Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 126

earth," because we have a right to anticipate that any apparently depleted
cause will, in future, resume its former intensity.
Will the Reed Catastrophism Please Stand Up:
The Solution to Agassiz's Paradox
This exegesis can resolve the paradox of Agassiz's private reactions to Lyell's
brief. Agassiz did not view the professional world of geology in 1830 as a
battleground between scientific empiricists and theological apologists. As a
fellow scientist, Agassiz accepted the methodological uniformities of law and
process. As a catastrophist who viewed the history of vertebrates as a tale of
progress, he rejected the substantive uniformities of rate and state. On
balance, praise for Lyell's forceful and beautifully crafted defense of proper
method far exceeded unhappiness with their longstanding disagreement about
the earth's behavior—for scientists then and now have recognized that their
profession is defined by its distinctive modes of inquiry, not by its changing
perceptions of empirical truth.
As we have our von Danikens, our "scientific" creationists, and our faith
healers, science in Lyell's day also felt besieged by a periphery of charlatans
and reactionaries, who often commanded much public support. Agassiz
therefore welcomed most heartily Lyell's elegant defense of scientific method
—this "most important work. . . since [geology] has merited this name."
Once we abandon the cardboard version of Lyell's scientific light versus
Agassiz's theological darkness, and grasp their substantial common ground
by their own perceptions, Agassiz's general praise following his particular
criticisms provokes no surprise. Lyell's dichotomy, exaggerated by
subsequent textbook cardboard, presents a taxonomy that would not have
been accepted, or even recognized, by most of his contemporaries. In
Agassiz's classification, any primary division between supporters and
detractors of fruitful science would have placed him and Lyell on the same
side.
As evidence of support by catastrophists for the methodological uniformities
of law and process, consider two primary 'Villains" of