Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 134

ity of rate with a brilliant argument for "probing behind" literal appearances,
and trying to find the signal of true gradualism in a record so riddled with
systematic imperfections that insensible transitions become degraded to bits
and pieces of apparent abruptness.
I do not gloat in this analysis to "show up" Lyell as less empirical or field-
oriented than his catastrophist opponents. I find no particular virtue in
empirical literalism and generally support Lyell's approach for balancing fact
and theory in a complex and imperfect world. I just find it deliciously ironic
that cardboard history touts Lyell's victory as the triumph of fieldwork, while
catastrophists were the true champions of a geological record read as directly
seen. Lyell, by contrast, urged that theory—the substantive uniformities of
rate and state—be imposed upon the literal record to interpolate within it
what theory expected but imperfect data did not provide.
Early in his first volume, Lyell admits the literal appearance of catastrophe as
predominant in geology:
The marks of former convulsions on every part of the surface of our planet
are obvious and striking . . . If these appearances are once recognized, it
seems natural that the mind should come to the conclusion, not only of
mighty changes in past ages, but of alternate periods of repose and disorder—
of repose when the fossil animals lived, grew, and multiplied—of disorder,
when the strata wherein they were buried became transferred from the sea to
the interior of continents, and entered into high mountain chains. (I, 7)
To uphold the third uniformity (of rate) in the face of this admission, Lyell
uses two arguments, both based on probes "behind appearance." First, he
argues that local records cannot be extrapolated to wider regions, or to the
whole globe. Abrupt transition in one section, for example, may be
reconciled with a world in balance if we find opposite changes in other places
at the same time. "There can be no doubt, that periods of disturbance and
repose have followed each other in succession in every region of the globe,
but