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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flood geology | 2/12 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_geology | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:19:57.530514+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Theories of the Earth === In his influential Principles of Philosophy of 1644, René Descartes applied his mechanical physical laws to envisage swirling particles forming the Earth as a layered sphere. This natural philosophy was recast in biblical terms by the theologian Thomas Burnet, whose Sacred Theory of the Earth published in the 1680s proposed complex explanations based on natural laws, and explicitly rejected the simpler approach of invoking miracles as incompatible with the methodology of natural philosophy (the precursor to science). Burnet maintained that less than 6,000 years ago the Earth had emerged from chaos as a perfect sphere, with paradise on land over a watery abyss. This crust had dried out and cracked, and its collapse caused the biblical deluge, forming mountains as well as caverns where the water retreated. He made no mention of fossils but inspired other diluvial theories that did. In 1695, John Woodward's An Essay Toward a Natural History of the Earth viewed the Genesis flood as dissolving rocks and soil into a thick slurry that caught up all living things, which, when the waters settled, formed strata according to the relative density of these materials, including fossils of the organisms. When it was pointed out that lower layers were often less dense and forces that shattered rock would destroy organic remains, he resorted to the explanation that a divine miracle had temporarily suspended gravity. William Whiston's New Theory of the Earth of 1696 combined scripture with Newtonian physics to propose that the original chaos was the atmosphere of a comet with the days of creation each taking a year, and the Genesis flood had resulted from a second comet. His explanation of how the flood caused mountains and the fossil sequence was similar to Woodward's. Johann Jakob Scheuchzer wrote in support of Woodward's ideas in 1708, describing some fossil vertebrae as bones of sinners who had perished in the flood. A skeleton found in a quarry was described by him in 1726 as Homo diluvii testis, a giant human testifying to the flood. This was accepted for some time, but in 1812 it was shown to be a prehistoric salamander.
=== Beginnings of modern geology === The modern science of geology developed in the 18th century; the term "geology" was popularised by the Encyclopédie of 1751. Steno's categorisation of strata was expanded by several geologists, including Johann Gottlob Lehmann who believed that the oldest mountains had formed early in the Creation, and categorised as Flötz-Gebürge stratified mountains with few ore deposits but with thin layers containing fossils, overlain by a third category of superficial deposits. In his 1756 publication he identified 30 different layers in this category which he attributed to the action of the Genesis deluge, possibly including debris from the older mountains. Others including Giovanni Arduino attributed secondary strata to natural causes: Georg Christian Füchsel said that geologists had to take as standard the processes in which nature currently produces solids, "we know no other way", and only the most recent deposits could be attributed to a great flood. Lehman's classification was developed by Abraham Gottlob Werner who thought that rock strata had been deposited from a primeval global ocean rather than by Noah's flood, a doctrine called Neptunism. The idea of a young Earth was further undermined in 1774 by Nicolas Desmarest, whose studies of a succession of extinct volcanoes in Europe showed layers which would have taken long ages to build up. The fact that these layers were still intact indicated that any later flood had been local rather than universal. Against Neptunism, James Hutton proposed an indefinitely old cycle of eroded rocks being deposited in the sea, consolidated and heaved up by volcanic forces into mountains which in turn eroded, all in natural processes which continue to operate.
=== Catastrophism and diluvialism === The first professional geological society, the Geological Society of London, was founded in 1807. By this time, geologists were convinced that an immense time had been needed to build up the huge thickness of rock strata visible in quarries and cliffs, implying extensive pre-human periods. Most accepted a basic time scale classifying rocks as primitive, transition, secondary, or tertiary. Several researchers independently found that strata could be identified by characteristic fossils: secondary strata in southern England were mapped by William Smith from 1799 to 1815.
==== Cuvier and Jameson ==== Georges Cuvier, working with Alexandre Brongniart, examined tertiary strata in the region around Paris. Cuvier found that fossils identified rock formations as alternating between marine and terrestrial deposits, indicating "repeated irruptions and retreats of the sea" which he identified with a long series of sudden catastrophes which had caused extinctions. In his 1812 Discours préliminaire to his Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupeds put forward a synthesis of this research into the long prehistoric period, and a historical approach to the most recent catastrophe. His historical approach tested empirical claims in the biblical text of Genesis against other ancient writings to pick out the "real facts" from "interested fictions". In his assessment, Moses had written the account around 3,300 years ago, long after the events described. Cuvier only discussed the Genesis flood in general terms, as the most recent example of "an event of an [sic] universal catastrophe, occasioned by an irruption of the waters" not set "much further back than five or six thousand years ago". The historical texts could be loosely related to evidence such as overturned strata and "heaps of debris and rounded pebbles". An English translation was published in 1813 with a preface and notes by Robert Jameson, Regius Professor of Natural history at the University of Edinburgh. He began the preface with a sentence which ignored Cuvier's historical approach and instead deferred to revelation: