Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 179

My colleague Ed Lurie, distinguished scholar of Louis Agassiz, once told me
that he had tried to escape Agassiz for years, and to branch into other areas of
nineteenth-century American biology. But he couldn't, for Agassiz loomed so
large that his shadow extended everywhere. Any exploration of any subfield
in American biology became, at least in part, a study of Agassiz's influence.
I feel much the same way about Charles Lyell. I have made no active effort
to avoid him, but neither do I court his presence. Still, I cannot escape him. If
I recognize a baleful influence of his rhetoric, my quest for a different
formulation still embraces another aspect of his vision. Thus, when Eldredge
and I developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium, we tried, above all, to
counteract both Lyell's bias of gradualism and his method of probing behind
appearance to defend the uniformity of rate against evidence read literally—
for punctuated equilibrium, as its essential statement, accepts the literal
record of geologically abrupt appearance and subsequent stasis as a reality
for most species, not an expression of true gradualism filtered through an
imperfect fossil record. We felt mighty proud of ourselves for breaking what
we saw as a conceptual lock placed by Lyell's vision upon the science of
paleontology. But then, from another point of view, what is punctuated
equilibrium but a nongradualist view of evolutionary theory applied to Lyell's
original vision of species as discrete particles, arising at geological moments
in space and time, and persisting unchanged until their extinction? Lyell had
compromised this vision by embracing a gradualist account of evolution to
salvage his uniformities, but we had been driven back to his original
formulation. We had, it seemed, attacked Lyell in order to find him.
I could drown you in words—indeed I already have—about the power and
importance of Lyell's vision. But any scientist will tell you that utility in
practice is the only meaningful criterion of success. I can offer no greater
homage to Charles Lyell than my personal testimony that he doth bestride my
world of work like a colossus.