This persistence of regularities is sometimes called Uniformitarianism or the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature.

Uniformitarianism was originally proposed in contrast to catastrophism, which states that the distant past " consisted of epochs of paroxysmal and catastrophic action interposed between periods of comparative tranquility " Especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most geologists took this interpretation to mean that catastrophic events are not important in geologic time ; one example of this is the debate of the formation of the Channeled Scablands due to the catastrophic Missoula glacial outburst floods.

* The assumption is that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now, have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe: Uniformitarianism.

The principle of Uniformitarianism states that the geologic processes observed in operation that modify the Earth's crust at present have worked in much the same way over geologic time.

Uniformitarianism describes an Earth created by the same natural phenomena that are at work today.

* The geological Principle of Uniformitarianism applies to soils, i. e., pedogenic processes active in soils today have been operating for long periods of time, back to the time of appearance of organisms on the land surface.

Uniformitarianism has been a key principle of geology and virtually all fields of science, but naturalism's modern geologists, while accepting that geology has occurred across deep time, no longer hold to a strict gradualism.

Uniformitarianism was formulated by Scottish naturalists in the late 18th century, starting with the work of the geologist James Hutton, which was refined by John Playfair and popularised by Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology in 1830.

* Uniformitarianism discussed at PhysicalGeography. net

* Uniformitarianism discussed at the Geography section of About. com

He saw landforms as supporting Lyell's Uniformitarianism which explained features as the outcome of a gradual process over huge periods of time, and quickly showed a gift for theorising about the geology he was examining.

Reduced to its simplest terms, it is an assumption of a collective duty to compensate for the inability of individuals to cope with the rigors of the era.

The implicit assumption of this response is that history is reversible.

The basic truth in the reactionary response is to be found in its realistic assumption of the primacy of the real over the ideational.

But this truth is distorted by its extreme application: the assumption of the separate existence of tradition.

Here we may observe that at least one modern philosophy of history is built on the assumption that ideas are the primary objectives of the historian's research.

Since the great flood of these dystopias has appeared only in the last twelve years, it seems fairly reasonable to assume that the chief impetus was the 1949 publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, an assumption which is supported by the frequent echoes of such details as Room 101, along with education by conditioning from Brave New World, a book to which science-fiction writers may well have returned with new interest after reading the more powerful Orwell dystopia.

The defect of these proposals is in their attempt to outrun history and their assumption that because something may be desirable it is also possible.

The threshold mass is derived from the momentum threshold with the assumption of a mean impact velocity of Af in the U.S. work and Af in the U.S.S.R. work.

The mass scale used in Table 5-1 was derived on the assumption that the motion of the glowing trail is related to the momentum transfer to the trail by the meteorite, permitting the calculation of the mass if the velocity is known ( Cook and Whipple, 1958 ).

If ( remember this is an assumption ) the minimal polynomial for T decomposes Af where Af are distinct elements of F, then we shall show that the space V is the direct sum of the null spaces of Af.

Thus in the three-dice example Af, Af, and the independence assumption imply that the probability that the three dice fall ace, not-ace, ace in that order is Af.

This contradicts the preceding observations, and so, under the assumption of this paper, we must reject the possibility that **zg is a Af curve on a quadric surface.

The existence of conflict and of vigorous union demand for an increase in money wages does not contradict the assumption that the union is willing to settle for cost-of-living and productivity-share increases as distinct from a cost-raising increase in the basic wage rate.

The underlying assumption, of course, is that only sight and touch enable us, in any precise and fully dependable way, to locate objects in space beyond us, the other senses being decidedly inferior, if not totally inadequate, in this regard.

This is an assumption with which few would be disposed to quarrel.

-- On the basis of a differentiability assumption in function space, it is possible to prove that, for materials having the property that the stress is given by a functional of the history of the deformation gradients, the classical theory of infinitesimal viscoelasticity is valid when the deformation has been infinitesimal for all times in the past.

This conclusion is dependent on the assumption that traditional sex mores will continue to sanction both premarital chastity as the `` ideal '', and the double standard holding females primarily responsible for preserving the ideal.

What I find appalling -- and really dangerous -- is the American assumption that the Negro is so contented with his lot here that only the cynical agents of a foreign power can rouse him to protest.

Let me pass over the trip to Sante Fe with something of the same speed which made Mrs. Roebuck `` wonduh if the wahtahm speed limit '' ( 35 m.p.h. ) `` is still in ee-faket ''.

The content is not the same, however: rather than individual security, it is the security and continuing existence of an `` ideological group '' -- those in the `` free world '' -- that is basic.

The stink is all the same to me, but I really think they can make one another out blindfolded ''.

I knew that a conversation with the author would not settle such questions, because a man is not the same as his writing: in the last analysis, the questions had to be settled by the work itself.

At the same time, he is plainly sympathetic, clearly friendly.

How is the beat poet to achieve unity of form when he is at the same time engaged in a systematic derangement of senses.

Robert Penn Warren puts it this way in `` Brother To Dragons '': `` The recognition of complicity is the beginning of innocence '', where innocence, I think, means about the same thing as redemption.

One is that they were established, or gained eminence, under pressure provided by these same immigrants, from whom the old families wished to segregate their children.

At the same time, because the personal code of the detective coincides with the legal dictates of his society, because he likes to catch criminals, he is in middle class eyes a virtuous man.

The same command is repeated as many times as there are levels in rank from general to corporal.

And it is clearly argued by Lord Percy of Newcastle, in his remarkable long essay, The Heresy Of Democracy, and in a more general way by Voegelin, in his New Science Of Politics, that this same Rousseauan idea, descending through European democracy, is the source of Marx's theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

It is to say rather, I believe, that he has brought to bear on the history, the traditions, and the lore of his region a critical, skeptical mind -- the same mind which has made of him an inveterate experimenter in literary form and technique.

At the same time, I am aware that my recoil could be interpreted by readers of the tea leaves at the bottom of my psyche as an incestuous sign, since theirs is a science of paradox: if one hates, they say it is because one loves ; ;

This is a problem to be solved not by America alone, but also by every nation cherishing the same ideals and in position to provide help.

No matter how earnest is our quest for guaranteed peace, we must maintain a high degree of military effectiveness at the same time we are engaged in negotiating the issue of arms reduction.

It is not the same dress as the one on her manikin in the Smithsonian.

She had stood at the bottom of the stairs, as usual, when Mrs. Coolidge came down, in the same dress that is now in the Smithsonian, to greet her guests.

In this domain the simple fact of coexistence in the same local, national, and world community is enough to guarantee that we cannot refrain from having some effect, large or small, upon Gentile-Jewish relations.

The symposium provides an opportunity to confront the self with specific statements which were made at particular times by identifiable communicators who were addressing definite audiences -- and throughout several hundred pages everyone is talking about the same key symbol of identification.

It is true that this distinction between style and idea often approaches the arbitrary since in the end we must admit that style and content frequently influence or interpenetrate one another and sometimes appear as expressions of the same insight.