He thus exerted a potent influence on palaeontology through his persistent advocacy of uniformitarianism, a doctrine with which Lamarck should also be credited.
And we will not succumb to the absolutely foolish, ridiculous logic of evolutionary uniformitarianism.
His reactionary and retarding ideas as a special creationist and his advocacy of the cataclysmic theory of change exerted a baneful influence until overthrown by the uniformitarianism of James Hutton (1726-1797) and Charles Lyell (1797-1875) and the evolutionism of Darwin.
The doctrine of Uniformitarianism, as propounded by Lyell, served to establish geology on a firmer and more rational basis than it had previously possessed; but latterly the tendency has been to modify the Lyellian view by an admission of the probability of a more intense action of groups of forces at certain stages of the earth's history.
As a natural philosopher he radically opposed Cuvier and was distinctly a precursor of uniformitarianism, advocating the hypothesis of slow changes and variations, both in living forms and in their environment.