Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?

Just a matter of history. In Britain Arthur Holmes and other accepted continental drift long before 1960, and studying geology in the late 60s we were taught it and how Americans and Canadians like Tuzo Wilson would not accepts it.
it was common in South Africa largely due to the work of du Toit.

I started geology in 1966 and by then it was commonplace here.

It seems that a certain sub-continent were very slooooow

Michael
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Don Winterstein
  To: asa
  Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 9:42 AM
  Subject: Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?

  "The initial model of continental drift included an unviable mechanism...."

   
  Last I heard (I haven't been keeping up!) the underlying driving force has always been poorly understood and has never been a very compelling part of the theory. But the data in support of the theory have become absolutely compelling: Beginning with the mid-Atlantic spreading centers and striations of magnetic anomalies preserved in ocean floors, Earth scientists have gone on to interpret a huge array of geological and geophysical phenomena in terms of plate tectonics.

  It's a revolutionary unifying concept. It's revolutionary because the model it overturned was that the continents were stationary. Apart from continental drift "missionaries" like Alfred Wegener, Earth scientists before about 1960 believed continents underwent no relative motion. Frank Press in his book _Earth_ states, "...The stability of global geographic features was...a main tenet of the old geology...." This was despite what are now regarded as fairly convincing early evidences from continent shapes, rock types, fossils and fossil climate patterns that certain continents now widely separated had once been joined.

  Plate tectonics is a unifying concept because it shows how many crustal phenomena once "explained" in isolation are interrelated.

  When the new model took over, it took over quickly. Few evidences for any theory could be more compelling than the combination of spreading center data with magnetic striation data.

  Don

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: David Campbell
    To: asa@calvin.edu
    Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 1:49 PM
    Subject: Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?

    The initial model of continental drift included an unviable mechanism,
    as well as some problems on the estimated timing of events, etc.
    Fixing these, as well as discovery of critical new evidence, were key
    in getting the revised idea of plate tectonics accepted.

    I'm not expert in the history of geology, but my impression is that
    plate tectonics is largely an example of a new idea explaining
    numerous phenomena that had not been linked together, instead of there
    being a single previous model that it overturned.

    --
    Dr. David Campbell (ASA member)
    425 Scientific Collections
    University of Alabama
    "I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"

    To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
    "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Fri Jul 6 06:07:25 2007