Uniformitarianism

Uniformitarianism holds that the same natural processes observable today, deposition, erosion, uplift, volcanism and the rest, have operated in essentially the same way throughout Earth's history, so that the planet's past can be read from causes still in operation in the present, a method often summarized as the present is the key to the past. James Hutton set out its theoretical basis in his Theory of the Earth, presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1785 and published in full in 1788 and 1795, concluding from the evidence that Earth's history showed no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end. The idea remained a minority position against catastrophism, which explained Earth's features mainly through sudden violent upheavals, until Charles Lyell's three volume Principles of Geology, published between 1830 and 1833, argued the case at length and brought it to dominance in nineteenth century geology.