In 1789, James Hutton wrote a treatise called *Theories of Earth*, in which he presented the foundational idea of geology. **Uniformitarianism is the idea that present-day processes are the same as those that operated in the geoligic past.** This broke with the prevailing Biblical worldview, which said that only catastrophes could have created the diverse forms that were observed in the world. A century later, William James espoused the same principle for the study of consciousness: > The demand for continuity has, over large tracts of science, proved itself to possess true prophetic power. We ought therefore ourselves sincerely to try every possible mode of conceiving the dawn of consciousness so that it may not appear equivalent to the irruption into the universe of a new nature, non-existent until then. > – William James, The Principles of Psychology, 1890 --- References: [[Reference Notes/Books/Timefulness|Timefulness]] [[Other Minds]]