plutonism

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The doctrines of the Plutonists.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The theory, early advanced in geology, that the successive rocks of the earth"s crust were formed by igneous fusion; -- opposed to the Neptunian theory.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun The old geological theory that the rocks forming the Earth were formed in fire by volcanic activity, with a continuing gradual process of weathering and erosion, then deposited on the sea bed, re-formed into layers of sedimentary rock by heat and pressure, and raised again.