The Milk Cow of Plate Tectonics
                  (...Junk Science...the smoking gun)

Fig.1. The nemesis of plate tectonics - is the ghost in the background, which is the assumption that the Earth must remain a constant size.  All geological observations are worked around this belief,  resulting in the ludicrous contradictions in which plate tectonics abounds.  Relinquishing this belief removes the film that clouds all geological interpretation that is 'plate tectonics'.

 
The hierarchical argument of plate tectonics begins with the observation of mantle creation at ridges, yoked to the assumption (belief) that the Earth cannot be getting bigger, resulting in the parallel assumption that there must therefore be a commensurate and exactly synchronised destruction of the mantle (in 'subduction' zones).   Creation and destruction in this way, coupled with the understanding that the Earth is hotter towards its centre than at its perimeter (supposedly in excess of the normal temperature gradient due to burial), leads in turn to the notion that the Earth's mantle must be convecting.   The observation of transforms and other major Earth fractures is then added,  from which it is deduced that the Earth is broken into a number of plates which are then further deduced to be independently moving about according to the vagaries of "must be convecting" ("like soup in a pot").

This agglommeration of belief, observation, inference, and assumptions is then synthesised as: "the Earth is divided into a number of plates which are driven by convection, being consumed in subduction zones and added to at ridges in a continuing recycling of the planet's interior, on the surface of which the continents ride like baggage, colliding and compressing here and pulling apart there..." which has its various elements presented as 'fact'  according to whatever aspects of emprirical geological investigation are being undertaken.   Thus "the Earth is divided into a number of plates...etc"  is taken as the factual foundation to which all subsequent geological investigation is referrenced.

However it is clear (as above) that this so-called 'observation' is nothing of the sort, but is a potpourri of belief, assumption, (some fact), and deduction, all of which are referenced back to the fundamental assumption that the Earth must remain a constant size.   This presentation of assumption as fact means plate tectonics must justifiably endure the accusation of JUNK SCIENCE -  namely the sort of science that is directed towards the self-serving interest of its practitioners at the expense of its consumers; career advancement at the expense of public funding, ...in which the most absolute nonsense may be cycled and recycled through a model which has hardly any leg to stand on in the face of the geological facts, yet has absolutely security of publication (and career advancement) (and funding) provided certain rules, shibboleths and mantras are met.

Whilst there are indeed voices declaring the absurdity of plate tectonics, these are not loud within the academic community for the reasons just above.   But whilst some may think the absurdity, to formally voice it generally spells career failure.  This state of affairs describes the initial stage of paradigm change where advancement is covertly framed so as to appear to articulate the old paradigm, when in fact it spells its demise.  In this way science is made to appear to advance by increments, and to illustrate the virtues of consensus and peer review.   The reality is otherwise.  Such is the power of the self-serving interests in the politics of consensus that change can only occur in the face of the most brutal and insistent challenge.  And whilst change must (and does) eventually come from within the system, it is only through appropriation of  what at first seems like 'wild ideas' that would not earlier have been even remotely considered.

As regards change, 'real science'  is in fact the endeavour of Johnnies-come-lately - exploring by 'filling out' in the wake of the real advance that is the cognitive shift in their thinking, which allows them to execute their research in the first place.

This shift  remains virtually unspoken, unremarked, being carried only in the emergent jargon which is developed to code (somewhat covertly) the newly developing belief system - which is the new 'paradigm', ...namely that mutually agreed belief system which for a time serves the interests of a group of practitioners in a field of study, around which the common endeavour of science is articulated  (Kuhn, 1967).   That belief system is then used as a basis on which to construct 'the evidence', which is in turn used to formulate 'the hypothesis'.   At this point an inversion occurs, a sort of gastrulation, a turning inside out, a rebirth, ....where the umbilical cord of belief is severed, and the data becomes the factual basis for the paradigm:  "the Mantle convects",  "the mantle is subducting",  "the Earth is divided into a number of plates", is the (proferred) factual basis for plate tectonics.   The belief, that "The Earth must remain a constant size",  is then reconfigured as a logical conclusion from 'the facts'.   It is this transmutation of 'belief' to 'rational conclusion' (which it isn't), that is the incontrovertible weakness that spells the demise of plate tectonics, for it is unsupportable in the face of the empirical *geological* facts.
 
 

*Note:- 'geological' is the point. That the Earth must remain a constant size is supportable within another discipline (physics); but not in geology.   There is a contradiction which requires dialogue between the two disciplines.  And which isn't happening, because geology defers to physics,  and no senior member of the geological fraternity will risk their career through controversial dialogue.

Controversy is not what career-building is about.
 
 

* Footnote:- However, see
Dr. Giancarlo Scalera
Primo Ricercatore
Istituto National di Geofisica e Volcanologica
Via di Vigna murata 605
I-00143 - Roma, Italy
 
 

(...Real scientists do the cognitive flexibility check here...)

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(How do we know that the Earth cannot be getting bigger? The laws of physics are said to militate against it; but the geological evidence says that  it is. )

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