Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 146

plexity through time. Lyell again admits the appearance but denies the
inherent directionality (see previous section for details). New species always
arise perfectly adapted to prevailing climates. If climates become cooler, new
species will display increases of complexity suited to these more difficult
conditions. Directional trends in life only record an underlying change in
climate. If an apparent climatic "arrow" is really the segment of a circle
rotating to nowhere, then life will also follow the future arc back—to
Professor Ichthyosaurus of times to come.
Having marshaled history to his purposes (chs. 1-5) and dismissed the two
most troubling cases of apparent directionality (climate and life, chs. 6-9),
Lyell devotes the rest of volume I (chs. 10-26) to a catalogue of modern
causes presented as a complete guide to the past. He arranges these chapters
(ostensibly about the second methodological uniformity of process) as a
subtle defense of his substantive uniformities of rate and state. For he
discusses first the aqueous causes (Figure 4.5) that destroy topography
(rivers, torrents, springs, currents, and tides) and then the igneous causes
(Figure 4.6) that renew (volcanoes and earthquakes), suggesting all the while
that both sets operate in continuous balance; neither ever dominates the entire
earth, and neither imparts any inherent direction to the character of rocks,
landforms, or life.
I shall discuss volumes II and III (Lyell's positive contribution) in the next
section, but must briefly note here how they continue and fulfill the plan of a
grand, coherent work on life and its nature. We usually remember volume II
only for Lyell's refutation of evolution, particularly of Lamarck's theory
(which he introduced to England, though only to dismiss). But the eighteen
chapters of volume II are designed and sequenced to present a positive view
of life's history that will lead to Lyell's greatest achievement, the subject of
volume III—a new method for stratigraphic dating based on an
unconventional view of life dictated by the uniformities of rate and state.
The focus of Lyell's argument—and the reason for lambasting evolution
defined as insensible transition between species—rests