Introduction
Part I. Catastrophism: The Story of its Decline and Fall ¿ and Resurrection
Section 1. From Prehistory to 1899: Catastrophism Dominates for Centuries, but Then Gives Way to Gradualism: 1. Mythology, religion and catastrophism
2. Hutton: fact and fiction about the origins of modern gradualism
3. Cuvier and Lamarck: choosing between extinction and evolution
4. Natural theology and Noah's Flood: the high-water mark of catastrophism
5. Catastrophism, uniformitarianism and idealist philosophy
6. Lyell triumphant: gradualism dominates geology
7. Darwin and evolution
8. After the Origin: the triumph of evolutionary gradualism
Section 2: From 1900 to 1979: Gradualism Reigns Supreme: 9. Neo-Darwinism: the Modern Synthesis
10. Phyletic gradualism
11. Gradualist perceptions of human evolution
12. Heretical catastrophists
13. Atlantis: rational and irrational theories of a 'lost' civilisation
14. Evolutionary mass extinctions and neocatastrophism
15. Punctuated equilibrium: a new evolutionary perspective
16. Human evolution: gradual or punctuational?
Section 3. From 1980 to the Present Day: Catastrophism Strikes Back: 17. Evolution evolving
18. Into the new millennium: evolution today
19. Chaos in the Solar System
20. Catastrophes on Earth
21. The death of the dinosaurs: iridium and the K-T extinctions
22. The continuing K-T debate
23. Mass extinctions and the course of evolution
Part II. Catastrophes and the History of Life on Earth: 24. Extinctions large and small
25. Cyclic processes and mass extinctions
26. The uncertain origins of humankind
27. Ice ages in the Pleistocene epoch
28. Modern views of Atlantis
29. Natural catastrophes and the rise and fall of civilisations
30. Conclusions
References
Index.
