Darwinism and Gradualist Geology Rose Together. And Both May Be Wrong.

The Darwinian model of evolution and the gradualist model of geology did not emerge independently - they rose together, Randall argues, and in doing so reinforced each other's blind spots. Geological gradualism held that landscape change was the product of almost imperceptible incremental processes - one grain of sand, one drop of water at a time, accumulating across vast timescales. Darwinian evolution applied the same logic to biology - changes between generations so small as to be undetectable, requiring hundreds or thousands of generations to produce meaningful difference. Each model made the other seem more plausible, and together they established a framework in which slow, uniform progress from simplicity to complexity became the default assumption underlying both earth science and biology.

What that framework quietly discarded, Randall notes, was the concept of cycles. A model built entirely on linear gradualism has no natural place for periodic catastrophic interruption - for the punctuated, reset-and-rebuild pattern that Randall argues the physical evidence consistently supports. The result was a scientific worldview that could describe the direction of change but not its rhythm - one that acknowledged complexity increasing over time while systematically underweighting the catastrophic events that have repeatedly erased what complexity had already achieved and forced the process to begin again.