Gradualism, from the Latin gradus ("step"), is a hypothesis, a theory or a tenet assuming that change comes about gradually or that variation is gradual in nature and happens over time as opposed to in large steps. Uniformitarianism, incrementalism, and reformism are similar concepts.
Gradualism can also refer to desired, controlled change in society, institutions, or policies. For example, social democrats and democratic socialists see the socialist society as achieved through gradualism.
Centrism is the range of political ideologies that exist between left-wing politics and right-wing politics on the left–right political spectrum. It is associated with moderate politics, including people who strongly support moderate policies and people who are not strongly aligned with left-wing or right-wing policies. Centrism is commonly associated with liberalism, radical centrism, and agrarianism. Those who identify as centrist support gradual political change, often through a welfare state with moderate redistributive policies. Though its placement is widely accepted in political science, radical groups that oppose centrist ideologies may sometimes describe them as leftist or rightist.
Centrist parties typically hold the middle position between major left-wing and right-wing parties, though in some cases they will hold the left-leaning or right-leaning vote if there are no viable parties in the given direction. Centrist parties in multi-party systems hold a strong position in forming coalition governments as they can accommodate both left-wing and right-wing parties, but they are often junior partners in these coalitions and are unable to enact their own policies. These parties are weaker in first-past-the-post voting than proportional representation systems. Parties and politicians have various incentives to move toward or away from the centre, depending on how they seek votes. Some populist parties take centrist positions, basing their political position on opposition to the government as opposed to left-wing or right-wing populism.
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, FRS (14 November 1797 – 22 February 1875) was a Scottish geologist who demonstrated the power of known natural causes in explaining the earth's history. He is best known today for his association with Charles Darwin and as the author of Principles of Geology (1830–33), which presented to a wide public audience the idea that the earth was shaped by the same natural processes still in operation today, operating at similar intensities. The philosopher William Whewell dubbed this gradualistic view "uniformitarianism" and contrasted it with catastrophism, which had been championed by Georges Cuvier and was better accepted in Europe. The combination of evidence and eloquence in Principles convinced a wide range of readers of the significance of "deep time" for understanding the earth and environment.
Lyell's scientific contributions included a pioneering explanation of climate change, in which shifting boundaries between oceans and continents could be used to explain long-term variations in temperature and rainfall. Lyell also gave influential explanations of earthquakes and developed the theory of gradual "backed up-building" of volcanoes. In stratigraphy his division of the Tertiary period into the Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene was highly influential. He incorrectly conjectured that icebergs were the impetus behind the transport of glacial erratics, and that silty loess deposits might have settled out of flood waters. His creation of a separate period for human history, entitled the 'Recent', is widely cited as providing the foundations for the modern discussion of the Anthropocene.
Uniformitarianism, also known as the Doctrine of Uniformity or the Uniformitarian Principle, is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in our present-day scientific observations have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe. It refers to invariance in the metaphysical principles underpinning science, such as the constancy of cause and effect throughout space-time, but has also been used to describe spatiotemporal invariance of physical laws. Though an unprovable postulate that cannot be verified using the scientific method, some consider that uniformitarianism should be a required first principle in scientific research.
In geology, uniformitarianism has included the gradualistic concept that "the present is the key to the past" and that geological events occur at the same rate now as they have always done, though many modern geologists no longer hold to a strict gradualism. Coined by William Whewell, uniformitarianism was originally proposed in contrast to catastrophism by British naturalists in the late 18th century, starting with the work of the geologist James Hutton in his many books including Theory of the Earth. Hutton's work was later refined by scientist John Playfair and popularised by geologist Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology in 1830. Today, Earth's history is considered to have been a slow, gradual process, punctuated by occasional natural catastrophic events.
Centre-right politics is the set of right-wing political ideologies that lean closer to the political centre. It is commonly associated with conservatism, Christian democracy, liberal conservatism, and conservative liberalism. Conservative and liberal centre-right political parties have historically performed better in elections in the Anglosphere than other centre-right parties, while Christian democracy has been the primary centre-right ideology in Europe.
The centre-right commonly supports ideas such as small government, law and order, freedom of religion, and strong national security. It has historically stood in opposition to radical politics, redistributive policies, multiculturalism, illegal immigration, and LGBT acceptance. Economically, the centre-right supports free markets and the social market economy, with market liberalism and neoliberalism being common centre-right economic positions. It typically seeks to preserve the cultural and socioeconomic status quo and believes that changes should be implemented gradually.
In geology, catastrophism is the theory that the Earth has largely been shaped by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope.This contrasts with uniformitarianism (sometimes called gradualism), according to which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, brought about all the Earth's geological features. The proponents of uniformitarianism held that the present was "the key to the past", and that all geological processes (such as erosion) throughout the past resembled those that can be observed today. Since the 19th-century disputes between catastrophists and uniformitarians, a more inclusive and integrated view of geologic events has developed, in which the scientific consensus accepts that some catastrophic events occurred in the geologic past, but regards these as extreme examples of explicable natural processes.
Proponents of catastrophism proposed that each geological epoch ended with violent and sudden natural catastrophes such as major floods and the rapid formation of major mountain chains. Plants and animals living in the parts of the world where such events occurred became extinct, to be replaced abruptly by the new forms whose fossils defined the geological strata. Some catastrophists attempted to relate at least one such change to the Biblical account of Noah's flood.