Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 133

Lyell and his catastrophist opponents differed not only in their interpretation
of the geological record, but also in their basic approach to field evidence. In
the light of Lyell's rhetorical brand, marking his opponents as anti-empiricists
devoted to armchair speculation, their differences in approach present one of
the great ironies in the history of science.
Read literally, then and now, the geological record is primarily a tale of
abrupt transitions, at least in local areas. If sediments indicate that
environments are changing from terrestrial to marine, we do not usually find
an insensibly graded series of strata, indicating by grain size and faunal
content that lakes and streams have given way to oceans of increasing depth.
In most cases, fully marine strata lie directly atop terrestrial beds, with no
signs of smooth transition. The world of dinosaurs does not yield gradually to
the realm of mammals; instead, dinosaurs disappear from the record in
apparent concert with about half the species of marine organisms in one of
the five major mass extinctions of life's history. Faunal transitions, read
literally, are almost always abrupt, both from species to species 6 and from
biota to biota.
The characteristic method of catastrophism, promulgated particularly by
Cuvier, was empirical literalism—an approach diametrically opposed to
Lyell's unfair characterization of these scientists as speculators opposed to
field evidence. The catastrophists tended to accept what they saw as reality:
abrupt transitions of sediments and fossils indicated rapid change of climates
and faunas. The defense of catastrophism was rooted in the most direct (or
minimally "interpretive") reading of geological evidence.
Lyell did not deny this apparent evidence of abruptness—that is, he did not
defend the uniformity of rate by citing different direct evidence for gradual
transitions. He couldn't, since the literal record speaks too loudly for
discontinuity. Instead, he supported uniform-
6. Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium to explain
these transitions between species as an accurate reflection of the workings of
evolution, not as artifacts of an imperfect fossil record.