Cataclysm

Cataclysm, an inundation or deluge, which in the Stoic cosmogony (based upon that of the Egyptians and resembling that of the early Brahminical writings) was believed to destroy the world alternately with the ekpyresis, or destruction by fire. The belief in the necessity of such sudden and universal convulsions to explain geological phenomena was not abandoned until Lyell in the present century had enforced the uniformitarian teaching of Hutton and Playfair.