Earth’s crust is a set of moving units called tectonic plates. Plate movements are responsible for mountain formation, including volcanic mountains, and they also cause earthquakes. Some of the plates are moving at a fast pace. What is fast? Australia, for example, is headed northward at a rate of seven centimeters per year. In contrast, most of North America is moving about one centimeter per year.
Centimeters are little units. If you are used to the English measurements, think 2.54 centimeters per inch. So, Australia is moving about 2 ¾ inches every year; let’s say three inches. A giant continent is moving and all the people seem to be unaware of the movement. But then, that’s the way on all the landmasses. The world’s surface is in motion, but unless there is an earthquake, no one feels the movement. Australians don’t sit around saying, “Can you feel it move? Last year, we were three inches south of where we are this year. Pass the vegemite.” All of Australia is moving imperceptibly.
No matter where you live, you are also traveling with a crustal plate’s imperceptible motions. And no matter who you are, you are also moving imperceptibly by the force of opinion or fact—or both—even when you believe you have never moved and that you will never move from your current intellectual position. The alternative to recognizing your intellectual movement is not simply remaining “in place.” The alternative is struggling to keep a massive landmass from carrying you along.
Want an example? Take the story of Robert FitzRoy, a vice-admiral in the Royal Navy during the nineteenth century and captain of the HMS Beagle, the ship that carried Charles Darwin to his discoveries about life and evolution. At first, FitzRoy, a highly intelligent polymath and accomplished individual, accepted, after reading Charles Lyell’s book on geology, that Earth was old, apparently very old, and he shared this with Darwin. FitzRoy, whose works and biography are well worth at least a casual reading, was a devoutly religious man who believed in the “absolute” truth of the Bible. He found through his explorations, however, that what he observed seemed to contradict a literal reading of the Bible and the interpretation by Bishop Ussher that Earth was young, just 6,000 years old in Ussher’s count. As Darwin’s work on evolution developed, FitzRoy was at first supportive, but after the voyage, increasingly unsupportive. Darwin published in 1859. In the following year, FitzRoy railed against Darwin’s work at a conference in Oxford.
And then FitzRoy, who had actually invited Darwin along on the voyage of discovery to avoid through companionship the depression that led to the suicide of his predecessor captain of HMS Beagle, cut his own throat. Apparently, the struggle between what he believed and what he knew had become one of the causes of his depression. He saw opinion changing, and he was powerless to stop it. When he had railed against the science of Darwin at the Oxford conference, he held a Bible over his head to the shouts of those who had rejected a literal interpretation and who had come to separate matters of faith from matters of intellect.
You are always on a moving plate that you cannot stop. The best you can do is to realistically assess the difference between what you believe and what you know and to estimate the rate at which you are imperceptibly moving or struggling to hold back a mass on which you are riding.
Centimeters are little units. If you are used to the English measurements, think 2.54 centimeters per inch. So, Australia is moving about 2 ¾ inches every year; let’s say three inches. A giant continent is moving and all the people seem to be unaware of the movement. But then, that’s the way on all the landmasses. The world’s surface is in motion, but unless there is an earthquake, no one feels the movement. Australians don’t sit around saying, “Can you feel it move? Last year, we were three inches south of where we are this year. Pass the vegemite.” All of Australia is moving imperceptibly.
No matter where you live, you are also traveling with a crustal plate’s imperceptible motions. And no matter who you are, you are also moving imperceptibly by the force of opinion or fact—or both—even when you believe you have never moved and that you will never move from your current intellectual position. The alternative to recognizing your intellectual movement is not simply remaining “in place.” The alternative is struggling to keep a massive landmass from carrying you along.
Want an example? Take the story of Robert FitzRoy, a vice-admiral in the Royal Navy during the nineteenth century and captain of the HMS Beagle, the ship that carried Charles Darwin to his discoveries about life and evolution. At first, FitzRoy, a highly intelligent polymath and accomplished individual, accepted, after reading Charles Lyell’s book on geology, that Earth was old, apparently very old, and he shared this with Darwin. FitzRoy, whose works and biography are well worth at least a casual reading, was a devoutly religious man who believed in the “absolute” truth of the Bible. He found through his explorations, however, that what he observed seemed to contradict a literal reading of the Bible and the interpretation by Bishop Ussher that Earth was young, just 6,000 years old in Ussher’s count. As Darwin’s work on evolution developed, FitzRoy was at first supportive, but after the voyage, increasingly unsupportive. Darwin published in 1859. In the following year, FitzRoy railed against Darwin’s work at a conference in Oxford.
And then FitzRoy, who had actually invited Darwin along on the voyage of discovery to avoid through companionship the depression that led to the suicide of his predecessor captain of HMS Beagle, cut his own throat. Apparently, the struggle between what he believed and what he knew had become one of the causes of his depression. He saw opinion changing, and he was powerless to stop it. When he had railed against the science of Darwin at the Oxford conference, he held a Bible over his head to the shouts of those who had rejected a literal interpretation and who had come to separate matters of faith from matters of intellect.
You are always on a moving plate that you cannot stop. The best you can do is to realistically assess the difference between what you believe and what you know and to estimate the rate at which you are imperceptibly moving or struggling to hold back a mass on which you are riding.
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