plistic idea that uniformity triumphed by fieldwork, then we will never understand how fact and theory interact with social context, and we will never grasp the biases in our own thinking (for we will simply designate our cherished beliefs as true by nature's dictates). Moreover, I have a particular reason, in the context of this book, for fulminating against cardboard history. Once we recover Lyell's substantive objection to intelligible and intelligent catastrophism, we recognize that the real debate was not dogma versus fieldwork, but a conflict between rival empirics rooted in the theme of this book—a conflict of metaphor between time's cycle and time's arrow. Lyell was not the white knight of truth and fieldwork, but a purveyor of a fascinating and particular theory rooted in the steady state of time's cycle. He tried by rhetoric to equate this substantive theory with rationality and rectitude—and he largely triumphed. Thus, we cannot understand the importance of time's arrow and time's cycle in establishing our view of time and process until we break through this most enveloping of all cardboard histories. It shouldn't be difficult; cardboard is pretty flimsy stuff.

Lyell's Rhetorical Triumph:
The Miscasting of Catastrophism

The Enigma of Agassiz's Marginalia

Louis Agassiz, the great Swiss scientist who made a home at Harvard and built the museum that I now inhabit, was a garden variety catastrophist. He developed the theory of continental glaciation, but advocated a global ice cover extirpating all life, with subsequent divine recreation. In the dichotomy that Lyell erected, Agassiz could only be an implacable opponent.

About ten years ago, I discovered Agassiz's copy of Lyell's Principles in the open stacks of our museum library. It contained some fascinating marginalia, incomprehensible if Lyell's great dichotomy accurately represents the geological struggles of his age. Agassiz penciled three comments in French on the margins of Lyell's preface