the classical texts of late 18th and early 19th century catastrophism in their original
languages—and I could find no claim for supernatural influences upon the history
of the earth. In fact, the catastrophists seemed to be advancing the opposite claim
that we should base our causal conclusions upon a literal reading of the empirical
record, whereas the uniformitarians (aka "good guys") seemed to be arguing, in an
opposing claim less congenial with the stereotypical empiricism of science, that we
must make hypothetical inferences about the gradualistic mechanics that a
woefully imperfect record does not permit us to observe directly.
But, although I had developed and presented an iconoclastic exegesis of
Lyell, I simply lacked the courage to state so general a claim for inverting the
standard view about uniformitarians and catastrophists. I assumed that I must be
wrong, and that I must have misunderstood catastrophism because I had not read
enough, or could not comprehend the subtleties at this fledgling state of a career.
So I scoured the catastrophist literature again until I found a quote from William
Buckland (both a leading divine and the first reader in geology at Oxford) that
could be interpreted as a defense of supernaturalism. I cited the quotation (Gould,
1965, p. 223) and stuck to convention on this broader issue, while presenting an
original analysis of multiple meanings— some valid (like the invariance of law)
and some invalid (like my professor's claim for constancy in range of rates)—
subsumed by Lyell under the singular description of "uniformity" in nature.
This work led me, partly from shame at my initial cowardice, and as others
reassessed the scientific character of catastrophism, to a more general analysis of
the potential validity of catastrophic claims, and particularly to an understanding of
how assumptions of gradualism had so stymied and constrained our
comprehension of the earth's much richer history. These ideas forced me to
question the necessary basis for Darwin's key assumption that observable, small-
scale processes of microevolution could, by extension through the immensity of
geological time, explain all patterns in the history of life—namely, the Lyellian
belief in uniformity of rate (one of the invalid meanings of the hybrid concept of
uniformitarianism). This exegesis led to a technical book about concepts of time
and direction in geology (Gould, 1987b), to an enlarged view that encouraged the
development of punctuated equilibrium, and to a position of cautious favor towards
such truly catastrophic proposals as the Alvarez theory of mass extinction by
extraterrestrial impact—a concept ridiculed by nearly all other paleontologists
when first proposed (Alvarez et a., 1980), but now affirmed for the K-T event, and
accepted as an empirical basis for expanding our range of scientifically legitimate
hypotheses beyond the smooth extrapolationism demanded by this third branch of
Darwinian central logic.
In addition to these disparate accretions of revisionism on the three branches
of Darwinian central logic, one further domain—my studies in the history of
evolutionary thought—served as a sine qua поп for wresting a coherent critique
from such an inchoate jumble of disparate items. Above all, if I had not studied
Darwin's persona and social context so intensely, I doubt
46 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY