Houston, We Have a Problem

I have previously defined catastrophism as the idea tht change occurs through sudden violent upheaval. This concept reigned supreme until its replacement in science in general during the 19th century by the ideas of uniformitarianism and gradualism (changes in the Earth took place slowly and gradually via the same processes that can be observed today). The father of paleontology, a French scientist named Cuvier, thought that the geological record showed evidence of a pattern of catastrophic events involving mass extinctions, followed by periods in which new life appeared without evidence of evolutionary development. Needless to say, this idea was soundly rejected when Darwin's theory gained the status of scientific orthodoxy. But it was not immediately so. Even geologist George Lyell had reservations about the soundness of his ideas being applied to biology.

The evidence, as it existed in Darwin's day, pointed toward discontinuity amongst the basic biological divisions with very few intermediary forms. These intermediary forms were nowhere to be found. It is not as though the jungles are teeming with organisms on the way to becoming other things. T. H. Huxley himself cautioned Darwin against rejecting the possibility of large jumps (saltations). So how to account for the absence of transitional forms--besides the obvious conclusion that they don't exist because they never existed?