The Myth Surrounding The Rejection Of Continental Drift

[Eclogite]

In a thread on abiogenesis and Darwinism qdogsman makes this statement:

 

I am doing this off the cuff so forgive me for not knowing names, dates, details, etc. but there was a father-son team, I believe, who were convinced (as I too was at the time. (In fact I was personally ridiculed by classmates who were studying Geology at the time and being put down for being so ignorant of the "true" geologic processes.)) that the continents had drifted apart. The official science community vigorously opposed his investigations and caused him a great deal of difficulty, until he finally produced the proof that he was right. He didn't get the credit as far as I know, and science cleverly changed the name from the much derided "Continental Drift" to the official and respected name of "Plate Tectonics". Again, shameful.

 

This was offered in support of his contention that there are many egregious examples of where the official scientific community deliberately suppresses the work of sincere investigators who are working outside the official scientific bounds.

 

I have no concerns about the details names and dates being wrong. You were seeking to support your underlying thesis. I do, however, take issue with the facts being wrong. You will understand, Paul, that where you give five examples to support your contention, if one of these be woefully wrong, then I shall suspect the validity of the other four. You have committed - I use the word committed advisedly - the near unforgivable sin of using half-remembered, misinterpreted, oft-repeated semi-truths as if they were well established facts. Here are the facts.

 

Continental drift was actively promoted by the meteorologist Alfred Wegner following his publication of the theory in 1915 (1). His favoured mechanism (differential centrifugal ‘force’) was faulty, as was that (tidal forces) of an earlier proposal by Taylor(2) in 1910. This was the principal reason for the hypothesis being rejected. Knowledge of the mantle composition and physical properties were only sketchily known, however it could be demonstrated that centrifugal force was wholly inadequate.

 

Although some researchers flirted with the idea of convection as the driving force, Arthur Holmes(3) was the first to place it on a solid footing (pun intended), as early as 1931. Despite his work and that of other visionaries, the idea continued to be rejected by the majority of Earth scientists. Such rejection was based upon strong suspicions , backed up by available facts, that the mantle viscosity was orders of magnitude too high. The situation began to change in the late 1950s and early 1960s as growing evidence forced a reevaluation.

 

There were two strands to this. Firstly, there was now clear evidence for divergent polar wandering, best explained by continental drift, from the research of scientists such as Blackett(4) and Runcorn(5). Secondly, seafloor spreading from mid-ocean ridges was posited by Hess(6) and expanded upon by Dietz(7), and demonstrated through the analysis of magnetic anomalies, first by Vine and Mathews(8).

 

By the end of the 1960s these threads had been pulled together, by the pioneering work of the likes of Wilson(9), Morgan(10), McKenzie and Parker(11), and Le Pinchon(12). Plate tectonics was born. The phrase was first used in print by Morgan and McKenzie(13) in a 1969 paper in Nature.

 

Fallacies in your assertion, Paul, include the following:

1. The rejection of the idea was primarily based upon the lack of a mechanism and the (then) simpler explanation of land bridges to explain palaeontological and stratigraphic coincidences. It was not primarily because Wegner was from outside the geological community. Arthur Holmes was a physicist and his work on geochronology was accepted from the outset and his contribution revered by geologists.

2. There was no opposition to his investigations. They were simply rejected on the justifiable grounds that no plausible mechanism existed.

3. Contrary to your claim he never produced proof that he was right, but perished on the Greenland icecap, alone, in a blizzard in 1930.

4. Contrary to your claim he is now widely acknowledged within the geological community as the first individual to promote the concept of large scale crustal mobility with substantial supporting evidence.

5. The name Plate Tectonics was chosen because plate tectonics is significantly different from the continental drift proposed by Wegner. The mechanism is different; the layers of the Earth involved are quite different; the associated processes, such as vulcanism, subduction and anatexis, are very different; the introduction of the concept of rigid plates and rotation vectors is central and novel; plate tectonics properly merits a different name, for it is a different thing. Your assertion that the name was changed to avoid giving credit to Wegner is pure nonsense.

6. The ignorance of your classmates in the 1950s is not evidence that the geological community had mistreated Wegner or his hypothesis.

 

If there is anything shameful here Paul it is your use of misinformation and misunderstanding to support an argument. You commented in the other thread that you don't read research papers. Perhaps you should. You would then be less likely to make such egregious mistakes in future.

 

Let me just add some further remarks relating to point 5. I find your assertion that the name change to Plate Tectonics was in order to avoid giving Wegner credit, verges on the offensive. If that was the intention, please explain to me why in J.Tuzo Wilson's paper (Ref.9 below) in Nature, the premier science journal on the planet, his first reference to other work is this: Wegener, A. , The Origin of Continents and Oceans (E. P. Dutton and Co., New York, 1924). If the object is to conceal Wegner's seminal role, this is a pretty damn funny way of going about things. You could also explain to me why, if suppression was the object of the day, Wegner's work was and is routinely acknowledged in textbooks.

 

Paul, if I am coming across in this post as angry, then you have an accurate perception. I find it regretable that you choose to argue your case on the basis of ignroance. I had thought better of you from your contributions on the other thread. Please note that I post here as a member, not as a moderator.

 

References:

1 Wegener, A. (1915) Die Enstehungder Kontinenteund Ozeane. Vieweg, Braunschweig,

2 Taylor, F.B. (1910) Bearing of the Tertiary mountain belt on the origin of the Earth’s plan. Geol. Soc. Am. Bull. 21, 179–226.

3 Holmes, A. (1931) Radioactivity and Earth movements, XVII. Trans.Geol.Soc.Glasgow, Vol.XVIII–Part III, 1928–3118, 559–606.

4 Blackett, P.M.S.(1956). Lectures on Rock Magnetism. Weizmann Sci. Press of Israel, Jerusalem, 131pp.

5 Runcorn, S.K. (1956). Palaeomagnetic Comparisons between Europe and North America. Proc. Geol. Assoc. Canada 8, 77–85.

6 Hess, H.H. (1962). History of Ocean Basins. In Petrologic Studies –A Volume in Honor of A.F. Buddington, pp.599–620

7 Dietz, R.S. (1961). Continent and ocean basin evolution by spreading of the sea floor. Nature 190, 854–7.

8 Vine, F.J. & Matthews, D.H. (1963). Magnetic anomalies over oceanic ridges. Nature 199, 947–9.

9 Wilson, J.T. (1963). Hypothesis of Earth’s behaviour. Nature 198, 925–9.

10 Morgan, W.J. (1968). Rises, trenches, great faults, and crustal blocks. J. Geophys. Res. 73, 1959–82.

11 McKenzie, D.P. & Parker, R.L. (1967). The north Pacific, an example of tectonics on a sphere. Nature 216, 1276–80.

12 Le Pichon, X. (1968). Sea-floor spreading and continental drift. J. Geophys. Res. 73, 3661–97.

13 McKenzie, D.P. & Morgan, W.J. (1969). Evolution of triple junctions. Nature 224, 125–33.

[Qdogsman]

Well Eclogite, I'm sorry I pissed you off and disappointed you. This is getting out of hand.

 

This started by Moontanman pissing me off by falsely claiming that I ridiculed science. Since I knew he couldn't produce any evidence that I ever had, I assumed that he must have been referring to times in which I had criticized science, or scientists in some way. I acknowledged that I had done that, and "off the cuff" I presented my list of 5 examples.

 

These were cases in which I had gotten impressions that injustice had been done. I tried to present them as such, not as facts. The case in point, Wegener's, was a personal impression I had gotten as a result of being personally insulted and ridiculed on the issue. Even though several years later, when I was exonerated, that impression remained. So when I read of cases like Barry Marshall's, and Dr. Money's, and heard the story at Dry Falls, they resonated with me.

 

When I worked in Enrico Clementi's lab, I made a point of finding out for myself whether or not scientists were constrained in what they were permitted to consider so I asked some scientists, as I related in my anecdote, for which I am accused of being a liar. The answer I got was as near to what I related as I can remember. The impression remained.

 

Now I find myself holding speculative opinions that I believe as strongly as I believed in contintenal drift when I was young and science did not yet accept it. I would like to present those opinions to someone, anyone who will listen, and since I am not a scientist, that avenue is not open to me. Internet forums seem to be the correct place, but I find what I consider to be unreasonable resistance to even considering the ideas open-mindedly.

 

When you look at controversial issues, such as the cause of stomach ulcers, whether continents drift, whether boys and girls are different, whether enormous floods occurred, or whether humans cause global warming, they fall into two categories for me.

 

There are those which require specialized scientific investigation to resolve. Those include the questions of stomach ulcers and enormous floods. I am not an expert on these questions and I must rely on science to answer them.

 

The other category, IMHO, is different. In those cases the truth is so obvious that any intelligent lay person can answer the basic question with just a little clear thinking.

