UC Irvine

Several early-literate traditions that have come down to us include some view of star formation. That of the Babylonians (and of the Old Testament Jews which derives from the Babylonian) take star formation to have been a single event, part and parcel with the formation of earth, sun, planets, and whatever else exists. Greek mythology, on the other hand, describes a series of events, deriving from interactions between the Gods and mankind. Egyptian pharaohs could join the stars (presumably happy events), while the Chinese tradition expected changes in the heavens normally of unpleasant purport. This separation of views between "long ago, when conditions were very different" (catastrophism) and "ongoing, hence amenable to study" (uniformitarianism) continued until the middle of the 20th century, and we explore some of the events that led to mainstream opinion switching back and forth and to the gradual convergence to the on-going point of view. © 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.