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Manipulation,
Appropriation,
Capitulation,
Fig.1 Seeing is believing. Members of the press and other interested parties witness a nuclear explosion (which had a deadening effect on more than just the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
How did it happen that geological observation and logical deduction was supplanted by physical theory in the way it was, to transmute Continental Drift into Plate Tectonics?. By any measure of science this was a strange eventuation. Geology was strongly in the track of exploring the logic of continental drift and its emergent neonate, Earth expansion, yet it was stopped cold in its tracks by the mantra of "No Mechanism', pitched first against continental drift and secondly against Earth expansion.
Surely, if 'no mechanism' was an objection then it was the duty of science to find one, when the facts untrammelled by convenient assumptions to the contrary, clearly indicated that one should exist.
Progress in science is written more often in the subtexts, than in the texts, and must be viewed against the political and social events of the time. There had been speculation on both continental rupture and planetary enlargement well before Wegener, both in Europe and in America but it was not until 1922, four years after the end of the First World War when Wegener's third edition was translated into English that controversy erupted in the English speaking world. Up until then the discourse had been developing equably in Europe in German and Russian literature, but it was the translation of Wegener's authoritative and comprehensive analysis that captured the attention of scientists in Britain and America. Geophysicists whose leader in rejection according to Carey (1988), a participant in the debate, was most likely Harold Jeffreys, roundly denounced it maintaining there to be no mechanism whereby the continents could 'plough' or 'drift' through an ocean of basalt. Geologists (in the English speaking world) followed.
Carey (1988) comments that ploughing or drifting however was to misrepresent what Wegener was saying, the word Wegener used being 'verschiebung', which in context was more accurately translated by Skerl as meaning 'separation'. The linguistic displacement was a blatant attempt to hang dead dogs on Wegener, ..a ploy that succeeded... in the English-speaking world at least.
Meanwhile in Europe the concept continued to be debated. Carey (1988, p.96) writes:-
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So, rather than being eclipsed, Continental drift and Earth expansion continued in the geological, if not the geophysical, community, particularly in Europe where the concept was regarded favourably by eminent geologists, raising again the question, how did it become subsumed by geophysics?There seems little doubt that the 'not-invented-here' sydrome was, in part at least, responsible for rejection in America and Britain, and probably on three counts. Firstly the dialogue was in German (some in Russian), and therefore liguistically peripheral to the community of English-speaking scientists. Secondly and worse, Wegener (a meteorologist) was not even a geologist. Thirdly, there was probably an air of hubristic superiority on the part of British and American scientists, simply by virtue of victory and economic superiority following the war: history is written by the victors.
Following the Second World War the reconfiguring of Continental Drift as Plate Tectonics and the rejection of Earth expansion was clinched by the supremacy in science of physics following the explosion of the atomic bomb in the Pacific, which basically confirmed that when it came to the atom and implications of 'mass' and a possible increase in size of the Earth, physicists knew what they were talking about. And if they asserted "no mechanism" for the Earth getting bigger, and geologists anyway could not provide one and even agreed there was none (known), then what was there to argue about? As well there seems little doubt that the political and linguistic schism after the war between Russia and continental Europe on one hand, and Britain and America on the other would have continued, and figured in the development of ideas and attitudes.
Yet the geological facts stood: the continents clearly had parted by the extents of the ocean floors, creating prima facie at least, an enlargement of the planet in the recent geological past that was obvious to anyone regardless of their geological background, or lack of it.
So what to do? Well, ...that depended from which side of the argument one was coming.. From the physics side there was only one thing *to* do, .. and that was to sweep it under the carpet by simply asserting there could *be* no enlargement, for otherwise was to imply the addition of material on a scale so stupendous that it completely contravened the known laws of physics. The laws of thermodynamics after all, on which had just been graphically demonstrated that matter can neither be created nor destroyed to the extent of wiping two cities off the face of the Earth had to be right, and therefore by implication any notion of an expanding Earth - even by one iota - was consequently, and simply 'wrong'.
