Uniformitarianism

High school (ages 12+)
Environment & Earth

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/uniformitarianism

1. What is the related topics?
2. Why do scientists think the same rules that work today also worked in the past?
3. Who first talked about uniformitarianism and what did he see?

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the related topics?Geology, Earth Science, Scientific Methodology, Deep Time, Gradualism, Catastrophism
2. Why do scientists think the same rules that work today also worked in the past?Because scientists believe that the basic rules of nature never change, they can use what we observe now to guess what happened long ago.
3. Who first talked about uniformitarianism and what did he see?James Hutton, called the “Father of Modern Geology,” first talked about it. He watched how the Scottish landscape slowly changed and said that Earth’s history is much longer than people thought.

Uniformitarianism: The scientific doctrine that the same natural laws and processes have operated throughout Earth's history.
Catastrophism: A historical theory proposing that Earth's geological features were shaped by sudden, violent, and short-lived events.
Gradualism: The concept that geological change occurs through slow, continuous processes over vast periods.
Deep Time: The immense span of geological history, measured in millions or billions of years.