Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER
3
STONES FROM THE SKY
Without help from a comet. . . I will give you a receipt for
growing tree ferns at the pole, or if it suits me, pines at the equator;
walruses under the line, and crocodiles in the arctic circle.
1
Charles Lyell
I
n science as in life, timing is everything. A correct theory proposed
before the time is ripe for its acceptance goes nowhere. The history
of science is replete with theories ignored for years, decades, even
centuries before their eventual acceptance. The most famous exam-
ple is that of Aristarchus of Samos who anticipated by 18 centuries
Copernicus's theory that the sun and not the earth is at the center
of the solar system. In Aristarchus's day, however, Earth-centered
astronomy did a good enough job of explaining the then rudimen-
tary knowledge of the solar system, so that Aristarchus's theory
was not "required." In 1866, the monk Gregor Mendel published
his work on the laws of genetics in the proceedings of a local soci-
ety of naturalists, but no one took notice. In 1900, 16 years after his
death, Mendel's results were rediscovered. Continental drift had
to wait half a century from Alfred Wegener's initial formulation in
1915 to the plate tectonics revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.
Why do ideas that eventually prove worthy often have to wait?
Typically it is because they go against the grain of the current para-
digm, leaving other scientists with no way even to think about
them. When first proposed, they are often little more than inspired
guesses with no supporting evidence. (Mendel was an exception; he
had the evidence but published it where no one saw it.] The appa-
ratus and techniques that will eventually provide experimental sup-
port often have yet to be invented. For example, only a few years
prior to 1980, the Gubbio iridium anomaly could not have been de-
tected, even if someone had been looking for it, because none of the
available instruments were sensitive enough to detect iridium at the
parts per trillion level.
