Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 114

Spencer (1965, 423): "Most students of the earth subscribed to the idea that
the earth was no more than a few thousand years old, and that its history had
been punctuated by one or more catastrophes during which all living beings
had been wiped out and newly created beings followed."
Or Stokes (1973, 37), in the leading text of historical geology: "Cuvier
believed that Noah's flood was universal and had prepared the earth for its
present inhabitants. The Church was happy to have the support of such an
eminent scientist, and there is no doubt that Cuvier's great reputation delayed
the acceptance of the more accurate views that ultimately prevailed."
Finally, a new book on popular science by one of America's finest science
writers: "Until Lyell published his book, most thinking people accepted the
idea that the earth was young, and that even its most spectacular features
such as mountains and valleys, islands and continents were the products of
sudden, cataclysmic events, which included supernatural acts of
God" (Rensberger, 1986,236).
These texts then identify fieldwork as the fuel for change to uniformitarian
enlightenment: "Hutton's ideas never caught on, though, until Lyell
reintroduced them with massive documentation from his field
studies" (Rensberger, 1986, 236). "The idea that catastrophism might be
wrong may have been a reaction against theological dogmatism, but for most
men it was an outgrowth of actual observation of nature" (Stokes, 1973, 37).
"As geologic knowledge expanded, the job of rationalizing a growing list of
events with a small but fixed supply of time became hopeless" (Longwell,
Flint, and Sanders, 1969, 18).
But why does it matter? What harm is a bit of heroic folderol about an
illusory past, especially if it makes us feel good about the progress of
science? I would argue that we misrepresent history at our peril as practicing
scientific researchers. If we equate uniformity with truth and relegate the
empirical claims of catastrophism to the hush-hush unthinkable of theology,
then we enshrine one narrow version of geological process as true a priori ,
and we lose the possibility of weighing reasonable alternatives. If we buy the
sim-