Evolution obviously required aeons of geologic time and the scientific community, including the great Isaac Newton himself, was committed to the Usher chronology, with its recent special creation and worldwide Flood. These could make little headway, however, as long as the scientists were predominantly creationists. Toward the end of the 18 th century, and especially in the first half of the 19 th century, the ancient pagan evolutionary philosophies began to be revived and promoted by the various socialistic revolutionary movements of the times. Evolution and related naturalistic speculations had been confined largely to the writings of social philosophers and rationalistic theologians. In common with most other scientists of their day, they believed in God and the divine authority of the Bible. These men and the other flood geologists of their day were careful scientists, thoroughly acquainted with the sedimentary rocks and the geophysical processes which formed them. This was the view of Steno, the "father of stratigraphy", whose principles of stratigraphic interpretation are still followed today, and of John Woodward, Sir Isaac Newton’s hand-picked successor at Cambridge, whose studies on sedimentary processes laid the foundation for modern sedimentology and geomorphology. In the early days of geology, especially during the 17 th and 18 th centuries, the dominant explanation for the sedimentary rocks and their fossilized contents was that they had been laid down in the great Flood of the days of Noah.
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