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Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism: Logical Roots and Current Relevance in Geology

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Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism: Logical Roots and Current Relevance in Geology Downloaded from http://sp.lyellcollection.org/ by guest on September 29, 2021 Catastrophism and uniformitarianism" logical roots and current relevance in geology VICTOR R. BAKER Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721-0011, USA Abstract, Catastrophism in the Earth sciences is rooted in the view that Earth signifies its causative processes via landforms, structures and rock. Processes of types, rates and magnitudes not presently in evidence may well be signified this way. Uniformitarianism, in contrast, is a regulative stipulation motivated by the presumed necessity that science achieves logical validity in what can be said (hypothesized) about the Earth. Regulative principles, including simplicity, actualism and gradualism, are imposed a priori to insure valid inductive reasoning. This distinction lies at the heart of the catastrophist versus uniformitarian debates in the early nine- teenth century and it continues to influence portions of the current scientific program. Uniform- itarianism, as introduced by Charles Lyell in 1830, is specifically tied to an early nineteenth century view of inductive inference. Catastrophism involves a completely different form of inference in which hypotheses are generated retroductively. This latter form of logical inference remains relevant to modern science, while the outmoded notions of induction that warranted the doctrine of uniformitarianism were long ago shown to be overly restrictive in scientific practice. The latter should be relegated solely to historical interest in the progress of ideas. On 4 July 1997, the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft Antarctic ice, was interpreted as showing various made a highly successful landing in the Ares Vallis indicators of possible relic biogenic activity region of Mars. The spectacular images transmitted (McKay et al. 1996). That this meteorite could be back to eager scientists at the Jet Propulsion from Mars is itself a profound legacy of catas- Laboratory, California, were immediately subjected trophic processes at human-centred scales of time to scrutiny. Within days, rather firm genetic hypo- and space, but a fact completely consistent with the theses were presented to the crowds of news physics of impact mechanics (Melosh 1984, 1985) reporters eagerly waiting to share the excitement of and confirmed by geochemical measurement science-in-the-making with millions of non- (McSween 1994). Indeed, the various organic scientists worldwide. geochemical and petrographic interpretations of The interpretation of the Pathfinder landing biogenesis, processes for which we can observe scene (Fig. 1) was completely geological. Large ample extant modern operations, are far more boulders, both angular and subrounded, were seen controversial in interpretation (McSween 1997) to be organized into distinct sedimentary patterns. than the immense meteor impact catastrophe that The smooth slopes of distant hills on the horizon launched pieces of Mars to Earth. were also interpreted. In neither case was the The ease with which these invocations of causative process inferred to be one presently catastrophism flowed for explaining Martian operative on the surface of that planet. Indeed, the features stands in sharp contrast to debates over the processes now acting on the extremely cold, dry origins of Earth's valleys, the genesis of clastic and nearly airless planet had done little to erase the sediments and the nature of fluid-shaped landforms bold imprint of processes last active hundreds of that contributed to the intellectual origins of million years ago. The shaped hills and boulder geology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries trains were clearly analogous to similar features in (Davies 1969). Some of the rhetoric in these the Channelled Scabland region of Earth. The debates led, in the earliest nineteenth century, to the origin of landforms in that region (Baker 1981) is mistaken conceptual association of cataclysmic the same origin proposed for the Martian landscape flooding hypotheses with religious dogma, when seen on television by more than a hundred million the real dogma lay in the arbitrary stipulation of people: catastrophic flooding. attributes for laws, processes and rates actually Only a few months before the Pathfinder operative in nature (Gould 1987). By substituting landing, a meteorite from Mars, collected from theoretical standards of nature for religious ones, BAKER, V. R. 1998. Catastrophism and uniformitarianism: logical roots and current relevance in geology. 171 In: BLUNDELL,D. J. & ScoTt, A. C. (eds) Lvell: the Past is the Key to the Present. