First, I'm glad that Thomas Moore recommended Jim Shea's paper (Shea, J.H.
1982. Twelve fallacies of uniformitarianism. Geology 10, 455-460). It's a
good paper and if you don't have access to it Randy, I'd be happy to mail or
FAX a copy free of charge.
Secondly, I've been reading (for fun) a 1978 (Arno Press, NY) reprint of
Charles Lyell's 1845 book "Travels in North America, in the Years 1841-2; with
Geological Observations on the United States, Canada, and Nova Scotia" and I
found something interesting that ties into this whole discussion.
As an aside, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the
history of geology in the Northeast. Lyell's accounts are quite interesting,
very readable, and full of interesting observations on people and places. He
was clearly a first-rate geologist and paleontologist as well.
Anyway, here's what Lyell said upon visiting Niagara Falls [p. 27]:
"Mr. Bakewell calculated that, in the forty years preceeding
1830, the Niagara had been going back at the rate of about a yard
annually, but I conceive that one foot per year would be a much
more probably conjecture, in which case 35,000 years would have
been required for the retreat of the Falls from the escarpment of
Queenston to their present site, if we could assume that the
retrograde movement had been uniform throughout."
So, here's one of the major early proponents of uniformitarianism applying
the principle to the retreat of the Niagara to see how old it is. But did he
apply the principle of uniformitarianism simplistically, and assume that the
rate of retreat was contstant? Nope. As he continued in the very next
sentence, he stated [p. 27-28]"
"This, however, could not have been the case, as at every step
in the process of excavation the height of the precipice, the
hardness of the materials at its base, and the quantity of fallen
matter to be removed, must have varied. At some points it may
have receeded much faster than at present, at others much slower,
and it would be scarcely possible to decide whether its average
progress has been more or less rapid than now."
How about that! Some 150 years ago, Lyell claimed that:
1. The same processes that act today (erosion by water) operated in
a similar manner in the past.
2. The rates of such processes may have varied considerably.
The rates varied! Now let's see what the infamous YEC Henry Morris (taking
a book off my shelf that I happen to have) once wrote about uniformitarianism
when discussing how geologists use various methods (in addition to radiometric
dating) to come up with an old earth [Morris, H.M. 1974. The Troubled Waters
of Evolution. Creation Life Publishers, San Diego, p. 21]...
"...the assumption of uniformitarianism must be applied, by which
the process is assumed always to operate at the same uniform rate,
throughout all ages..."
That's why many geologists think YECs all full of it.
Thirdly, Lyell said something else interesting when visiting a famous site
in Nova Scotia containing fossil trees (the extinct Carboniferous genus
_Sigillaria_) which are found fossilized in an upright condition (the infamous
"polystrate" fossils creationists so love to misrepresent). These fossils
were caused by the periodic influxes of large amounts of sediments (small
"catastrophies") which quickly buried standing trees. Lyell recognized
[p. 160]:
"The evidence of the growth of more than ten forests of fossil
trees superimposed one upon the other..."
How about that... Here we have an early famous uniformitarianist recognizing
episodic catastrophic events in the earth's history.
- Steve.
-- Steven H. Schimmrich Callsign KB9LCG s-schim@uiuc.edu Department of Geology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 245 Natural History Building, Urbana, IL 61801 (217) 244-1246 http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/s-schim Deus noster refugium