Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 103

hero of geology—a status won by wresting this discipline from the
domination of vacuous, armchair, theologically tainted speculation, and
establishing it as a modern science by hard reason based on empirical
observation from the field. Consider, as we have in previous chapters, the
assessment of Sir Archibald Geikie:
With unwearied industry he marshalled in admirable order all the
observations that he could collect in support of the doctrine that the present is
the key to the past. With inimitable lucidity he traced the operation of
existing causes, and held them up as the measure of those which have acted
in bygone time . . . Not only did he refuse to allow the introduction of any
process which could not be shown to be a part of the present system of
nature, he would not even admit that there was any reason to suppose the
degree of activity of the geological agents to have ever seriously differed
from what it has been within human experience. (1905, 403)
If Geikie's Lyell accurately depicts the man himself, we face quite a
conundrum of historical interpretation: why, in heaven's name, was the hero
of rational empiricism engaging in reveries about returning ichthyosaurs and
future pterodactyls right in the heart of the great work that established
geology by eschewing fatuous speculation? Was Lyell merely providing
some comic relief, following the principle of necessary variety known to
every great dramatist? Do his returning ichthyosaurs function like the
gravediggers contemplating Yorick's skull in Hamlet, or like the unctuous
courtiers Ping, Pang, and Pong who make us forget for a moment that
Princess Turandot will slay any suitor who can't answer her question? Or was
Lyell perfectly serious—in which case, the traditional hagiography is dead
wrong?
In this chapter I shall demonstrate that Lyell meant every word about future
ichthyosaurs. Once again, our key to understanding the importance and
seriousness of this passage lies in the metaphors of time's arrow and time's
cycle. Lyell was no impartial empiricist, but a partisan thinker committed to
defending time's cycle against a literal record that spoke strongly against a
directionless world,