Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 132

through time, but moving from place to place on the earth's surface—for this
idea presumes "the reiterated recurrence of minor convulsions" rather than
unacceptable "paroxysmal violence" (III, 339). Lyell attacks Elie de
Beaumont not with facts that support his uniformity of state, but with a claim
that directionalism is unscientific ("mysterious in the extreme"):
The speculation of M. de Beaumont concerning the "secular refrigeration" of
the internal nucleus of the globe, considered as a cause of the instantaneous
rise of mountain-chains, appears to us mysterious in the extreme, and not
founded upon any induction from facts; whereas the intermittent action of
subterranean volcanic heat is a known cause capable of giving rise to the
elevation and subsidence of the earth's crust without interruption of the
general repose of the habitable surface. (I, 339)
But what is inherently preferable about causes that preserve the general
repose of the surface?
Lyell and the catastrophists were locked in a fascinating debate of substance
about the way of our world, not a wrangle about methodological aspects of
uniformity. Their struggle pitted a directional view of history as a vector
leading toward cooler climates and more complex life, and fueled by
occasional catastrophes, against Lyell's vision of a world in constant motion,
but always the same in substance and state, changing bit by bit in a stately
dance toward nowhere. This real debate, so lost at our peril in the success of
Lyell's rhetoric, was the grandest battle ever fought between the visions of
time's arrow and time's cycle.
Lyell's Defense of Time's Cycle
Lyell's Distinctive Method of Probing behind
Appearances
Lyell's work may be awash in rhetoric but it is, as Agassiz fairly noted, an
intellectual tour de force filled with meatier arguments of great interest.