>In the middle to early part of the 19th century, this was not at all the
>case. The percentages were exactly the opposite, yet diluvialists were
>unable to account for the geologic data in an interventionist paradigm and
>many of the best minds desperately wanted it to be the case. Adam
>Sedgewick's recanted the global flood concept in a presidential address to
>the Geological Society.
How so? In the early 1800's Lyell published his works and established
modern Geology on a firm uniformitarian footing. Before him, in the late
1700's we have the father of geology James Hutton, who unconsciously
paraphrasing 2Pet 3:3, 4, stated that in the history of the world he saw
"no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end" Where is the switch
from diluvial geology to flood geology? If there was a switch that took
place in the ?middle to early? part of the 19th century, I sure missed it.
Geology is from its inception as a science uniformitarianism in outlook.
Sure in the pre-paradigm days there may have been a few catastrophists
around who studied the earth, and as Kuhn points out, there may have been a
few around who maintained a steadfast adherence to their preparadigmic
ideas until they died, but the framework was established by Hutton and
Lyell, and was uniformitarian from its inception, and deliberately so.
>So why were they unable to solve the problem when global flood advocates
>were the majority? Under your ratio suggestion we would have expected
>success at that time.
Preparadigmic activities have never been successful. Had someone come up
with a paradigm within the diluvial model, things might well have turned
out very differently, but who can tell. The paradigm that unified geology
was uniformitarianism. The explanatory power was heady, and geology became
firmly rooted in that mindframe.
Art
http://chadwicka.swau.edu