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Continental drift, ein Märchen

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... He also mentions that his paper had been severely criticized by Yale professor Chester Longwell (1944), and he had heard it was going to be "assaulted" by Bailey Willis (1857-1949) a strong opponent of Continental Drift (to whom du Toit had sent a copy of "Our Wandering Continents" in 1937; Master, 2016). Willis (1944) published a polemical essay dismissing the idea of Continental Drift as a fairy tale, "ein Märschen". The debate between Simpson (1943), du Toit (1944), Longwell (1944) and Willis (1944) has been discussed at length by Newman (1995), Oreskes (1999) and Frankel (2012). ...
... Willis (1944) published a polemical essay dismissing the idea of Continental Drift as a fairy tale, "ein Märschen". The debate between Simpson (1943), du Toit (1944), Longwell (1944) and Willis (1944) has been discussed at length by Newman (1995), Oreskes (1999) and Frankel (2012). ...
... Longwell (1944).11 Willis (1944). ...
... Bailey Willis (1944) called Wegener's theory 'ein Märchen' (a fairy tale) and Oreskes (1999) provided several reasons for the American rejection. First, Wegener was not a geologist by profession, which of course was most welcome by his opponents. ...
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Palaeogeography is the cartographic representation of the past distribution of geographic features such as deep oceans, shallow seas, lowlands, rivers, lakes and mountain belts on palinspastically restored plate tectonic base maps. It is closely connected with plate tectonics which grew from an earlier theory of continental drift and is largely responsible for creating and structuring the Earth's lithosphere. Today, palaeogeography is an integral part of the Earth sciences curriculum. Commonly, with some exceptions, only the most recent state of research is presented; the historical aspects of how we actually came to the insights which we take for granted are rarely discussed, if at all. It is remarkable how much was already known about the changing face of the Earth more than three centuries before the theory of plate tectonics, despite the fact that most of our present analytical tools or our models were unavailable then. Here, we aim to present a general conspectus from the dawn of ‘palaeogeography’ in the 16th century onwards. Special emphasis is given to innovative ideas and scientific milestones, supplemented by memorable anecdotes, which helped to advance the theories of continental drift and plate tectonics, and finally led to the establishment of palaeogeography as a recognized discipline of the Earth sciences.
... The continental drift hypothesis was finally tested by European scientists and reported in 1923 (Stewart 1990) and in 1926(van Waterschoot et al. 1928Stewart 1990). In the US, opponents included such prominent geologists as Chamberlin (van Waterschoot et al., 1928), Bucher (1933, Simpson (1943), and Willis (1944). It should be noted that Bucher (1933) hypothesis about the geodynamic pulsation character of the Earth's evolution was theoretically supported by Aleinikov et al. (2001). ...
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In this section we look at the chronological evolution of geothermic theories. René Descartes (1644) first proposed that the Earth was initially a small star that subsequently cooled from a molten state, and as such had a certain amount of internal heat. Kircher (1665) mentioned the subterranean heat that was felt at the bottom of mines which he attributed to subterranean fires. Leibniz (1749), in his Protogaea written in 1691–1693 and first published in 1749 (Wolf and Dannemann 1935), proposed that the Earth had cooled through time from a molten state, and that during the cooling process a universal ocean gradually condensed from vapor. The earliest measurements of underground temperature were probably made in 1740 in the mines of Alsace, France by De Gensanne (de Buffon, 1778; Radau 1880; Prestwich, 1886). In 1783, de Lavoisier installed a thermometer for monitoring temperatures in Paris in the deep caverns below street level which are famous for displaying a constant temperature of 11.86 °C (285.01 K) at all seasons, which interestingly still remain unchanged (Gillispie, 2004). de Buffon (1778) proposed the existence of heat originating within the Earth. They estimated the time of the Earth’s cooling, based on the cooling rate of iron, to have been about 75,000 years. Toward the end of the 18th century, de Saussure found the increment rate of temperature with depth to be 1° for 37 m in the salt mines of Bex (Radau, 1880). Von Buch (1802) provided indications of the rate of temperature change by 1 °F with a depth. Cordier (1827) was probably one of first scientists to calculate the average geothermal gradient, and concluded that the value was about 20–25 °C/km.
