catastrophism (3 facts) - Nineteenth-century hypothesis that depicted the many changes evinced by the geological record as having resulted from cataclysms occurring during a relatively brief period of history.
causality (3 facts) (causation) - The doctrine that every new situation must have resulted from a previous state. Causation underlay the original atomic hypothesis of the Greeks, and was popular in classical physics. It is eroded in quantum mechanics and has, in any case, never been proved essential to the scientific world view. See chance, determinism.
determinism (1 kind, 4 facts) - The doctrine that all events are the predictable effects of prior causes.
empiricism (2 facts) - An emphasis on sense data as a source of knowledge, in opposition to the rationalist belief that reasoning is superior to experience.
materialism (3 facts) - Belief that material objects and their interactions constitute the complete reality of all phenomena, including such seemingly insubstantial phenomena as thoughts and dreams. Compare spiritualism.
Occam's Razor (5 facts) - Any hypothesis should be shorn of all unnecessary assumptions; if two hypotheses fit the observations equally well, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be chosen.
uniformitarianism (3 facts) - The hypothesis that the extensive changes in the earth, as evinced in the geological record, have resulted, not from massive catastrophes, but from the slow operation of wind, weather, volcanism, and the like over many millions of years.
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