Why is uniformitarianim still taught?

That has been my understanding of uniformatarianism (as understood today). That is, physical processes (slow or fast) act today as they have done.I like the distinction between gradualism, catastrophism and uniformatarianism. They are different axes.

Assuming that even the most strident of 'uniformatarianist' accepted that there was a volcano now and then, that rivers overflowed their banks and that climates varied moderately, it was not only 'not wholly wrong' it was almost 100% right.There have been, what, 5 or so major 'catastrophes'? Each with a large impact to be sure. But the rest of the time we get things pretty much as they are. In that light even the old view of uniformatarianism isn't all that far off the mark.

To spin off on another bit of misunderstanding (stop me if we need to finish with uniformitarianism):If you want to be nit picky the idea of continental drift was, in fact, wrong. A huge difficulty with the idea of any mechanism was the problem of continents plowing through the sea floors. And, now, we see that they don't "drift". The whole surface of the earth moves and the continents are just carried along.I think this is important to understand. Wegner's idea was, at some high enough level, 'right' but not 'right' enough to become a compelling theory of geology. It had to be modified significantly first. As he was talking about it the detractors were correct. It isn't possible. (That is as I think he was talking about it, I've never seen anything original by Wegner)

Though I suppose everything fits under the uniformitarianism topic, it might be a good idea to go to dates and dating for this one.You could open a "What about changed processes?" or something if you wanted. There is, you know, evidence that the rates have not changed.