Catastrophism

Origins of Catastrophism

The Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet (1720–1793) was the precursor of catastrophism. In his work Principles of Catastrophism, he suggested that all living things have been destroyed by catastrophes at periodic intervals throughout the earth's history and they themselves accounted for fossils. Bonnet was the first to use the term evolution in a biological sense. He believed that a new creation follows a catastrophic event in which new life forms could elevate one level in the Great Chain of Being (the influential concept that all of nature, from nonliving matter to sophisticated organisms to spiritual beings, is arranged in an unbroken physical and metaphysical series or hierarchy).

Catastrophism, however, is generally associated with the great French anatomist and paleontologist Baron Georges Cuvier (1769–1832). Cuvier is credited with applying his anatomical principle of the “correlation of parts” in the systematic study of fossil vertebrates to arrive at his most memorable discovery: that species of animals have indeed become extinct. Cuvier reconstructs the skeleton of fossil tetrapods (mainly large mammals) from isolated bones by gathering together and re-creating lost skeletal elements, given that the anatomical structure of every organ is functionally related to all other organs in the body of an animal because animals interact with their environment, resulting [Page 150]in the functional and structural characteristics of their organs. He concluded that these large terrestrial vertebrates had become extinct, based on the fact that their skeletons are very different from those of present-day species, which were very well known on all continents; and given the unlikelihood of discovering new ones. To explain the patterns of extinction and faunal succession in the fossil record and the alternations of marine and continental sedimentary strata that he himself had registered, Cuvier argued that sudden land upheavals and inundation of low-lying areas by the sea might have been responsible for the most recent extinctions in Eurasia. He viewed these revolutions as naturally recurring events, subsequent to long intervals of stability during the history of life on Earth, and this led him to enumerate successive ages down into the sequence of strata indicated by the fossil animals that they contain. Timewise, the history of the earth had been indefinitely long. At the same time, Cuvier expresses the directionality of geological history. Following the Wernerian system, he argues in favor of systematically changing mineralogy throughout time, and for a pattern of decreasing effect or intensity of catastrophes, as an original universal ocean gets smaller. Thus catastrophic dynamics and directionality are interconnected in a distinctive and comprehensive view.

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