History Of The World Part III

So the lion and the dolphin had come to opposite views (across the channel, for one); the French had the placid sediments of Paris (where else?) and the aqueous dominated. The British had been at the highlands (these sometimes more unicorn than lion) and Italian volcanoes, probably for a change of weather. This account simplifies or distorts; Neptunism actually originated in Germany. And some Neptunists did end up in Edinburgh. Moreover, it was an Italian studying volcanoes in Italy who booted Plutonism—but see how easy it is to cast this as English versus the French? There was a notable political contrast at the time; certain ideas in France had proven too radical (the reign of terror, the calendar system, etc) so a more conservative approach was supported in England, which bled into the sciences. This was Burkean conservatism, not the modern things that happen to have the same name. Radical change also found support in Catastrophism, assisted by various stories of floods, or to solve the Neptunist problem of where did the magic water go? What happened to that process? Not all flood myths are negative, by the way. Consider Egypt and the Nile.

Even more complicated was when both the Neptunists and Plutonists used the same formation to support their contrary views.

> He had squatted for hours in the courtyard of the philosophers, listening to the arguments of theologians and teachers, and come away in a haze of bewilderment, sure of only one thing, and that, that they were all touched in the head.

> — Howard, E., 1933, "The Tower of the Elephant"

And unto this debate came Charles, destined to publish "Principles of Geology" to some renown. Lyell favored uniformitarianism, and perhaps due to a brief stint as a lawyer provided mountains of evidence to support his case. It is quite the dry read. A certain Darwin was much impressed. This perhaps swung the needle too far over to gradual change, as there are sometimes catastrophes: the Missoula floods come to mind, which was hard to get that past the gradualists, especially when there are ripple marks only visible from a plane. More recently Gould and others have gone in for punctuated equilibria: things are mostly boring and maybe change a little, but then sometimes stuff breaks. As in geology, politics.

No boom today. Maybe boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.

> Hallam, A., 1990. "Great Geological Controversies," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 2, number 9780198582199.

> Lyell, C., 1854. Principles of Geology: or, the Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants Considered as Illustrative of Geology. D. Appleton & Company.

Or try the Project Gutenberg EBook #33224.

> Montgomery, D.R., 2012. The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood. WW Norton & Company.

references.bib

P.S. the Western tradition leans towards the law of the excluded middle, which can lead to binary thinking, rooting for the right team. Other traditions hold to true, false, neither true nor false, or both true and false. Or could have a little slidy scale instead of a toggle and then a UI library that you need to link against and fastcgi support and