Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 113

scientists by 1830, with LyelTs true opponents among scientific
catastrophists, and therefore depicts Lyell as the white knight of truth: "He
entered the geological domain when it was a weird, half-lit landscape of
gigantic convulsions, floods, and supernatural creations and extinctions of
life. Distinguished men had lent the power of their names to these theological
fantasies" (1959, 5).
The game of dichotomy requires standard-bearers for each side. In textbook
cardboard, Georges Cuvier is Lyell's catastrophist enemy. He accepts the
biblical chronology (or at least an earth of very short duration); he advocates
the total extirpation of life (and its subsequent miraculous recreation) at each
catastrophe; he works, probably consciously, for the church against science.
What a vulgar misrepresentation! Cuvier, perhaps the finest intellect in
nineteenth- century science, was a child of the French Enlightenment who
viewed dogmatic theology as anathema in science. He was a great empiricist
who believed in the literal interpretation of geological phenomena (see pages
132-137). His earth, though subject to intermittent paroxysm, was as ancient
as Lyell's. He argued that many faunal changes following catastrophes
represented migrations of preexisting biotas from distant areas. The real
debate between Lyell and Cuvier, or of uniformity and catastrophism, was a
grand scientific argument of substance—and its main subject was time's
arrow and time's cycle. Yet consider some further textbook cardboard, from
three best-sellers of the 1950s through the 1970s:
Gilluly, Waters, and Woodford (1959, 103) on Cuvier: "These [catastrophes],
he believed, destroyed all existing life, and following each a whole new
fauna was created: this doctrine, called Catastrophism, was doubtless in part
inspired by the Biblical story of the Deluge." By the third edition (1969),
their confidence had increased, and they substituted "unquestionably" for
"doubtless in part."
Longwell and Flint (1969, 18): "One group of geologists, though admitting
that the Earth had changed, supposed that all changes had occurred within the
time scale of the biblical chronology. This meant that the changes had to be
catastrophic."