 

I was not alone in being the only non-scientist who believed in continental drift. There were untold many others. The question could be answered simply by looking at a globe and doing a little clear thinking. I remained firm in my belief until science finally came around to accepting the truth. I even bought a college geology textbook, "Introduction to College Geology" by Chauncey D. Holmes, pubished in 1962, just so that I would have the official position used by my classmated to ridicule my belief and my thinking. I paid 25 cents for the book.

 

Likewise, any clear-thinking individual, especially those who are parents, believe that there is a difference between boys and girls apart from their anatomy and physiology that is not caused by their upbringing. I can't imagine how Dr. Money was able to perpetuate his fraud for so many years and how the scientific community bought into such a ludicrous idea if they were not cowed into it by artificial prohibitions on their scope of inquiry.

 

And the same is true for AGW. Any person with average or above intelligence can reasonably conclude that it cannot be the case that any human activity causes any more than a negligible and non-measurable effect on climate, and that CO₂ is neither a poison nor a pollutant, but instead the source of all the carbon that makes up living bodies, the ubiquitous product of animal life, the vital food for plants, the fun component of bread and beer, and is as benign and non-poisonous as salt or water.

 

No scientific data is required for this analysis. The obvious facts, so readily available to all observers, is sufficient to enable us to draw this conclusion. If you have trouble doing so, one of us should open another thread and I could explain it to you.

 

So that brings us to my recent participation in this forum. Being a non-scientist, and one who doesn't have time to read, or to learn to read, scientific journals, I have formed opinions on some questions concerning abiogenesis, evolution, religion, and consciousness based strictly on clearly observable phenomena. In the same sense of drawing obvious conclusions, or at least arriving at what I consider to be promising hypotheses, that I did about gender differences, continental drift, and AGW, I have reached the same conclusion Bishop Paley reached, but based on information he didn't have. I have the benefit of a layman's view of molecular biology as it is understood today. My essay, which got me back into Hypography, was my attempt to present my argument.

 

As the result of some fruitful discussion, for which I am grateful, I have changed my position. I have abandoned comparisons with digital systems and replaced them with comparisons with symbolic systems. I have also made it clear that my objective is not to convince anyone that my thesis is correct, but instead to make the case that science should present no prohibition, either express or implied, to the thoughtful consideration of a mind being an instrumental part of the origin of the genetic code, or of life, or of the universe itself. I had, and still have, the strong feeling that such prohibitions exist.

 

In the escalating anger aroused by Moontanman's assault on my character, to my hasty response, to your anger at my hasty response, that led us to this point, the crux of the issue is now exposed. To paraphrase Shakespeare, methinks you might be protesting a little much. If Moontanman is right, that he has heard a version of my anecdote many times, it tells me that many scientists maintain a list of sacred cows in their desks. It is the existence of those lists that I think is preventing science from advancing.

 

Thank you for your active, thoughtful, and energetic attention. I do appreciate it.

 

Paul Martin

Qdogsman

[Eclogite]

The interesting thing about science, from my perspective, is that it is a self correcting system. That is to say that the methodology, even when imperfectly applied, generates answers that are more correct than previous answers. This methodology does not rely upon the clearly observable phenomena you use as the bases for your obvious conclusions, or promising hypotheses. (Paragraph 13 in your above post.) Rather science relies upon those phenomena being observed by multiple observers, on multiple occassions, with proper attention paid to variations in the constraints surrounding the observations and subsequent testing of hypotheses arising from the observations, such testing being rigorous, thorough, diverse and long term.

 

On the subject of anger, what frustrates me is the error you make in attacking science (and you are attacking science) whilst confessing to knowing little about the methodology and not caring to take the time to "learn how to read a scince journal". There is an arrogance there that is disturbing. I don't comment on the role of social mobility in the development of weaving in 14th century Flanders because I know absolutely nothing about it. Those things I do comment on I make certain I am reasonably well informed. I believe this is a sound practice. And I choose to be angered when I suspect others are ignoring it.

 

Let's look at your other four examples. Here is an extract from the other thread I started in relation to them.

I am not inclined to spend any time researching the facts to try to defend what I wrote. I could be completely wrong, as you claim. My total knowledge is based on a single visit to the tourist attraction at Dry Falls, watching a movie there, and listening to the rangers tell the story. Since the story they told seemed to me to be another example of the problem I was trying to illustrate with my 5 examples, I included it. [/Quote] This, Paul, is rather disingenuous. You won’t take the time to refute my assertions, yet you will not concede you are mistaken. Noting that you could be completely wrong very clearly leaves open the possibility that you consider you could be completely right. But let’s move one.

