Abstract
The entire history of tectonics - the branch of geology that studies the structure and structural evolution of the Earth?evolution of the Earth's rocky cover - is that of the conflict between two " " schools of thought, each guided by a " " guiding image: the " catastrophist " school, which believes in a regular, deterministic universe with catastrophic behavior ; and the " uniformitarist " school, which believes in an irregular (and in principle indeterministic) universe with uniform behavior. This story is told here " backwards ", from the 20th century to the pre-Socratics.
This opening lecture has been published under the title " Another history of tectonics ".
