General theory that suggests that certain phenomena on the Earth are the result of catastrophic events. For example, the Biblical Flood is responsible for sedimentary rock formations and the extinctio [..]

as a geological or biological theory, 1869, coined by Huxley from catastrophe + -ism. By CATASTROPHISM I mean any form of geological speculation which, in order to account for the phenomena of geology [..]

the belief that landscape is the result of sudden, catastrophic events, rather than slow, day-to-day processes. Outmoded, but recognized as a contributory factor.

One side of a nineteenth-century geological argument about the forces that have shaped the earth. Catastrophism proposes that the earth was shaped by sudden, cataclysmic upheavals (such as the "Flood" or "Deluge" of Noah in the Bible) and that the laws of nature in the periods between these cataclysms are not the same, that is, [..]

The geological doctrine that agents of geological change have been more dramatic in the past than in the present; contrasted with uniformitarianism.