Wiktionary
punctuationism
n. In evolutionary biology, belief that evolution does not proceed at a steady pace, but instead is characterized by periods of stasis, punctuated by brief (within several hundred-thousand years) periods of rapid change.
Usage examples of "punctuationism".
But there has been some discussion of exactly what those expectations are, and this is partly what the punctuationism argument is about.
Gould has misled himself by his own rhetorical emphasis on the purely poetic or literary resemblance between punctuationism, on the one hand, and true saltationism on the other.