... Wettstein (1880), see Letsch (2007) for a summary) when Wegener published his famous article Die Entstehung der Kontinente (Wegener 1912) in the present journal. And the hypothesis remained heatedly debated throughout the five decades following the publication of Wegener's first papers (see e.g. the summaries and reviews by Lake 1922, Schwinner 1936: 269–287, Willis 1944, Jeffreys 1959: 364–371, Wunderlich 1962, or the historical account by Carozzi 1985). Even though some excellent and highly influential geologists stood behind the theory (notably Argand 1924; Daly 1926; Staub 1928; Holmes 1928, or Du Toit 1937), it could not gain general acceptance, maybe with the notable exception of Switzerland (Carozzi 1985). ...
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Plate tectonics developed around 1965 as a powerful tool to describe the tectonic movements of the Earth’s crust. The article demonstrates that basically four already existing theoretical concepts—subduction, seafloor spreading, the application of Euler’s theorem and transform faults—had to be combined to arrive at the modern theory. Alfred Wegener, father of the theory of continental displacement, is often credited as the most direct forerunner of plate tectonics. However, none of the aforementioned concepts had been developed by him. The present article deals with the hitherto not duly credited contributions of the Swiss geologist Eugen Wegmann (1896–1982). He developed in a series of highly original papers published between 1943 and 1948 (one of them in the Geologische Rundschau), a critical test of the theory of continental displacement based on the regional geology of the Arctic. Furthermore, he gave a very concise account on the geometrical principles of drift movements. As a result, he developed for the first time—25 years before McKenzie and Parker’s Nature 216:1276–1280, landmark paper on the Pacific (1967)—the geometrical basis to graphically test plate motion directions. However, his work has not yet received the credit it deserves, neither by scientist nor by historians of science.
... Despite support from the southern hemisphere where the evidence is clearest (e.g., DuToit, 1921), Wegener's message largely fell on deaf ears. His theory of 'continental drift' as an explanation for tropical tillites was regarded as 'incredible' (Coleman, 1926, p. 263), a 'fairy tale' (Willis, 1944) and 'purely fantastic' (Flint, 1957, p. 503). Ironically, these three were leading North American glacial geologists; Coleman and Willis, moreover, had been Presidents of the Geological Society of America. ...
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The ‘Snowball Earth’ model of Hoffman et al. [Science 281 (1998) 1342] has stimulated renewed interest in the causes of glaciation in Earth history and the sedimentary, stratigraphic and geochemical response. The model invokes catastrophic global Neoproterozoic refrigerations when oceans froze, ice sheets covered the tropics and global temperatures plummeted to −50 °C. Each event is argued to be recorded by tillites and have lasted up to 10 million years. Planetary biological activity was arrested only to resume in the aftermath of abrupt and brutal volcanically generated ‘greenhouse’ deglaciations when global temperatures reached +50 °C. The ‘Cambrian explosion’ is regarded by some as a consequence of post-Snowball glacioeustatic flooding of continental shelves. We shall show by a systematic review of the model that it is based on many long standing assumptions of the character and origin of the Neoproterozoic glacial record, in particular, ‘tillites’, that are no longer valid.
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As a geology professor teaching a course in Introductory Geology, it did not make sense to me that Alfred Wegenerʼs theory of continental drift should have been rejected for nearly half a century. From what I knew of his evidence, it seemed convincing enough. Why were geologists so against these ideas? There must have been more to this history than what was commonly known. I began this project with the feeling that the rejection of continental drift was a scandal for geology and for science. Scientists should not reject a correct interpretation for so long. In more familiar scandals, such as recent ones in finance, politics, sports, and religion, one naturally looks for cover-ups. If there were cover-ups here, what was being hidden and who was being protected? I collected all the important historical literature, and I found what I was looking for. This is a revisionist history. It is based largely on a type of historical data that has been overlooked by others – the works of leading geology textbook authors. These authors are especially important, because their textbooks teach students the principles of the science. The theory of continental drift involved a new scientific paradigm, of mobile, not fixed, continents. The textbooks used in introductory geology courses defined the fixist paradigm and influenced the likelihood of a paradigm shift. I have thus paid extra attention to what the main English-language textbook authors wrote, and tried to understand in depth how these highly respected scientists thought. I know from long experience that scientists think just the way other people do.
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