Geology. (Abstracts-2003 Annual Meetings)‪.‬

George McCready Price and the Founders of the Law of Faunal Succession. Ralph Stearley, Calvin College, Department of Geology, Geography & Environmental Studies, Grand Rapids, MI 49546 George McCready Price is credited with launching the twentieth-century movement known as "flood geology' (Numbers 1992). His long publishing career spanned over 50 years. Price accomplished most of his geological research by reading reports and textbooks authored by others; he lacked formal geological training and had little field experience. Price reasoned from his armchair that formations could not be universal in geographic scope and hence their combined faunas were being illegitimately extrapolated to global significance. In particular, Price (The New Geology, 1923) accused William Smith and Georges Cuvier of extrapolating a "crude rule of thumb" that may or may not have been of local use, to the scope of a "cosmogony.' Price further belittled Smith as "ignorant." Price, however, exhibited a profound ignorance of the history of field-oriented empirical research, which led to the generalization of the law of faunal succession. This ignorance and associated armchair cynicism were bequeathed to the flood geo logy movement which blossomed in the last half of the twentieth century.