When astronomer/meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents had, in his word, “drifted,” he met opposition from geologists and their like in Europe and America. Based on evidence from continental shape, geology, and paleontology, his hypothesis lacked a demonstrable mechanism behind the “drift.” That lack of a mechanism for moving continents made drift seem preposterous to the early twentieth-century scientists who specialized in all matters geological. Wegener was, after all, an outsider. What could a nonspecialist tell specialists about their field of knowledge? His book on the subject, written during WW I while he recovered from two wounds and served as a military meteorologist, was The Origins of Continents and Oceans. It stirred controversy on widely separated continents.
Wegener developed an interest in his controversial subject because the coastlines on either side of the Atlantic matched like pieces of a puzzle. You have probably noted the same seemingly coincidental puzzle-piece shapes of North America, South America, and Africa. Cut them out of a paper map to reassemble. Rather a nice fit, wouldn’t you say? I remember my experience with my first world map about the time I entered kindergarten. Having seen my mother assemble puzzles in the long dark evenings of winter, I was struck by the outlines of the continents. To my father, I exclaimed, “Hey, they look like pieces of a puzzle.” But as a child, I left the thought there, did no further research into the matter, and never published my childhood observation in a peer-reviewed journal. Had I been more insightful and energetic, I might now be one of the historic proponents of plate tectonics.
I’ll note that Wegener was not only older but also more educated than I when he concluded that the continents had somehow moved. But given the age difference (Wegener was born in 1880 and died in 1930 before I was born), I really didn’t have the chance to be the first to discover that coastlines across the Atlantic have interlocking shapes. Even Wegener wasn’t the first. In the century after Columbus’ discovery of the New World, navigators and cartographers had crudely mapped the Atlantic landmasses. in 1596 Abraham Ortelius noted the puzzle-piece appearance. For hundreds of years, observers more knowledgeable than I was as a child probably also noted that puzzling puzzle of coastal shapes and, like me, let it go into and out of their heads.
A brief primer: Wegener’s hypothesis of continental drift is now the theory of sea-floor spreading. There’s a bunch of evidence now, and the theory explains the shapes of oceans and landmasses, the location of earthquakes and volcanoes, and the rise of great mountain belts. But Wegener met strong resistance to his ideas. Even though he had shown that rocks and fossils on either side of the Atlantic matched beyond mere coincidence, he could not convince the intellectual belligerents of his time. Unfortunately, his death in 1930 prevented Wegener from seeing the role he played in the development of modern geology, paleontology, climatology, oceanography, and geophysics. You and I are recipients of information from discoveries made in the context of Wegener’s musings while he was under attack, both literally and physically during WW I and intellectually in the ensuing years. It’s because of Wegener and his eventual defenders that we understand why and where earthquakes, like those along the San Andreas Fault, occur.
In other blogs, I have noted the dependence we all have on axiomatic thinking born in the mind of Euclid more than 2,000 years ago. We have a tendency to accept axioms and shape our perspectives by them. Those axiomatic perspectives then become the lens through which we see the details of our world, especially those that we can’t fully explain. As Wegener struggled unsuccessfully to discover a physical mechanism powerful enough to move continents and reshape oceans, he noted, “...there must be a hidden error in the assumptions alleged to be obvious.”* Two camps of opinion had emerged. One assumed that the continents and oceans were permanent features. Another assumed they were ephemeral features of a dynamic Earth. As learned as Wegener’s opponents were, many were stuck on assumptions about how a “permanent” surface had wrinkled. Many assumed, for example, that Earth was hot initially and that subsequent cooling led to a mountainous wrinkling of Earth’s outermost layer, producing the highlands and lowlands we see today.
To be fair to Wegener’s opponents, I should note that they didn’t have the benefit of seismic tomography, laser measurements, side-looking sonar, satellites, and a cadre of geologists, paleontologists, paleoclimatologists, geochemists, and geophysicists who were born into the advantages provided by the twentieth century’s technological advances and the library of studies on the ages and location of Earth’s surface rocks. Nevertheless, I want to note, also, that the first reaction to Wegener’s hypothesis wasn’t indicative of scientific openness. It was, rather, indicative of errors made from “assumptions alleged to be obvious.”
Is it our nature to rely so thoroughly on “assumptions alleged to be obvious” that we frequently subduct into a zone of bias and prejudice like some basaltic ocean floor sinking into Earth’s mantle? As we all learn in school, the nature of “true” science is openness. Sometimes facts contradict our assumptions. The difficulties we have in understanding the people around us and the nature of our physical world almost invariably stems from our inability to know when the obvious isn’t obvious to everyone.
Is there an Alfred Wegener in your life? You know, an outsider who might have some insight. Is there someone who might be onto a truth you can’t see from your perspective and the assumptions you allege to be “obvious”? Maybe we’re all a bit like those early twentieth-century geologists who couldn’t accept an insight from an outsider. Maybe that’s our nature, and we know it because at times we have all been a Wegener, the outsider who has a good idea that the insiders can’t accept.
