Art, Thanks for the compliment. My ego has been sufficiently stroked!
Perhaps I'm reading too much into your wording here but I would like
to elaborate on the idea of compromise as it relates to the scientific
explanations for the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. Many people
view compromise as a lose-lose situation - You lose part of your idea, I
lose part of mine and as a result neither of us are satisfied with the
agglutinated whole. Yet I believe that the history of thought on the
Grand Canyon illustrates how science progresses by accommodating seemingly
contradictory ideas.
Each of those "students" of the Grand Canyon spend large amounts of time,
money, and effort studying a small portion within the entire system. From
the evidence gathered, these researchers form a hypothesis that explains
what happened within their field area. The next step and natural
consequence is to extrapolate the ideas from that study area to explain
the formation of the entire system. This works fine when dealing with
simple systems and the early researchers assumed that the Grand Canyon was
a simple system. Hence the grand explanations of those who studied the
seemingly younger evidence at the western end of the Canyon contradicted
those grand explanations of those who studied the seemingly older evidence
at the eastern end.
The polyphase ideas of McKee, Lucchitta, and others simply acknowledge
that the entire system is much more complex than previously thought and in
their "compromise" use the evidence to create an explanation that honors
the observations and conclusion of both sets of workers. Are there
problems with this solution? I'm sure that there are but these problems
simply provide direction for additional study and do not, as yet,
invalidate the polyphase hypothesis.
>Models
>such as the submarine tunneling of the river west of Peach Springs wash
>have been proposed, and we have impounded sediments at both ends of the
>canyon of about the right age to be from the ancestral river. Then there
>are the problems of the barbed drainages in the eastern reaches of the
>canyon, that imply that the river once flowed north along its eastern
>course.
I will have to plead ignorance of these particular "models", but from your
brief description they sound like additional observations from isolated
field areas that support the idea that the Grand Canyon formation was
complex and cannot be explained as a simple system. These observations
would then seem to invalidate both the simple explanations of the early
Grand Canyon researchers and the simple breached dam/flood hypothesis of
Austin and others.
>I think that it is safe to say that the issue of how the river was
>carved is still a grand mystery, and that everyone who has studied it has a
>different explanation for its formation. But that is not the same as
>saying that "most of the geologists have junked the idea that the Colorado
>River carved the Grand Canyon". A few quotes (or even one) from geologists
>who actually advocated this position would have helped his case.
I agree that the Grand Canyon is still a grand mystery but would maintain
that the current theories are closer to a resolution of this mystery than
flood theorists would like to admit.
The quote that "most of the geologists have junked the idea that the
Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon" comes directly from Steve Austin's
film "Mt. St. Helens & Catastrophism". Since this film was aimed at
popular audiences there is very little in the way of supporting references
given. Austin doesn't give any additional references for the Grand Canyon
in his ICR Acts & Facts Impact No. 157 article of the same name
(http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-157.htm) which is an earlier version of
the material in Austin's film. I would think that he would do a better job
in his book "Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe" (which I have yet to
obtain and read.)
Steve
[Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own
and should not be attributed to my employer]
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: ////// Steven M. Smith Office: (303)236-1192 ::
:: |----OO U.S. Geological Survey Message: (303)236-1800 ::
:: C > Box 25046, M.S. 973, DFC Fax: (303)236-3200 ::
:: \__~/ Denver, CO 80225 smsmith@helios.cr.usgs.gov ::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::