Dead on Arrival - Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences - page 67

fore the 1970s was Willis's principle that the continents and oceans have always
been in the same place. Otherwise, how could the authors have drawn the “paleo-
geographic maps” on which such works depended? Without “permanence,” writ-
ing a historical geology text would be akin to writing the biography of an orphan
who moved every few days and never left a forwarding address. Permanence and
drift were diametrically opposed, and only one could be right.
Inthe first sally ofwhat wouldbecome acareer-longcrusade against continental
drift, Schuchert used not his own words but those of the Viennese paleontologist
and Alpine scholar Carl Diener. Schuchert's translation of an article by Diener
appeared in the April 1922 issue of a proprietary magazine called Pan-American
Geologist . Diener criticized Wegener's speculative geology and “recognized the
correctness of that theory which Bailey Willis represents, that permanence of great
seabasins stands almost outside the category of questions which are still debat-
able.” Land bridges were not only necessary but possible, said Diener, since “no
geophysical argument is opposed to the sinking of individual fragments” of si-
al (the lighter, rigid, silicon- and aluminum-rich upper crust). 2 But isostasy had
alreadyshownthatthelightercontinentscouldnotsinkintothedensersimabelow.
According to Diener, Willis had shown that permanence precludes the “horizontal
movements of [sialic] continental blocks over the Sima of the ocean floors” (197).
IntheOctober1922issueof Pan-American Geologist ,oneofitseditors,Edward
Berry of Johns Hopkins University (1875-1945), made what for him would prove
quite a temperate statement against drift. As to “Wegener's speculation which
would regard South America as having drifted westward from a former union with
Africa,” Berry said, the “geophysical difficulties are insuperable.” But even ignor-
ing those difficulties, he could see “no record of such a former union in anything
we know of the stratigraphy, structure, faunas, or floras. Between the juggling with
the hypothetical [Sial] and Sima of the earth's crust I much prefer the older hypo-
theses of land bridges and subsidence.” 3 Thus in 1922, even before American and
British geologists had a chance to read the English translation of Wegener's topic,
Diener and Berry had pronounced continental drift dead before arrival.
Not Even the Same Puzzle
The most efficient way to follow the fate of continental drift is to dip into the story
at key points, relying mainly on papers and remarks from a sample of the many
scientific meetings and reviews that considered the great question. On Septem-
ber 11, 1922, the Geological Section of the British Association held “a lively but
inconclusive discussion on the Wegener hypothesis of the origin of the contin-