Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
When insiders reject a theory, those from outside the field, with no allegiance to
its mores, may become intrigued and decide to step in. Insiders typically resent the
intrusion.
As early as 1901, the
Monthly Weather Review
warned meteorologists not to ad-
opt the CO
2
theory of the “chemist” Arrhenius. Reading between the lines of what
Wegener's critics wrote, and often in the lines themselves, we perceive why geo-
logists rejected not only his theory but the man himself. Wegener was a “meteor-
ologist ignorant” of geological history, whose “world was not an ordinary one . . .
a stranger to the facts” who “generalizes too easily from other generalizations and
pays no attention to historical geology.” He presented only evidence that suppor-
ted his theory and took “extraordinary liberties with the globe.” Wegener was not
merely a foreigner; he was a German espousing “pseudoscience.”
Luis Alvarez was another resented outsider. We see this most clearly in Charles
Officer's scurrilous attempt to assassinate Alvarez's character. The ad hominem
attack may succeed in the courtroom and legislative hall but never for long in sci-
ence, where the data will out.
Even if insiders do not cast aspersions on the character and training of an in-
dividual outsider, they may still resent the implication that their discipline is in-
capable of solving its own problems using its own methods. Lyell needed “no
help from a comet,” nor Huxley from a “mathematical mill.” In 1964 Bucher
wrote: “Before we look to the sky to solve our problems miraculously in one blow,
we should consider the possibility that cryptoexplosion structures and explosion
craters may hold important clues to processes going on at great depth.” A speak-
er at the same conference warned: “To call on astronomy to solve our tectonic
problems would be to minimize the usefulness of geology.” Tony Hallam, a dis-
tinguished British geologist who readily accepted plate tectonics, was not eager to
accede to the Alvarez theory, advising that “environmental changes on this planet
as recorded by the facies [rock types] should be thoroughly explored before invok-
ing the
deus ex machina
of strange happenings in outer space. . . . It is intuitively
more satisfying to seek causes from amongst those phenomena which are compar-
atively familiar to our experience.”
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Yet for each of the four discoveries, the outsiders proved indispensable. Kelvin,
Rutherford, and Patterson were outsiders to geology. The British paleomagnetists
who paved the way for plate tectonics were physicists almost to a person. Daly,
Dietz, Urey, and Wegener were outsiders to lunar science. Luis Alvarez was an
outsider to paleontology and proud of it. Arrhenius was a stranger to meteorology,
as were Hulburt, Callendar, Plass, Manabe, and Hansen. Without such interlopers,
the great discoveries would have been even longer delayed.
