Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 123

Thus, we may reject, as unintelligible in principle, the idea of worldwide, or
even substantial regional catastrophe, for it would be
contrary to analogy to suppose, that Nature had been at any former epoch
parsimonious of time and prodigal of violence— to imagine that one district
was not at rest while another was convulsed—that the disturbing forces were
not kept under subjection, so as never to carry simultaneous havoc and
desolation over the whole earth, or even one great region. (I, 88-89)
These five quotations illustrate Lyell's debating style. He establishes certain
meanings of uniformity—law and process—as necessary postulates of
scientific method, and then tries to win similar status for controversial ideas
about the earth's empirical behavior by describing them in the same language
of logical necessity.
4. Uniformity of state, or nonprogressionism. Change is not only stately and
evenly distributed throughout space and time; the history of our earth also
follows no vector of progress in any inexorable direction. Our planet always
looked and behaved just about as it does now. 5 Change is continuous, but
leads nowhere. The earth is in balance or dynamic steady state; therefore, we
can use its current order (not only its laws and rates of change) to infer its
past. Land and sea, for example, change positions in an endless dance, but
always maintain about the same proportions. Floods, volcanoes, and
earthquakes have wrought devastation at about the same frequency and
extent throughout time. The earth had no early period of more vigorous
convulsion.
Lyell also extended the uniformity of state to life. Species are real entities
with points of origin in space and time, definite durations and moments of
extinction. Their beginnings and ends are not
5. Like Hutton, Lyell eschewed speculation about ultimate beginnings and ends.
These moments must, of course, depart from uniformity of state, but science cannot
comprehend them. The uniformities apply to the vast panorama of time as recorded
in the geological record.