*Wegener, Alfred, Prof. Dr., Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, 1915. Dover Reprint 1966 of 1929 edition, 19.
Wegener developed an interest in his controversial subject because the coastlines on either side of the Atlantic matched like pieces of a puzzle. You have probably noted the same seemingly coincidental puzzle-piece shapes of North America, South America, and Africa. Cut them out of a paper map to reassemble. Rather a nice fit, wouldn’t you say? I remember my experience with my first world map about the time I entered kindergarten. Having seen my mother assemble puzzles in the long dark evenings of winter, I was struck by the outlines of the continents. To my father, I exclaimed, “Hey, they look like pieces of a puzzle.” But as a child, I left the thought there, did no further research into the matter, and never published my childhood observation in a peer-reviewed journal. Had I been more insightful and energetic, I might now be one of the historic proponents of plate tectonics.
I’ll note that Wegener was not only older but also more educated than I when he concluded that the continents had somehow moved. But given the age difference (Wegener was born in 1880 and died in 1930 before I was born), I really didn’t have the chance to be the first to discover that coastlines across the Atlantic have interlocking shapes. Even Wegener wasn’t the first. In the century after Columbus’ discovery of the New World, navigators and cartographers had crudely mapped the Atlantic landmasses. in 1596 Abraham Ortelius noted the puzzle-piece appearance. For hundreds of years, observers more knowledgeable than I was as a child probably also noted that puzzling puzzle of coastal shapes and, like me, let it go into and out of their heads.
A brief primer: Wegener’s hypothesis of continental drift is now the theory of sea-floor spreading. There’s a bunch of evidence now, and the theory explains the shapes of oceans and landmasses, the location of earthquakes and volcanoes, and the rise of great mountain belts. But Wegener met strong resistance to his ideas. Even though he had shown that rocks and fossils on either side of the Atlantic matched beyond mere coincidence, he could not convince the intellectual belligerents of his time. Unfortunately, his death in 1930 prevented Wegener from seeing the role he played in the development of modern geology, paleontology, climatology, oceanography, and geophysics. You and I are recipients of information from discoveries made in the context of Wegener’s musings while he was under attack, both literally and physically during WW I and intellectually in the ensuing years. It’s because of Wegener and his eventual defenders that we understand why and where earthquakes, like those along the San Andreas Fault, occur.
In other blogs, I have noted the dependence we all have on axiomatic thinking born in the mind of Euclid more than 2,000 years ago. We have a tendency to accept axioms and shape our perspectives by them. Those axiomatic perspectives then become the lens through which we see the details of our world, especially those that we can’t fully explain. As Wegener struggled unsuccessfully to discover a physical mechanism powerful enough to move continents and reshape oceans, he noted, “...there must be a hidden error in the assumptions alleged to be obvious.”* Two camps of opinion had emerged. One assumed that the continents and oceans were permanent features. Another assumed they were ephemeral features of a dynamic Earth. As learned as Wegener’s opponents were, many were stuck on assumptions about how a “permanent” surface had wrinkled. Many assumed, for example, that Earth was hot initially and that subsequent cooling led to a mountainous wrinkling of Earth’s outermost layer, producing the highlands and lowlands we see today.
To be fair to Wegener’s opponents, I should note that they didn’t have the benefit of seismic tomography, laser measurements, side-looking sonar, satellites, and a cadre of geologists, paleontologists, paleoclimatologists, geochemists, and geophysicists who were born into the advantages provided by the twentieth century’s technological advances and the library of studies on the ages and location of Earth’s surface rocks. Nevertheless, I want to note, also, that the first reaction to Wegener’s hypothesis wasn’t indicative of scientific openness. It was, rather, indicative of errors made from “assumptions alleged to be obvious.”
Is it our nature to rely so thoroughly on “assumptions alleged to be obvious” that we frequently subduct into a zone of bias and prejudice like some basaltic ocean floor sinking into Earth’s mantle? As we all learn in school, the nature of “true” science is openness. Sometimes facts contradict our assumptions. The difficulties we have in understanding the people around us and the nature of our physical world almost invariably stems from our inability to know when the obvious isn’t obvious to everyone.
Is there an Alfred Wegener in your life? You know, an outsider who might have some insight. Is there someone who might be onto a truth you can’t see from your perspective and the assumptions you allege to be “obvious”? Maybe we’re all a bit like those early twentieth-century geologists who couldn’t accept an insight from an outsider. Maybe that’s our nature, and we know it because at times we have all been a Wegener, the outsider who has a good idea that the insiders can’t accept.
*Wegener, Alfred, Prof. Dr., Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, 1915. Dover Reprint 1966 of 1929 edition, 19.
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