Acho que esse tópico já vinha sendo deturpado para "perguntas geológicas que não merecem um tópico próprio", então vai outra. Na verdade sobre história da geologia.
Nem sei bem como colocar em pergunta, é algo que vi em algum livro velho perdido ou algum recôndito mais obscuro da internet, porque procurei uma vez ou outra e não consegui encontrar informações. Uma espécie de "geologia bíblica", mas não criacionista no sentido que o criacionismo tem hoje, mas de quando o "criacionismo" ainda era "mainstream". Já faziam uma distinção de eras em estratos, mas tentavam encaixar num contexto bíblico, meio como "era Adâmica" para o Holoceno e outras coisas assim.
Mas nem sei o quanto isso foi "mainstream". O que me recordo da história das coisas é que alguns geólogos pioneiros (Como William Smith?) eram criacionistas, até quando já começava a aparecer alguma concorrência pré-darwininana aqui e ali, mas mesmo assim, o seu trabalho acabou servindo de base para a teoria da evolução.
... apesar de óbvio, acho que só agora me ocorreu ver "history of geology" na wikipedia:
[...] By the 1770s two feuding theories with designated followers were established. These contrasting theories explained how the rock layers of the Earth’s surface had formed. The German geologist, Abraham Werner proposed the theory that the Earth’s layers, including basalt and granite, had formed as a precipitate from an ocean that covered the entire Earth, referring to the Deluge. [...]
In early nineteenth-century Britain, catastrophism was adapted with the aim of reconciling geological science with religious traditions of the biblical Great Flood. In the early 1820s English geologists including William Buckland and Adam Sedgwick interpreted "diluvial" deposits as the outcome of Noah's flood, but by the end of the decade they revised their opinions in favour of local inundations.[21] Charles Lyell challenged catastrophism with the publication in 1830 of the first volume of his book Principles of Geology which presented a variety of geological evidence from England, France, Italy and Spain to prove Hutton’s ideas of gradualism correct.[17] [...]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geology#18th_century
Acho que era esse outro William então:
[...] This was published in 1820 as Vindiciæ Geologiæ; or the Connexion of Geology with Religion explained, both justifying the new science of geology and reconciling geological evidence with the biblical accounts of creation and Noah's Flood. At a time when others were coming under the opposing influence of James Hutton's theory of uniformitarianism, Buckland developed a new hypothesis that the word "beginning" in Genesis meant an undefined period between the origin of the earth and the creation of its current inhabitants, during which a long series of extinctions and successive creations of new kinds of plants and animals had occurred. Thus, his catastrophism theory incorporated a version of Old Earth creationism or Gap creationism. Buckland believed in a global deluge during the time of Noah but was not a supporter of flood geology as he believed that only a small amount of the strata could have been formed in the single year occupied by the deluge.[3]
From his investigations of fossil bones at Kirkdale Cave, in Yorkshire, he concluded that the cave had actually been inhabited by hyaenas in antediluvian times, and that the fossils were the remains of these hyaenas and the animals they had eaten, rather than being remains of animals that had perished in the Flood and then carried from the tropics by the surging waters, as he and others had at first thought. [...]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Buckland#Rejection_of_flood_geology_and_Kirkdale_Cave
Bem, acho que quase respondi a mim mesmo, já me dou por satisfeito com o trecho sublinhado.
Achava que tivesse havido uma transição mais gradual dessas perspectivas.
Achava também que não havia essa associação geral sugerida/que eu entendi aí de dilúvio como mecanismo formador dos estratos, achava que isso fosse invenção mais recente, e que antes se pensasse apenas que tivessem formado ao longo de séculos, ou milhares de anos.
