In nineteenth century geology there was a long dispute between Uniformitarians and Catastrophists. Were the features visible on the surface of the earth the result of long slow operation of more or less the same processes seen happening today, or were they the result of abrupt changes occurring suddenly at irregular intervals?
Many Catastrophists had ulterior theological agendas, but their arguments were also based on geological evidence. By that evidence, the Uniformitarians eventually won the dispute, although the evidence does imply some occasional large catastrophes (melting ice dams releasing huge glacial lakes, comet and asteroid impacts, volcanic explosions, and the like).
Around the same time, an analogous debate occurred in epistemology. The epistemological Uniformitarians were thinkers such as the Rationalists and Kant, who saw cognitive and cultural features as the result of uniform structures and methods operating everywhere, though often clouded by superstition or enthusiasms. The epistemological Catastrophists were thinkers such as Herder and Hamann, who saw deep differences between the cognitive styles and categories of the various linguistic or national communities, and the possibility of epistemological upheavals and the sudden emergence of radical differences. (As usual, Hegel had it both ways.)
This debate is usually spoken of as between absolutism and relativism, but the thinkers were split over uniformity versus catastrophe even before they got to issues of truth.
In our century this debate recurred in the philosophy of science, asking whether the change of large scientific theories involved the same scientific methods that were used in the day to day refinement of theories. The most notable, though not the first, example of this dispute was occasioned by Kuhn's distinction normal uniformitarian science from catastrophic theory change. Foucault proposed a similar distinction of uniformitarian happenings within discourses and sudden catastrophic changes of discourse.
Universities have vested interests in both sides of these debates. Universities justify themselves to outsiders and inspire their own people by sometimes appealing to uniform steady incremental growth through repeated application of the same methods, but also by promising exciting, catastrophic revolutions.
Advanced academic training also looks both ways: learn your methodologies, but also strive for conceptual breakthroughs. In the humanities and arts lately, causing revolutions has become the only high-prestige occupation. This contrasts with Kuhn's claim that the best way to cause a scientific revolution is not to try directly for one, but to do methodical normal science as well as you can, for that will produce the anomalies that impel revolution. That maxim, though, has less of a track record in humanities and the arts.
If we are to be self-conscious catastrophists, then we need to encourage variation, to experiment with methods and meta-criticisms, to dance around and outside the disciplinary structures. That's one thing universities are supposed to do these days, but they don't like to trip over their own feet. They also need to be on watch reading the signs of the times for oncoming asteroids, such as now the Internet and someday biotechnology for learning.