>Interesting over the years how the meaning of uniformitarian has changed to
>encompass the entire range of the catastrophist.
This was a correction of Lyell and Hutton's original uniformitarianism which
went so far as to say that the rates of geological processes had been
constant throughout history. This was the postulation of a perpetual motion
machine which clearly is wrong. Geology accepts catastrophes which we can
see happening or potentially happening. Meteor impacts are a case in point.
I don't think Lyell or Hutton ruled them out in the first place though.
As you are aware, the preferred term today is actualism although many still
use uniformitarianism.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm