastrophism but didn’t attribute the breaks to any metaphysical importance.
Also, Abraham Gottlob Werner, a Neptunist, used catastrophism to explain this theory, where floods were the catastrophe.
Lastly, Immanuel Velikovsky attempted through his Velikovskyism theory in the 1950s to support catastrophism using planet Venus as a comet from Jupiter and to align it with biblical plagues in Egypt where the Sun stood still and met a vigorous rejection from many scientists.
Opponents
The most critical opponents of catastrophism were Charles Lyell, a Scottish geologist who laid the foundation for modern stratigraphy and sedimentology, and James Hutton (1726-1797), a Scottish geologist and farmer who devised the principle of uniformitarianism.
Through observing the Scottish coast, Hutton concluded that ongoing things like erosion, weathering, wave action, transportation, deposition, and volcanism, given an extended time, would result in the various geological structures and features. Therefore, Earth was not static but dynamic.
However, his observations didn’t get much traction until Lyell popularized them. Hutton was not a good writer. Also, some people failed to understand his ideas, and his thoughts were poorly disseminated.
What triggered Lyell’s object? The reasons were many. For instance, in his observation at Mount Etna in Italy, he noted a layer with fossils of living species buried at the base covered by layer by layer of lava and an uplifted young stratum with mostly fossils of extinct species. From this and other sightings, he concluded that Earth was immensely old and not what catastrophists or neptunists suggested.
His other field evidence against catastrophism was an interbed of tertiary fluvial deposits with lava flow and lacustrine sediments at Auvergne, France, and another one where gravels of tertiary fluvial had marine fossils near Nice. They made him (Lyell) seriously doubt catastrophism. Why? Because these formations were incompatible with this theory and seemed to occur gradually over time.
His approach that emphasized processes working for a long time appealed to even Charles Darwin.
Besides Hutton and Lyell, many other people opposed catastrophism. Some notable ones being Constant Prévost, Jean Baptiste Julien d’Omalius d’Halloy, and André Étienne d’Audebert de Férussac. Even Johann Wolfgang von Goethe thought Cuvier’s idea was devoid of philosophy and wouldn’t give depth to his students.
Other opponents were Jules Desnoyers, Marcel de Serres, and Ami Boué. Ami Boué said most geologists rejected or disagreed with Cuvier’s ideas. Later, after Cuvier’s death, he radically refuted the concept of a universal Deluge.
Catastrophism vs. uniformitarians Controversies – Who won?
A great debate emerged between the uniformitarians and catastrophists, rivaling plutonists and neptunists. Its content was sudden catastrophes vs. gradual change over a long geological period as forces shaping life and the Earth’s surface.
The catastrophists’ main argument was the lack of living analogs of some fossils found in strata. This, they pointed was evidence of short-lived catastrophes that resulted in the disappearance, destruction, or extinction of these organisms and the reappearance of new fauna and floras.
On the other hand, the uniformitarians opined the abrupt changes in fossils in strata were due to either missing strata (unconformities) or geologic rock record imperfection. They insisted that gradual changes, which took vast timelines, were the main drivers of the Earth’s physical and biological history. Therefore, the fossil break wasn’t necessarily sudden, and you would find each species’ ancestors inside beneath layers.
The uniformitarians had a scientific reason/viewpoint and field observations or evidence. Thus, they won against catastrophism. This victory made uniformitarianism the main opinion for historical geologists during much of the 19th century and up to the mid-20th century.
However, the triumph of uniformitarianism wasn’t much to the scientific idea of catastrophism that Cuvier, d’Orbigny, Brongniart, and Agassiz postulated. The main casualties were theologian catastrophists who embraced the doctrine since it seemed somewhat in line with the scriptures. Their understanding was more of a theology-driven appeal rather than a scientific viewpoint.
Modern geologists/scientists’ point of view
Modern geologists and scientists believe in actualism. While upholding uniformitarianism as per Hutton’s and Lyell’s view, they agree that some catastrophic processes or events without modern comparison play an important role in sculpturing the Earth. Such catastrophes include huge flood-basalt volcanic eruptions or continental glaciation (as per Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz). Examples are Luis Alvarez’s impact event and J Harlen Bretz’s hypothesis we saw.
As you can see, the actualism approach contrasts thorough catastrophists’ emphasis on extinction and reappearance, short rapid geologic time intervals, and short-lived global disasters.
Neocatastrophism – a modern view
Over the past few decades, neocatastrophism has opined that some seldom (low-frequency events) events like supernova gamma-ray bursts, enormous volcanic eruptions, and asteroid impacts may have resulted in sudden extinctions. Such hypotheses include Luis Alvarez’s impact event and moon formation theory.
Neocatastrophists try to explain the geological history of the Earth using pulsating mountain building, sea level rise and fall, climatic shifts, evolution, and extinction of organisms applying natural forces only. They don’t involve metaphysics or religious opinions.
This is contrary to what geomorphologists think. They believe high frequency (often) low magnitude events are often the main cause of physical and biological change on Earth.