Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 131

the respectable notion of directional cooling from an original molten state,
but manages to place this physical basis of contemporary catastrophism into
the same pot with discredited cometary collisions, thereby branding the best
physics of his day as vain speculation. He then rejects directional cooling a
priori, on methodological grounds:
When the advancement of astronomical science had exploded this theory
[Burner's axial changes], it was assumed that the earth at its creation was in a
state of fluidity, and red hot, and that ever since that era it had been cooling
down, contracting its dimensions, and acquiring a solid crust—an hypothesis
equally arbitrary, but more calculated for lasting popularity, because, by
referring the mind directly to the beginning of things, it requires no support
from observations, nor from any ulterior hypothesis. They who are satisfied
with this solution are relieved from all necessity of inquiry into the present
laws which regulate the diffusion of heat over the surface, for however well
these may be ascertained, they cannot possibly afford a full and exact
elucidation of the internal changes of an embryo world. (I, 104-105)
Lyell then presents his own recommendation:
But if, instead of vague conjectures as to what might have been the state of
the planet at the era of its creation, we fix our thoughts steadily on the
connection at present between climate and the distribution of land and sea . . .
we may perhaps approximate to a true theory. If doubt still remain, it should
be ascribed to our ignorance of the laws of Nature, not to revolutions in her
economy;—it should stimulate us to farther research, not tempt us to indulge
our fancies in framing imaginary systems for the government of infant
worlds. (1,105)
Later (III, ch. 24), Lyell attacks Elie de Beaumont because his "successive
revolutions . . . cannot be referred to ordinary volcanic forces, but may
depend on the secular refrigeration of the heated interior of our planet" (III,
338-339). Lyell reasserts his preference for shifting foci of internal volcanic
heat, constant in strength