Naomi Oreskes - The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science

Theory And Method In
American Earth Science

NAOMI ORESKES

Oxford University Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Puhlication Data

Oreskes, Naomi.

The rejection of continental drift: theory and method in American earth science / Naomi Oreskes.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-19-511732-8; ISBN 0-19-511733-6 (pbk)

1. Continental drift.

2. Geology United States History 20th century.

I. Title.

QE511.5.074 1999

551.1'36-dc21 98-4161

To Shlomo Flotzgebirge, my faithful companion,
and to K. B., who sees connections that no one else notices
and always keeps me on track.

T his book began in 1978 when I first studied geology at Imperial College in London. I had completed two years as a geology major at a leading U.S. university and counted myself lucky to have chosen a field of science heady in the wake of revolutionary upheaval: geologists around the globe were reinterpreting old data and longstanding problems in the new light of plate tectonics. It seemed a good time to be an aspiring young earth scientist. Imagine my surprise and dismayto discover in England that the radically new idea of plate tectonics had been proposed more than half a century before by a German geophysicist, Alfred Wegener, and widely promoted in the United Kingdom by the leading British geologist of his era, Arthur Holmes. The revolution that had been described by my professors in the United States as the radical revelation of a dramatically new vision of the earth was viewed by many of my professors in England as the pleasing confirmation of a long-suspected notion. Whereas my textbooks in the United States had proclaimed the explanatory power of the new ruling theory, Dorothy Rayner, the doyenne of British Stratigraphy, dryly instructed in her text, Stratigraphy of the British Isles, "our stratigraphy and history has certainly been illuminated by the current hypothesis, but so far the light shed is somewhat uneven." And although I had only just learned of these ideas two years before, my English flatmate could pull out the dog-eared copy of Arthur Holmes's 1945 textbook she had read in elementary school.

The seeds of an intellectual inquiry were sown. For some years they lay dormant while I lived the life of a field geologist, although the ground in which they lay was being heavily fertilized. Working as a professional geologist in Australia, I learned often from mildly indignant colleagues not only that many Australian geologists knew about and believed in the idea of continental drift in the 1940s and 1950s but also that in several instances they were ridiculed at international meetings or on visits to the United States by rude and arrogant Americans. I also learned that other theories of crustal mobility, including the expanding earth hypothesis, had been advocated and in some cases were still being advocated by Australian geologists. One Australian who was receptive to the idea of an expanding earth was my employer, the director of exploration of Australia's third-largest mining company, who periodically circulated papers on this topic among his scientific staff. It was evident that the recent history of earth science was much more complex, much more nationalistic, and much more interesting than my professors and textbooks or my readings in the philosophy of sciencehad ever suggested.

In the early 1980s, I returned to the United States to pursue graduate studies in geology and again encountered a conundrum. My English training and Australian experience had inculcated in me an inductive methodology, in which scientific problems originated in the observation of geological phenomena in the field, but many of my American professors disdained inductive science and what they pejoratively dismissed as "outcrop" geology. They encouraged me to pursue a deductive strategy and to rely primarily on the tools of laboratory analysis. This was particularly true of younger professors and those who had achieved a high level of professional recognition. The issue was not one of theoretical belief but of methodological commitment. My American and British professors promoted contradictory and ultimately incompatible views about the right way to generate scientific knowledge. Two strands began to merge: divergent visions of the recent history of earth science and divergent methodological commitments. Was there some relation between the two? So began the active portion of the inquiry represented by this book.

My debts are thus spread over several continents. My research advisors at Stanford University, Peter Galison and Marco T. Einaudi, encouraged me to pursue the questions raised in this book while still engaging in scientific research. Neither of these men has ever allowed his thinking to be constrained by the historically contingent boundaries of academic disciplines, and for this I am deeply grateful. Among the Stanford faculty, past and present, I am also indebted to Nancy Cartwright, who profoundly influenced my thinking; to Dennis Bird, John Bredehoeft, John Dupree, Jane Maienschein, James O'Neil, Tjeerd van Andel, and Norton Wise; and to fellow graduate students David Magnus, Carey Peabody, Barbara Bekken, Lisa Echevarria Benatar, Peter Mitchell, Hilary and Jon Olson, Nicolas Rose, and Allan Rubin. In Australia I am indebted to Roy Woodall, formerly Director of Exploration of Western Mining Company, and to colleagues at Western Mining and BP Minerals who shared historical anecdotes; at Imperial College, London, to John Knill, Paul Garrod, Angus Moore, Mike Rosenbaum, Ernie Rutter, Richard Sibson, and the late Janet Watson, all of whom inspired me in important ways; and at Dartmouth College to Claudia Henrion, Richard Kremer, and the late, great Chuck Drake, who I dearly wish had lived to read this book.

Throughout this project I have benefited from the intellectual generosity and moral support of many colleagues: Duncan Agnew, Ron Doel, Robert Dott Jr., Mott Greene, David Kaiser, Homer LeGrand, Phil Pauley, Ron Rainger, Martin Rudwick, and Kenneth Taylor commented on the manuscript; Allan Allwardt, Richard Creath, Henry Frankel, Eli Gerson, Carl-Henry Geschwind, Bruce Hevly, Rachel Laudan, Leo Laporte, Chandra Mukerji, Robert Smith, and Don White provided feedback and information; Helen Wright Grcuter and Finley Wright gave me access to their father's letters; Michcle Aldrich sent historical tips. Among librarians and archivists, I am indebted to Deborah Day of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Charlotte Dirksen and Henry Lowood at Stanford, Barbara DeFelice and the late Susan George at Dartmouth College, Ronald Brashear at the Huntington Library, Susan Vasquez and Shaun Hardy at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and the staff of the Yale University Libraries.