Slashdot Mirror
When Continental Drift Was Considered Pseudoscience
Lasrick writes "I Love this article in Smithsonian by Richard Conniff. One of my geology professors was in grad school when the theories for plate tectonics, seafloor spreading, etc., were introduced; he remembered how most of his professors denounced them as ridiculous. The article chronicles the introduction of continental drift theory, starting a century ago with Alfred Wegener. From the article: 'It was a century ago this spring that a little-known German meteorologist named Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents had once been massed together in a single supercontinent and then gradually drifted apart. He was, of course, right. Continental drift and the more recent science of plate tectonics are now the bedrock of modern geology, helping to answer vital questions like where to find precious oil and mineral deposits, and how to keep San Francisco upright. But in Wegener’s day, geological thinking stood firmly on a solid earth where continents and oceans were permanent features.'"
"I Love this article in Smithsonian by Richard Conniff. One of my geology professors was in grad school when [...]
It's always the little details that insufferably nag you. For example, after reading this poorly written (or edited) summary, I will always be haunted by the ambiguity of whether Richard Conniff was actually the submitter's geology professor, or if those two references without any explicit tying together are just that. I will carry this burden to my grave.
So the OP's professor was in grad school circa-1912?
Also, a lot of people don't realize (and the OP confirms) that almost all geological science to date has been funded by oil and mining companies.
Wegener's idea of continental drift was correct, but he didn't have a good mechanism for how these continents could plow through oceanic crust to move. That takes a massive force, and there wasn't enough energy to do it.
Later it was realized the continents were relatively light and floated atop moving plates. That provided a mechanism where the internal heat engine of the earth could provide enough energy to make them move.
It wasn't just stodginess that kept Wegener's idea from being accepted. It was also real physical objections. Until the 50s/60s and the discovery of seafloor spreading from the patterns of magnetisation in the seabed, the dynamics just didn't work out.
Now, in hindsight, it's "obvious". But it certainly wasn't at the time. The matching of geological features was intriguing, but without a mechanism for the continents moving, it couldn't overcome the objections.
Continents don't "drift" on the ocean like Wegener imagined, rather the motion of continents is caused by continental and oceanic plates engaging in tectonic events.
I believe the term "Pseudoscience" is reserved for "not even wrong" type things. The scientists of the era considered him incorrect in his conclusions, not pseudoscientific.
economic warp speed
? sounds like a new function describing our national debt.
He was, of course, making irrational stuff up, that accidentally happened to turn out to be correct. Kind of like the ancient greek version of atomic theory.
If real, usable, economic warp speed spacecraft propulsion is ever invented, that doesn't mean the "star trek" writers should get credit.
You were aware that he actually had a fair amount of evidence for continental drift, right? Including fossils (particularly plant fossils) and geography on both sides of the continents that had drifted apart? The fact that he didn't have a mechanism doesn't make it irrational.
He didn't "just happen" to be right, he was a serious scientist who correctly observed evidence for geological change, and correctly supposed that slow gradual movement of landmasses over time was indicated.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
for advancing heliocentrism.
Because when he did, he insisted that all orbits around the sun were perfectly circular. He rejected the idea of elliptical orbits -- an idea that had already been proposed. As a result, the mathematics involved in his model to calculate the "movement" of the stars was significantly less accurate than the then-current and accepted model using epicycles.
But he was right, generally, even if he got the specifics wrong.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Wegener was correct about the continents moving around, and amassed plenty of evidence that the continents were once grouped together into the supercontinent of Pangaea (e.g., similar land animals and plants in rocks of the Carboniferous and Permian on continents now separated by wide oceans). But he was completely wrong about the mechanism. He proposed that the continents were plowing through the ocean crust kind of like icebergs floating on the sea, but when you work out the physics of that situation, the ocean crust is too strong to allow that to happen (continental lithosphere is too weak, and you'd crush them before being able to push them through the oceanic lithosphere even if a suitable force were applied). So, without a valid mechanism that made physical sense, geologists rejected his model. Plate tectonics didn't originate until the 1960s or 1970s when people realized that, essentially, the oceanic lithosphere was moving along with the continents, being formed at mid-oceanic ridges and destroyed at subduction zones, so the physical problems with Wegener's original continental drift no longer applied. People often think continental drift and plate tectonics are the same theory, but they are fairly different. The largely rejected original theory transformed into the new, modern one. Wegener still deserves a lot of credit for bringing together the evidence that the Earth's surface really did move, and by the 1970s that motion was directly measurable. It's pretty cool to imagine that every year the distance between, say, Europe and North America, gets a few cm longer.