In normal circumstances this assertion would never have been even remotely acceptable in any branch of science, much less one centered entirely in empirical observation. But these were abnormal times; the Cold War was escalating, and there was every need to maintain the credibility of physics, ..and so the wall-eyed assertion of subduction was given lip-service despite the "convenient assumtion" invoked to support it . The zone of circum-Pacific earthquakes was claimed to be the zone of commensurate destruction of ocean floor created at the spreading ridge. Like an inverted pyramid balanced on its point the entire edifice of Plate Tectonics has sat precariously on this convenient assumption ever since, an assumption that by the hand of dogma has morphed into fact. But it is not fact, as the increasing documentation of 'flat subduction' (by Plate Tectonics own hand) shows.
From the geological side however there was a choice, but it was more of Hobson than real, for a behemoth was rolling, moreover one that had tremendous memic and pyrotechnic appeal. The Cold War mandated a need for security, and that lay in weapons development, which in turn was underpinned by physics. It was where the science, money and careers were going. There was no point to scientific idealism, professional petulance, and killing a goose that promised to lay golden eggs by raising doubts over the "convenient assumption" that physics had inserted into Wegener's earlier conclusion of continental separation ("Drift") to resurrect it as Plate Tectonics. Going with the flow was entirely reasonable and sensible. Besides, the elements that secured that appropriation related to continental separation and global growth, and were laudably factual. If the 'theory' was not, then so what? Theory could be debated, and there was a logic anyway in the "Earth-cannot-get-bigger" argument in terms of planetary accretion. The finer point, which is that theory wherever it is proposed should be based on fact, and not assumption, was set aside.
So, ..choice, ..but no choice. Geologists quickly saw which side their bread was buttered and capitulated to the new way of doing science - by consensus. In retrospect capitulation must have been sheer political expediency, because the geological argument gathered from the ocean floor data much favoured expansion, as certain eminences (Fig.2 above) recognised. Apart from those eminences, and Carey himself, there have been since few exceptions. Two most notable were Bruce Heezen and Marie Tharp, who put together the maps of the ocean floors in the Atlantic, and whose work apparently prompted Harry Hess to postulate subduction, not because the geological elements describing subduction were compelling, but because Earth expansion as proposed by Bruce Heezen (1960) and Carey (1958) was "philosophically unsatisfying, ..in that there is no apparent mechanism within the Earth to cause a sudden (and exponential according to Carey) increase in the radius of the Earth" - as well as the question where the water comes from to maintain the current 'plimsol line' with respect to the continents. And all of that despite Hess' own admission that Expansion "would remove three of my most serious difficulties." (H. Hess, p.610).
The "No Mechanism" bugbear again. Why, in the psyche of scientists, is their own ignorance in the face of the facts such a big issue? Are they narcissists all? Do they think they have some god-given omnipotence over the workings of nature so profound that if they don't undertand something, then it can't be happening. I mean really, .. what is this 'No Mechanism;' all about? Is it seriously so important? Or is it a cop-out for something else, like an apagos satanos pulled out to thrust in the face of threat to their own understanding or career should one arise?
Some see consensus as respectable, even necessary. Others see it as pernicious. Still others as the refuge of mediocrity. Certainly as far as scientific advance is concerned it is at great cost to the public purse. However, that simply may be the cost that the public has to bear for the luxury of being able to afford scientific enterprise in the first place, for science is not simply about advance, but the exploration of perimeters that advance offers, even if it does contribute increasingly less to science as time passes. The work is necessary but it does foster a corrupt underbelly of sterility which is greatly to the disadvantage of both the funding public and the science, for unlike those who push the science forward whose dedication to the science is absolute, and usually at considerable cost to themselves, the allegiance of consensus is not to the science, but to the funds that drive it, access to which is defended with tribal ferocity.
For the last half-century the Earth sciences have graphically demonstrated this aspect of publically funded science. What *is* surprising however (or perhaps not, depending on one's point of view) is the way that mediocrity has managed to squat like a dragon guarding its treasure, unchallenged, on the rubble that is Plate Tectonics.
Eating Big Macs.
With gravy.
Earth expansion
hostage to a 'convenient assumption'
??
