So pervasive are myths about geology that a term, geomythology, has been coined to identify such myths. Other aspects of the subject, particularly the challenge to mythological explanations put forward by earth scientists in modern times, are examined here.Īll religious explanations of the planet's origins can be called myths, which is not necessarily a pejorative term: a myth is simply a story to explain how something came into being. This topic, along with the scientific challenge to those early accounts of Earth's formation, is discussed in considerable detail within the essay Earth, Science, and Nonscience. HOW IT WORKS Explaining Originsįor thousands of years, humans were content to rely on religiously inspired stories, rather than scientific research, to provide an explanation regarding Earth's origins. In fact, the planet is very old -so old that all of human history is almost inconceivably short in comparison. Discredited at the time, catastrophism later gained acceptance, though this did not lead to support for the concept of a young Earth.
HISTORICAL GEOLOGY TIMELIME SERIES
Opposing uniformitarianism was catastrophism, or the idea that Earth was formed in a short time by a series of cataclysmic events.
A breakthrough came with the introduction of uniformitarianism, a still-influential principle based on the idea that the geologic processes at work today have always been at work. This debate pitted adherents of religion, which seemed to require a very young Earth, against adherents of science. Today they are of equal importance, but in the early modern era, geologists were most focused on topics related to historical geology, in particular, Earth's age and the means by which Earth was formed. These two principal branches of geology are known, appropriately enough, as physical geology and historical geology. Geologists are concerned primarily with two subjects: Earth's physical features and the study of the planet's history.
0 kommentar(er)