He was, of course, making irrational stuff up, that accidentally happened to turn out to be correct. Kind of like the ancient greek version of atomic theory.
Kind of like you are doing now...
I understand and very much appreciate the point of the article.
A similar situation happened, as I understand it, with the idea that ulcers were caused by h.pylori - a huge level of institutional resistance to a clever new insight, eventually realized to be true to the point of "how did we not see how obvious this was"? Heck, germ theory itself and the idea of sterilization fought the same uphill battle.
Nevertheless, when reading the always-popular stories about the "outsiders" with the "radical" new theory fighting uphill to achieve fame and ultimate confirmation and vindication, it's always important to keep in mind that this DOESN'T imply any sort of validation for every crackpot theory that's out there. There are a lot of very, very stupid ideas that are reviled BECAUSE they're wrong.
Being very self-assured and certain you're right has nothing to do with actually being right. Life isn't a storybook. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. In the case of the OP, it took the discovery of evidence that made the energy-level math work out. Before that, even though the theory (today) seems to be right, it was CORRECT that mainstream science rejected it until it was supportable.
Sometimes you might have a great idea, and you might even be right, but it may take longer than your lifetime for it to finally be proved.
-Styopa
Making an observation that something appears to have happened, but failing to explain the mechanism for is not "making irrational stuff up". It's "presenting an hypothesis", which is part of the scientific method. It's an entirely different thing from imagining something fanciful out of nothing factual because you want it for a work of fiction. It's perfectly rational to say "we can't fathom why or how yet, but let's see if this might be true". For example, Newton didn't have any real explanation for what makes gravity work (nor did anyone else, for centuries), but his formulas describing his observations of orbital mechanics were genuine science being practiced, not "making irrational stuff up".
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
We have string theory accepted as fact with little or no data to support it.
Volcanoes were invented shortly after World War 2, following the demonstration by the crew of the Manhattan Project that it was possible to melt rock. They were so impressive that they were then retroactively added to various historical documents around the world, thru a combination of warp drive and continental drift.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
My sister's science fair project in 1972 was on "continental drift" and she had to add "theory" to the title because several of the district science fair judges did not believe that it could possibly be true.
If real, usable, economic warp speed spacecraft propulsion is ever invented, that doesn't mean the "star trek" writers should get credit.
Actually, it just might. That's how we got self-opening doors. When TOS came out and Disney was planning EPCOT, they saw Star Trek and their "imagineers" went to Paramount to find out how they accomplished it. They were discouraged when told that the "self operating" doors were opened and closed by stagehands, by hand. Less than ten years later they were on almost every grocery store.
I'd say that if someone came up with a way to warp spce, Star Trek should get some credit.
Free Martian Whores!
I took a geology course a decade ago, and my professor discussed the previous theories of geology. Geosynclines were part of the idea to explain what we geologically observe. I don't have too much of an understanding of it, but it amounted to saying that landslides and similar types of sediment transport were responsible for the underwater landscape. My professor said that even back then it didn't make too much sense.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
The tectonic view is far more predictive of a wide range of phenomena, including gravity anomalies under mountain ranges, zones of vulcanism (e.g. the "ring of fire" around the pacific) and so on. Wegener's role in modern geology is somewhat similar to Lorentz' role in the development of relativity. The Lorentz contraction is an effect, but Lorentz was unable to place it within a theoretical framework which unified many other observations. Wegener did not unify the action of the mantle with the action of crust correctly. Lack of a mechanism does not stop us from studying, for example, Kepler or Newton. Newton offers no mechanism for gravitation, and Kepler no mechanism for his orbital dynamics.
Wegener died relatively young, in an attempt to save others in the arctic, and had the misfortune of being too far ahead of the available observations. He was, on a key point, simply wrong about basalt dynamics.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
TC Chamberlin who oppose the concept of continental drift, previously opposed another hypothesis. This would be the age of earth put forth by Lord Kelvin who based his estimate on the time it would take a molten earth to cool down. Chamberlin, in opposition, wrote the following.
The fascinating impressiveness of rigorous mathematical analysis, with its atmosphere of precision and elegance, should not blind us to the defects of the premises that condition the whole process.
Kelvin's defect of the premises was that he did not include heat due to radioactive decay. And in a bit of irony, it is this heat that causes convection within the earth, which causes seafloor spreading/plate tectonics. So Chamberlin got one thing right, and one thing wrong.
Let's not forget that Einstein's work didn't come out of thin air, but was based on previous work like Lorentz and Maxwell. We have mythologized Einstein to some extent, just as we did with Newton and Galileo, tending to forget that these men, while instrumental in scientific advancement, built upon previous work.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Carl Sagan said it best: "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.