Chapter 3 Armando Peralta

Since the previous chapter talked about extinction, of course the next chapter will have to be a about the first theories regarding extinction. The two main theories were catastrophism and uniformitarianism. Catastrophism was proposed by William Whewell and it states that in the history of earth there have been very catastrophic events which cause many species to go extinct. On the other hand there is uniformitarianism, which was proposed by Charles Lyell and stated that rather than extinction being instantaneous, it was a gradual process. Uniformitarianism influenced the ideas of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. The theme of science being a process is again shown in this chapter as scientist use new ideas to come up with new theorize to explain how those ideas may be possible.They elaborate upon each other's theories.