through time, but moving from place to place on the earth's surface—for this idea presumes "the reiterated recurrence of minor convulsions" rather than unacceptable "paroxysmal violence" (III, 339). Lyell attacks Elie de Beaumont not with facts that support his uniformity of state, but with a claim that directionalism is unscientific ("mysterious in the extreme"):

The speculation of M. de Beaumont concerning the "secular refrigeration" of the internal nucleus of the globe, considered as a cause of the instantaneous rise of mountain-chains, appears to us mysterious in the extreme, and not founded upon any induction from facts; whereas the intermittent action of subterranean volcanic heat is a known cause capable of giving rise to the elevation and subsidence of the earth's crust without interruption of the general repose of the habitable surface. (I, 339)

But what is inherently preferable about causes that preserve the general repose of the surface?

Lyell and the catastrophists were locked in a fascinating debate of substance about the way of our world, not a wrangle about methodological aspects of uniformity. Their struggle pitted a directional view of history as a vector leading toward cooler climates and more complex life, and fueled by occasional catastrophes, against Lyell's vision of a world in constant motion, but always the same in substance and state, changing bit by bit in a stately dance toward nowhere. This real debate, so lost at our peril in the success of Lyell's rhetoric, was the grandest battle ever fought between the visions of time's arrow and time's cycle.

Lyell's Defense of Time's Cycle

Lyell's Distinctive Method of Probing behind Appearances

Lyell's work may be awash in rhetoric but it is, as Agassiz fairly noted, an intellectual tour de force filled with meatier arguments of great interest.