A historical account of the triumph of the global theory of plate tectonics and its implications for the "modern revolution in geology" of the 1960s and 1970s after fifty years of controversy and competition.

Describes the expansion of the land-based paleomagnetic case for drifting continents and recounts the golden age of marine geoscience.

"The book provides an excellent historical summary of the debates over continental drift theory in this century." —Contemporary Sociology "This is a useful discussion of the way that science works. The book will be of value to philosophers of science . . . " —Choice " . . . will find an important place in university and department libraries, and will interest afficionados of the factual and intellectual history of the earth sciences." —Terra Nova " . . . an excellent core analysis . . . " —The Times Higher Education Supplement " . . . an ambitious and important contribution to the new sociology of science." —American Journal of Sociology " . . . Stewart's book is a noble effort, an interesting and readable discussion, and another higher notch on the scoreboard of critical scholarship that deserves wide examination and close attention." —Geophysics This fascinating book describes the rise and fall and rebirth of continental drift theory in this century. It uses the recent revolution in geoscientinsts' beliefs about the earth to examine questions such as, How does scientific knowledge develop and change? The book also explores how well different perspectives help us to understand revolutionary change in science.

Developments in Geotectonics, Volume 2: Geodynamic Models: An Evaluation and a Synthesis presents the concept of sea-floor spreading and the hypothesis of global plate tectonics. This book provides a basic understanding of the global movements. Organized into eight chapters, this volume begins with an overview of the concept of global plate tectonics, with its additional hypotheses of subduction zones and sea-floor spreading. This text then examines the concept of vertical deformations of the lithosphere and their gravitational spreading. Other chapters consider the analysis of geotectonic processes that is based on some general principles of their mechanics. This book discusses as well the origin of mega-undations in turbulent and laminar flow systems in the lower mantle, where the matter may have a Newtonian viscosity. The final chapter deals with the geodynamics of the Earth's crust as the result of the outward growth of the deep ocean floor from mid-ocean ridges. This book is a valuable resource for geologists, geonomists, and geophysicists.

For years, I was a proud employee of General Motors. I loved my work as a Journeyman Electrician. Unfortunately, my work was transformed into a horror story when I was assigned to Pontiac Assembly Center. There, I was routinely bullied, harassed, and threatened by co-workers and supervisors. When I asked GM management for help, they responded by aligning themselves with my persecutors. I was threatened with physical violence, stalked, denied safety rights, forced to do work others were unwilling to do, and refused medical treatment. I was removed from a coveted job by a Superintendent, who cited my MS condition, blatantly ignoring rights afforded under ADA. I was called "Black Nigger Bitch". There were pictures posted about the plant, where I was depicted as "ROADKILL". KKK style nooses were hung in the plant. A General Foreman pressed his face close to mine and said, "I can't promise you you're going to live the next few minutes." I next turned to the justice system for help. When my case went before a Circuit Court Judge, he swiftly and willfully granted summary disposition judgments in GM's favor. Undaunted, I began my own investigation. In doing so, I discovered that 108 pages of my deposition had disappeared. I uncovered a letter from a GM executive threatening a union official who planned on helping me. My lawyer lied to me about having filed an appeal. Where is the justice when a court of law condones this as acceptable behavior in a civilized society? How can America hold itself out as a free and just society that other countries would choose to emulate? Should corporate entities such as GM be allowed to not only bend the law, but to break the law? How and why could such travesty have been allowed to occur?

In Mysteries of Terra Firma, James Lawrence Powell tells an engrossing three-part tale of how we came to understand the ground on which we walk, and how that ground holds the key to the greatest secrets of deep space and time. Naming his profound stories Time, Drift, and Chance, he tells of the three twentieth-century revolutions in thought that created the amazing science of Earth -- and of all planets to the edge of the universe. The riddle that drove the first revolution is obvious and yet in 1904 remained impenetrable: how old is Earth? An encounter between the imperious Lord Kelvin and a New Zealand farm-boy-turned-physicist, Ernest Rutherford, set the stage for the solution and launched a golden century of geology. As a result, scientists learned that if the 4.5 billion years of geologic time were compressed into a single twenty-four-hour period, Homo sapiens would have arrived only in the last second. The geological Revolution of Time reveals how long the ground on which we walk has existed, and how briefly we have trod that ground. In the early twentieth century, German meteorologist and polar explorer Alfred Wegener proposed a counterintuitive, heretical theory: that terra firma is not so firm; instead of being fixed in place, continents drift. In 1926, petroleum geologists convened in New York City to discuss Wegener's radical idea, where it was met with outrage and skepticism: "If we are to believe Wegener's hypothesis we must forget everything which has been learned in the last seventy years and start all over again," one attendee said. Forty years later, a new generation did exactly that. The Revolution of Drift, the second part of Powell's narrative, showed us how the ground on which we walk moves. Throughout geologic time, meteorites have incessantly bombarded everything in the solar system. Far from serene and predictable, the planets are ruled by random violence on an unimaginable scale. Once a mountain-sized meteorite flew through space, struck the Earth, killed the dinosaurs and two-thirds of all species, and spared the small hamster-sized creature that happened to be our ancestor. The chance of that happening again is essentially zero. So, the final revolution in Powell's history of a golden century of geology is the Revolution of Chance. Simply put, this revolution in thought has transformed our understanding of how lucky we really are. If we can learn so much from considering no more than the rocks beneath our feet, what will we learn when we begin walking on other planets? Mysteries of Terra Firma is both charming in its storytelling and staggering in its implications. Discovering the ground on which we stand is a fascinating journey into our past -- and our future.

The definitive account of the early debate over Wegener's theory of continental drift, based on extensive interviews and archival material.

This introduction offers an explanation of how fossils are a product of our evolving habitat. The emphasis is on what paleontology is really about, how the paleontologist tries to find out the ways in which fossil animals lived and how geological processes have interacted with the history of life.

Studies of the magnetic anomalies paralleling ocean ridges have furnished partisans of continental drift with decisive arguments. To take stock of this important question, my colleague Thellier and I decided in the early summer of 1967 to make it the subject of the annual seminar on Earth physics for the school year 1967-68. Although research was still developing rapidly, the General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics held in Switzerland in September, particularly some of the meetings in Zurich under the auspices of the International Committee for the Upper Mantle, appeared to confirm that we had made no important omissions. At the con clusion of the seminar, where I had been responsible for most of the lectures, I resolved to write the present volume for the non-specialized scientific reader. The project turned out to be a good deal more ambitious than I had thought. It is quite an undertaking nowadays to try to survey a rapidly growing subject, first of all because of the difficulty of gathering material; publication delays are now nearing one year, with the result that specialists communicate largely through a selective distribution of reports, as well as verbally in frequent colloquia. I warmly thank those who helped me in getting unpublished literature, especially Xavier Le Pichon. Even so, some essential work came to my knowledge only lately.