{"id":10408,"date":"2025-09-10T11:34:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T16:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/?p=10408"},"modified":"2025-09-10T11:34:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T16:34:08","slug":"are-steady-state-systems-ahistorical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/2025\/09\/are-steady-state-systems-ahistorical\/","title":{"rendered":"Are “steady-state” systems ahistorical?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019m currently back reading \u201cEarth\u2019s Deep History\u201d by Martin Rudwick<\/a>, and once again I am being annoyed by what seems to me to be a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of what is meant by \u201csteady state\u201d in the context of Earth history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s certainly possible that in a contest between me and one of the pre-eminent historians of geology, I\u2019m missing something, but here\u2019s my problem: he argues that a \u201csteady state\u201d Earth is by definition ahistorical: it has \u201cno real history\u201d. I think this is incorrect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what Rudwick says about the theory of the Earth proposed by Georges Leclerc, Comte de Buffon<\/a>, who anticipated James Hutton in arguing that Earth\u2019s past history can be explained by processes we can observe acting in the present, such as the erosion and deposition of sediment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cHe portrayed the Earth as a scene of unceasing gradual change, but change without overall direction\u2026a \u201dsteady state\u201d<\/em> of dynamic equilibrium. It was therefore an Earth without any real history\u201d [p. 63]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For Hutton, he says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cHutton\u2019s steady-state Earth\u2026 [with] successive \u201cworlds\u201d formed an endless sequence in time, but not a real history<\/em> of the Earth, any more than the repeated orbits of the planets consisted of a real history of the Solar System.\u201d [p. 72]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So what is meant by \u201cdynamic equilibrium\u201d, or \u201csteady state\u201d? It describes a system that is doing work – using energy, moving stuff around, forming new substances in chemical reactions – but when aggregated over the whole system<\/em>, the effects of all these processes  balance out. I liked to use this cartoon in my lectures to illustrate this point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cartoon<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So, in Buffon and Hutton\u2019s conception, over long stretches of time the processes that destroy and create elevated land surfaces balance out, such that the relative proportions of land and ocean on the whole Earth stay constant over time. If you were given two pictures of the Huttonian Earth from space, you would be hard-pressed to identify their sequence or temporal spacing.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if you are embedded within<\/em> that system, things do change nonetheless! The geography of the Huttonian Earth – where exactly the land and ocean is actually distributed – changes over time. So even in an eternal steady state, any particular point on the Earth does have a real and unique history. Sometimes that point is elevated and being eroded; sometimes it is submerged and accumulating eroded debris; sometimes it is being deformed and uplifted. And we can read this history – at places like Hutton\u2019s unconformity<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps this is a little pedantic – I\u2019m not arguing with what seems to be Rudwick\u2019s broader contrast of early narratives of Earth history that viewed the planet as an eternal, self-regulating machine, and those where there is a clear narrative progression of states from the planet\u2019s creation to the present day. In fact, there\u2019s an interesting discussion to be had here about how it\u2019s impossible to reconcile these two narratives when your systems metaphors are relatively simple machines like a steam engine. A much deeper understanding of complex systems needed to be developed before we could see that the Earth can be a largely self-governing system that can, nonetheless, change over time (a more modern picture of Earth history is as a series of successive \u201csteady states\u201d that get periodically disrupted and reshaped by internal and external prods).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also possible that there is some technical meaning of \u201chistory\u201d here that I am missing. But rightly or wrongly, it is creating a bit of mental friction between me and this book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m currently back reading \u201cEarth\u2019s Deep History\u201d by Martin Rudwick, and once again I am being annoyed by what seems to me to be a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of what is meant by \u201csteady state\u201d in the context of Earth … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4,903,28,17],"tags":[926,927],"class_list":["post-10408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deep-time","category-geology","category-history-of-science","category-past-worlds","category-ranting","tag-geophilosophy","tag-james-hutton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10410,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10408\/revisions\/10410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}