 

You saw this as an example of what you consider to be a problem with science. (That’s the science you claim you are not biased against.) And there is the heart of my problem with your assertions. You have a view of science based upon snippets of information which you cherry pick to support that view.

 

You were impressed by the Rangers’ story. Note that: story. You were at – your own words – a tourist attraction. How does one attract tourists to something as dry as the Dry Falls? By dramatising the events and characters involved. It’s much more enthralling to hear of the maverick geologist taking on the might of the establishment and eventually triumphing than to be told about the routine and mundane disagreements and quarrels and arguments and debates that surround the acceptance of any novel idea. As someone with scientific training I find those exchanges fascinating. Not so the general public. They require the frisson of a hero, a giant killer.

 

You say "I was not the only non-scientist to believe in continental drift." [sarcasm]Well bully for you. Should I now bow in homage to the cranks who think aliens routinely abduct humand and insert probes in their anus? After all, there are many non-scienstists who believe this to be true.[/sarcasm]

 

There are many thoughts people have about the world, arrived at by your methodology. Some of these thoughts are correct, but often for the wrong reasons, and many of these thoughts are dross. The alignment of American coasts with Europe and Africa was noted almost from the time maps of the coasts were produced. Early explanations included washing away by the Biblical flood, or a giant river valley produced by ocean currents. So, continental drift is not the only obvious explanation for the fit. That's where science differs from and is a vast improvement on your chance observation and contingent conclusion.

 

Ont eh subject of gloabal warming, I believe this has been thoroughly debated elsewhere. Your supposed common sense conclusions in the matter are profoundly ignorant. I will be happy to pursue this matter further after you have read and digested the most recent IPCC report.

 

Please also note that my anger, when I choose to experience it, is not directed against you. (I suspect you are a likable enought chap.) It is directed against your faulty methodology of evaluating important issues.

 

 

Finally, I am willing to guide you through a handful of scientific papers and show you how I would go about using them. All you have to do is ask.

[Qdogsman]

Eclogite,

 

I confess and admit that I was wrong and you are right. I am embarrassed and humiliated. I have been arrogant in my attacks on science. I have commented on subjects of which I am ignorant. I have been disingenuous. I am mistaken and wrong. I was stupid and gullible to have accepted the story told at the tourist attraction at Dry Falls. I have cherry-picked my examples. I have used faulty methodology in evaluating important issues. I am ashamed at my behavior. I am truly sorry for getting you so angry.

 

Thank you for your kind offer to guide me through a few scientific papers. But, as I already explained, I do not have the time.

 

I am sorry for the trouble I caused, but I am also disappointed. For a while, after getting through the problems caused by my stupid choice of terminology, and after explaining and adjusting my objectives for the discussion, I really thought my participation in Hypography was going to be fruitful. And I think it was fruitful until all my interlocutors, except for those attacking my integrity, character, and personality, suddenly stopped responding. This has not been a total loss, however, it helps me better understand people.

 

Thank you for the time and energy you have spent on my posts.

 

Paul Martin

Qdogsman

[Moontanman]

Eclogite,

 

I confess and admit that I was wrong and you are right. I am embarrassed and humiliated. I have been arrogant in my attacks on science. I have commented on subjects of which I am ignorant. I have been disingenuous. I am mistaken and wrong. I was stupid and gullible to have accepted the story told at the tourist attraction at Dry Falls. I have cherry-picked my examples. I have used faulty methodology in evaluating important issues. I am ashamed at my behavior. I am truly sorry for getting you so angry.

 

Thank you for your kind offer to guide me through a few scientific papers. But, as I already explained, I do not have the time.

 

I am sorry for the trouble I caused, but I am also disappointed. For a while, after getting through the problems caused by my stupid choice of terminology, and after explaining and adjusting my objectives for the discussion, I really thought my participation in Hypography was going to be fruitful. And I think it was fruitful until all my interlocutors, except for those attacking my integrity, character, and personality, suddenly stopped responding. This has not been a total loss, however, it helps me better understand people.

 

Thank you for the time and energy you have spent on my posts.

 

Paul Martin

Qdogsman

 

 

Paul, questioning your preconceptions is the beginning of knowledge, you can still be fruitful here, I responded as much to your attitude as i did to your mistakes, but i salute you for admitting you were mistaken...