Gradualism vs Catastrophism

[HysteryDiagnosis]

http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/00current.htm


Thus, the extinction of the dinosaurs is said to have taken place over 135 million years ago. However, the popular notion that the geologic column represents vast periods of time is being questioned by a number of geologists who realize that it most likely results from a series of catastrophic events.

Nicolaus Steno is often said to be the father of geology. His "principle of superposition" influences geologists to this day, even though it was formulated in the late 1600s. In many ways it seems to be completely straight forward, but only now is it recognized that it was not based on experiments but on field observation.

"At the time when any given stratum was being formed, all the matter resting upon it was fluid, and, therefore, at the time when the lower stratum was being formed, none of the upper strata existed."

In February 2000, Guy Berthault wrote a paper in which he described several experiments that analyzed the hydraulic processes involved with sedimentary layering. His conclusions were subsequently published in Lithology and Mineral Resources, Vol. 37, No. 5. Under conditions of constant flow rate and a continuous supply of particles, he discovered that a mixture of coarse and fine particles would separate into thin laminations.

[SheilaT]

1. The whole gradualism idea has long since

abandoned in geology.

And evolution is by many thought to proceed in fits and starts, and is called punctuated equilabrium.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. Thank you for not being one of those, and thank you for revealing that

punctuated equilibrium is now the accepted view.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. I have been picking at this and am intrigued by some of the stuff coming out of

this arena.

http://www.mythopedia.info/
The study of historical information about the natural world is useful in a variety of ways. It is of interest in its own right, facilitating our understanding of past cultures and their outlook on the world. This is especially felt in cases where recent discoveries concerning the plasma universe shed fresh light on historical data that had previously been inscrutable. On a deeper level, a study of historical information about the natural world also helps to clarify the nature and origin of religion as a whole. Conversely, historical sources have much to contribute to modern science, as they can complement the scientific reconstruction of the past, specifically the recent history of planet Earth.


http://www.mythopedia.info/episto.html
In conclusion, geophysical and plasma-physical models of earthquakes, lightning and aurorae are falsifiable exponents of hard science; our comparative analysis of traditional cosmologies and myths, partly resulting in our reconstruction of a near-universal template of creation mythology, is a falsifiable exponent of ‘soft science’; and the interdisciplinary hypothesis that many creation myths can be explained in terms of past geophysical and atmospheric events, as a theory of past events, is neither conclusively falsifiable nor conclusively verifiable, but is a historical model, of a scientific character, that must be graded relative to other theories of myth according to probability. The plasma-physical model of creation mythology and art-historical data, such as geometric petroglyphs, is simply a working hypothesis for a large set of ancient data that we consider the most convincing, the most complete and the most economic theory of the nature of traditional mythology in general.

This position is not fundamentally different from the work of archaeoastronomers who ‘reconstruct’ past observations of comets and meteor showers on the basis of textual records. In each case, the impetus to produce a ‘scientific’ model is given by historical data, including human artefacts or writings.

[MineralMan]

2. Woo.

But that site's a barrel of laughs. Thanks for the link. My comic relief fix was overdue.

[sudopod]

3. "135 million years ago"

No.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Tertiary_extinction_event

[MineralMan]

4. Wait...I think they measure time differently at the site

where this came from. They measure lots of things differently over there. You should go have a look. I almost fell on the floor, I laughed so hard.

It's a great satire site, for sure. It's just that some of the people there don't know they're on a satire site, I think. Or something like that.