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Gradualism is the belief that changes occur, or ought to occur, slowly in the form of gradual steps (see also incrementalism
Incrementalism

Incrementalism is a method of working by adding to a project using many small changes instead of a few large jumps. Wikipedia, for example, illustrates the concept by building an encyclopedia bit by bit, continually adding to it....
)

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Politics

Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behaviour within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporation, academia, and religion institutions....
, the concept of gradualism is used to describe the belief that change ought to be modified in small, discrete increments rather than abrupt changes such as revolution
Revolution

A revolution is a fundamental social change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time....
s or uprising
Rebellion

Rebellion is a refusal of obedience. It may, therefore, be seen as encompassing a range of behaviors from civil disobedience and mass nonviolent resistance, to violent and organized attempts to destroy an established authority such as the government....
s. Gradualism is one of the defining features of political conservatism
Conservatism

Conservatism is a political and social term whose meaning has changed in different countries and time periods, but which usually indicates support for the status quo or the status quo ante....
 and reformism
Reformism

Socialism reformism is the belief that gradual Democracy changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures....
. According to Machiavellian politics, Congressmen are pushed to agree to gradualism.

Martin Luther King, Jr.






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Encyclopedia


Gradualism is the belief that changes occur, or ought to occur, slowly in the form of gradual steps (see also incrementalism
Incrementalism

Incrementalism is a method of working by adding to a project using many small changes instead of a few large jumps. Wikipedia, for example, illustrates the concept by building an encyclopedia bit by bit, continually adding to it....
)

Politics and society

In politics
Politics

Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behaviour within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporation, academia, and religion institutions....
, the concept of gradualism is used to describe the belief that change ought to be modified in small, discrete increments rather than abrupt changes such as revolution
Revolution

A revolution is a fundamental social change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time....
s or uprising
Rebellion

Rebellion is a refusal of obedience. It may, therefore, be seen as encompassing a range of behaviors from civil disobedience and mass nonviolent resistance, to violent and organized attempts to destroy an established authority such as the government....
s. Gradualism is one of the defining features of political conservatism
Conservatism

Conservatism is a political and social term whose meaning has changed in different countries and time periods, but which usually indicates support for the status quo or the status quo ante....
 and reformism
Reformism

Socialism reformism is the belief that gradual Democracy changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures....
. According to Machiavellian politics, Congressmen are pushed to agree to gradualism.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was opposed to the idea of Gradualism as a method of eliminating segregation
Racial segregation in the United States

Racial segregation in the United States, as a general term, included the racial segregation of facilities, services, and opportunities such as housing, education, employment, and transportation along race in the United States lines....
. The government wanted to slowly try to integrate African-Americans and Caucasians into the same society, but many African-Americans believed it was a way for the government to put off actually doing anything about racial segregation:

"This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy." Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream
I Have a Dream

"I Have A Dream" is the popular name given to the Public speaking by Martin Luther King, Jr., when he spoke of his desire for a future where Black people and White , among others, would coexist harmoniously as equals....
 delivered August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC


Geology and biology

In the natural sciences, gradualism is a theory
Theory

For a more detailed account of theories as expressed in formal language as they are studied in mathematical logic see Theory A theory, in the general sense of the word, is an analytic structure designed to explain a set of observations....
 which holds that profound change is the cumulative product of slow but continuous processes, often contrasted with catastrophism
Catastrophism

Catastrophism is the idea that Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope.The dominant paradigm of modern geology, in contrast, is uniformitarianism , in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, create the Earth's appearance....
. The theory was proposed in 1795 by James Hutton
James Hutton

James Hutton Doctor of Medicine was a Scotland geologist, physician, Natural history, chemist and experimental Agriculture. He is considered the father of modern geology....
, a Scottish geologist, and was later incorporated into Charles Lyell
Charles Lyell

Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, Order of the Thistle, Fellow of the Royal Society was a Scotland lawyer, geologist, and protagonist of Uniformitarianism ....
's theory of uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism (science)

Uniformitarianism, in the philosophy of science, assumes that the natural processes that operated in the past are the same as those that can be observed operating in the present....
. Tenets from both theories were applied to biology
Biology

Biology is a branch of the natural sciences concerned with the study of living organisms and their interaction with each other and their environment ....
 and formed the basis of early evolution
Evolution

In biology, evolution is change in the heritability trait of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. These changes are caused by a combination of three main processes: variation, reproduction, and selection....
ary theory.

Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin Royal Society was an English people natural history who realised and presented compelling evidence that all species of life have evolution over time from common descent, through the process he called natural selection....
 was influenced by Charles Lyell
Charles Lyell

Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, Order of the Thistle, Fellow of the Royal Society was a Scotland lawyer, geologist, and protagonist of Uniformitarianism ....
's Principles of Geology, which explained both uniformitarian methodology and theory. Using methodological uniformitarianism, which states that one cannot make an appeal to any force or phenomenon which cannot presently be observed (see catastrophism
Catastrophism

Catastrophism is the idea that Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope.The dominant paradigm of modern geology, in contrast, is uniformitarianism , in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, create the Earth's appearance....
), Darwin theorized that the evolutionary process must occur gradually, not in saltations
Saltation (biology)

In biology, saltation is a sudden change from one generation to the next, that is large, or very large, in comparison with the usual variation of an organism....
, since saltations are not presently observed, and extreme deviations from the usual phenotypic variation would be more likely to be selected against.

Gradualism is often confused with the concept of phyletic gradualism
Phyletic gradualism

Phyletic gradualism is a macroevolution hypothesis rooted in Uniformitarianism . The hypothesis states that species continue to adapt to new challenges over the course of their history, gradually becoming new species....
, a term coined by Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould was a prominent American Paleontology, Evolution, and History of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
 and Niles Eldredge
Niles Eldredge

Niles Eldredge is an United States paleontology, who, along with Stephen Jay Gould, proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972....
 to contrast with their concept of Punctuated equilibrium
Punctuated equilibrium

Punctuated equilibrium is a theory in Evolution which states that most Sexual reproduction species experience little change for most of their geological history, and that when phenotypic evolution does occur, it is localized in rare, rapid events of branching speciation ....
, which is gradualist itself (but accepts that saltation
Saltation (biology)

In biology, saltation is a sudden change from one generation to the next, that is large, or very large, in comparison with the usual variation of an organism....
 can occur, even though it is not a necessary mechanism nor the main point).

Linguistics and language change

In linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
, language change
Language change

Language change is the manner in which the Phonetics, Morphology , Semantics, Syntax, and other features of a language are modified over time. All languages are continually changing....
 is seen as gradual, the product of chain reaction
Chain reaction

A chain reaction is a sequence of reactions where a reactive product or by-product causes additional reactions to take place. In a chain reaction, positive feedback leads to a self-amplifying chain of events....
s and subject to cyclic drift
Drift

Drift is a slow change and may refer specifically to:In the literal sense of a change in position of a body:*Drifting , which is a sport where drivers intentionally induce oversteer, to be judged on their technique...
. The view that creole languages are the product of catastrophism
Catastrophism

Catastrophism is the idea that Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope.The dominant paradigm of modern geology, in contrast, is uniformitarianism , in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, create the Earth's appearance....
 is heavily disputed.