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 143, 171-182. Downloaded from http://sp.lyellcollection.org/ by guest on September 29, 2021 172 V.R. BAKER Fig. 1. Mars Pathfinder landing site imaged in July 1997 from the lander spacecraft. This mosaic of images shows boulders in trains and quasi-imbricate arrangement. The hills on the horizon have rounded slopes and scarps that were shaped by large-scale fluid flow. Ancient catastrophic flooding produced both the landforms and the sedimentary patterns. well-meaning geological reformers blinded subse- and immense bars of flood-transported bouldery quent workers with the importance of rare, great gravel (Baker 1981). floods in Earth history. It was not until the Nearly coincident with the attainment of geo- Channelled Scabland debates of the 1920s that logical respectability by Bretz's hypothesis, the cataclysmic flooding re-emerged for consideration Mariner 9 spacecraft produced images of Mars as an important geomorphological process. In those displaying ancient channelways of immense size, debates J Harlen Bretz, the flood advocate, insisted containing nearly the same landform assemblage as upon drawing attention to the flood evidence at the Channelled Scabland (Baker 1982). It was the field sites in eastern Washington State, regardless geological understanding of the ancient Martian of the numerous theoretical arguments to the floods (Baker & Milton 1974; Baker 1982) that led contrary (Baker 1978). The controversy was such to such ease of interpretation for the Pathfinder that Bretz's outrageous hypothesis of cataclysmic landing site. flood origins for scabland terrains of eastern Giant glacial outburst floods are now recognized Washington did not achieve general acceptance as characteristic of the terminal phases for the until the 1960s and 1970s. By then it was realized immense ice sheets that covered much of North that a whole suite of landscape features was present America and Eurasia in the last ice age. Late-glacial that could only be explained by the high-energy age flooding in the Altay Mountains of central Asia physics of immense flood flow (Baker 1973). The has recently been documented to rival or exceed diagnostic landforms included great streamlined that of the Channelled Scabland (Baker et al. 1993). hills, multiple channelways deeply scoured into Landforms formerly attributed to glacial action rock, inner channels headed by great rock cataracts alone are now recognized as the products of close Downloaded from http://sp.lyellcollection.org/ by guest on September 29, 2021 CATASTROPHISM AND UNIFORMITARIANISM 173 association between flooding and glacial ice (Shaw espoused by James Hutton (1726-1797), a finan- 1994). cially successful medical doctor and chemical It is well to remember that all these revelations industrialist. Hutton devoted much of his later life were achieved not by theoretical elegance in to managing his farms and to various writings, explaining the Earth, but by overcoming restrict- including his Theory of the Earth. The latter denied ions posed by existing theories. In their attempts to a role of catastrophic forces by instead invoking the enshrine fundamental principles for their science, action of existing processes as sufficient, acting nineteenth century advocates of a 'more scientific' over long time scales, to shape the surface of the geology confused simplicity of logical expression planet. with intrinsic qualities of nature. The resulting The second of the great theories prevailing in the doctrine, named 'uniformitarianism', asserted that early nineteenth century was that of the German the relatively low-intensity, frequently occurring mineralogist, Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749- processes in evidence today must be the class of 1817). Werner believed that rocks were laid down processes generally operating in the past. This in a primordial ocean, which convulsed and dogma sometimes proved an even greater impedi- subsided both intermittently and catastrophically. ment to understanding the past than the religious Variations in the intensity and nature of processes motivation that it purported to replace. The mis- explained the various succession of strata, precipi- taken need to stipulate attributes for laws, processes tation of crystalline rocks, and the like. The theory and rates actually operative in nature persists in was tied strictly to observed consequences of the science even to this day. Theories, which are presumed processes, which were thought merely to increasingly emphasized in proportion to compu- be much more intense variants of processes that tational power, serve not to tell geomorphologists could be observed today. about Earth. Rather, it is the signs of Earth itself, The Hutton and Werner controversy centred on the dirt, land and rocks, that are interpreted by substantive issues of alternative 'systems' for the geologists, employing, of course,
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