Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
In view of the scanty and hypothetical nature of our knowledge of the Earth's interior, it seems
best not to be too much influenced by the theoretical difficulties in the interpretation of the
facts ofobservation. Ifthefacts arecorrectly observedthere mustbesomemeans ofexplaining
and coordinating them and many precedents suggest the unwisdom of being too sure of con-
clusions based on the supposed properties of imperfectly understood materials in inaccessible
regions of the Earth.
19
By 1960, geologists, especially those in America, believed that their evidence
had shown that continental drift
had not happened
. With the exception of the new
breed of paleomagnetists, geophysicists like Harvard's Francis Birch, Harold Jef-
freys, and Gordon J. F. MacDonald believed that regardless of the geological evid-
ence, continental drift
could not have happened
because the Earth's internal prop-
erties made it impossible.
