![]() According to Oreskes, American geologists tried to elucidate Earth history through the physical evidence observed, while Europeans tried to understand Earth history in terms of the physics and chemistry laws (Oreskes 1999). Footnote 1 Oreskes’s work is subtler in explaining that American geologists had standards of practice that diverged from European geologists’. Other authors emphasize the rejection attitude from the rest of the community, mostly noticing that main opponents were American geologists and, thereby, explaining the rejection in terms of the “American chauvinism and recalcitrance” (Newman 1995, 79). In that sense, it has been also argued that: “The theory remained controversial for nearly half a century the reason for this was that the scientific community had difficulty testing the hypothesis rigorously with available techniques and also lacked a convincing explanatory mechanism” (Giller et al. In explaining the above, Hallam reaches the conclusion that “when discoveries are made before their time, they are almost certain to be ignored or meet with opposition which is too strong to overcome” (Hallam 1983, 152). Indeed, Wegener has been described as “an early advocate of an immature theory” (Oreskes 2013, 29) or “born at the wrong time” (Nield 2015, 193). ![]() In other words, scientists who lacked his intuition would not get convinced by his modest evidence. This is a way of explaining why Wegener’s theory did not have many supporters. Some emphasize the figure of Wegener, pointing out his remarkable intuition to develop a correct theory without much evidence. Here, some subtle divergences can be found among authors. ![]() In any case, the story is thrilling because it reflects a community of scientists who, since 1912, had the theory within their grasp but resisted to accept it for more than 50 years, until they surrendered to the final evidence.Īll stories about continental drift begin with Wegener in 1912, and the heart of the conflict is situated on the difficulties of the scientific community to accept his theory. There are also exhaustive, well documented and rigorous versions of it, like the book published by Oreskes ( 1999) or the four volumes written by Frankel ( 2012). That is a brief version of the story, for sure. Later on, in the 1960s new evidence from paleomagnetism was presented and, with this new evidence, the geologists’ community finally accepted Wegener’s continental drift theory. At the beginning, a few scientists supported him, but most geologists simply rejected his theory. ![]() He is considered to have been far ahead of his time because his assumptions turned to be right but they lacked enough evidence. Therefore, this text aims to bring much broader sociological elements than usually involved in the analysis of the continental drift theory.Īccording to the usual story about the continental drift theory, in 1912 Alfred Wegener argued that all continents had once been united before splitting apart. These were fixism and mobilism and they were always confronting their own evidence and interpretations and functioning as general frameworks for the acceptability of a specific theory. I’ll argue that continental drift debate took much longer than it was usually recognized with two styles of thought coexisting for hundreds of years. In this article I analyse continental drift debates from a different perspective which is based on styles of thought. Therefore, rationalist approaches suggest that evidence can be enough by itself to close scientific controversies. In that sense, many authors suggest that Alfred Wegener’s theory of the original supercontinent Pangea and the subsequent continental displacements finally reached a consensus when irrefutable evidence became available. The continental drift controversy has been deeply analysed in terms of rationalist notions, which seem to find there a unique topic to describe the weight of evidence for reaching consensus.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |